AP Blackjack Is Over

[Archvaldor]

It feels to me like AP blackjack is essentially dead as a concept.

During the blackjack decades, broadly speaking sixties through nineties, blackjack had a major appeal to smart young guys as a means to make money and avoid the rat race. Barriers to entry were minimal compared to the costs of starting a business. Good games could be found relatively easily. There was an element of myth to this-you always got overexcited nerds writing endless volumes about the subject while doing very little, as if their amazing abstract math skills would actually get them anywhere without capitalization and street knowledge (cue triggered nerds). But there was also an element of truth.

Nowadays games have deteriorated. There are viable plays but the best opportunities are completely underground now, no one shares that stuff. And it is all so 20th century, expenses, downtime, bricks and mortar. There's so much opportunity online for kids with intelligence that requires little in the way of capitalization.

The best numbers you hear people pulling are millions of dollars over the best part of a decade. That's going to be people on the extreme of the bell curve. By contrast you look at something utterly banal and well publicized like amazon dropshipping and there are credible, multiple stories of people pulling seven figures in the same time frame. When you look at the more advanced cutting edge stuff eg social arbitrage, you could be talking billions.

I used to get really excited when I discovered an AP opportunity. I still do, it is intellectually absorbing. But nowadays I then look at my Tesla shares and think "Oh yeah, not worth my time".

I'm writing this in the hope but not expectation someone will come out with a convincing refutation of all this. I kind of miss being a full-time AP, at least some aspects of it.