Coloring up and thanks

[Cloudstreets7087]

Bear, can you explain the 'shoebox' reference? Just kidding...please don't!

I started on a shoestring BR, so I can relate. I does seem a number of people on the site did as well and managed to grow from there to various levels. I think these numbers may be misleading because the many folks who started out underfunded and busted out, probably quit right there and aren't around to tell us about it, so we are only hearing the 'success' stories.

This is a very valid point. I'm sure there are tons of people that busted their bank roll quickly and just never bothered with it again.

To add insult to injury with my story, I started off with the OPP count in the beginning. I felt very confident I could keep an accurate count with OPP and I would completely blow the Hi-Lo count. I figured it would be more damaging to have an inaccurate hi-lo count than a very accurate, but less effective OPP count. So I used that for the first 2.5 months of my "Career."

[KJ]

For myself, I never needed the money for living expenses. KJ, for example, managed to do it while paying expenses - that had to be real tough.

Freightman, I think the word you are looking for there is stupid.

[Freightman]

Freightman, I think the word you are looking for there is stupid.

Stubborn maybe - stupid no

[Nikky_Flash]

wow , gives me hope as a red-chipper , I've always left when its crowded , which is most the time ... do u (the op ) just stay and play ? .... I can't figure out where people Are playing where they can sit and just do what u gotta do ... my situation is almost always full and over loaded with people everywhere ...

[Freightman]

Freightman, I think the word you are looking for there is stupid.

Like any field of endeavour, the strong survive, the weak do not. A simple analogy would be the straight commission salesman who is starving to death vs. The one basking in success, or the businessman striking out vs the one who makes it 5 years or beyond (in my case - 18) there are degrees if both success and failure.

I have a recollection of some old post that you made - a nothing bankroll paying expenses, possibly even sleeping in your car, if you had one at the time. Times were tough for you. I equate that to quitting my last job and going out on my own, I had limited funds, and only a concept of something that would work - essentially an unmined idea for my neck if the woods, no template to work off of. I struggled also. My first priority was generating cash - finding shit projects just to generate a few bucks. I recall thinking more than once if that cheque would show up prior to month end, or would I have to go into savings to pay the house bills. I would only buy copier paper 1 or 2 reems at a time, though not competitive from a price perspective, it meant less cash out the door. I almost failed that first year, but I kept at it, and I survived. I reworked my concept a few times - I recall that exhilaration I had, about 15 years ago, when finally, I could finally take a deep breath, and know that I had survived. I've had several good years now, and can say now, for all intents and purposes, though still working, essentially semi retired working maybe 8 hours a week now. I may be wrong, but it seems that your story somewhat mirrors mine, though the fields if endeavour were different.

Stupid, I don't think so,
Stupidly stubborn, perhaps so, but isn't that the stuff that dreams are made of?

As an afterthought, I would never have contemplated blackjack at the time I was struggling to make Money - that came later, by accident, once I started making a few bucks.

[SiMi]

Hey, CS7087!

Congrats on your success!! FWIW, I agree that you should pay off the debt ASAP and move on to something that intrigues you more than BJ. It sounds as if you don't really enjoy playing BJ all that much and you were just trying to make some money quickly. You were very lucky with BJ and that's GREAT! Might as well move on and try something new as far as I can see.

I enjoy BJ and I will play it as long as I'm able. Since I'm going to play, I figured I might as well have an advantage, even if it's small. That way, I can play a lot and not lose my ass. For me, card counting is more of a personal challenge than a way to make money because, let's face it, the edge is quite small and you have to really work hard to make any decent money.

I could go to a bar for a couple of hours and have a few drinks (and maybe get a DUI on the way home) or go to a movie and spend $20 on a ticket and popcorn for a couple of hours and get Hollywood's latest tripe or I could go to a Casino for a few hours and probably walk away with a few hundred dollars more than I walked in with, on average. To me, it's a no-brainer to play BJ they way I do. Even if If lose a wad in one session, I know I'll get it back eventually so it's cool and I'm having fun in the David vs. Goliath world of CC.

Poker is a great game for people who like to "psych out" other people and that may be a lot of fun for you and I suspect there's a ton of strategy if you like math and probability, etc. I think you should be very proud when you pay off the debt and close this part of your life. Again, congrats to you!!

Best!
SiMi

[Three]

I had been playing a while on a modest $10K BR when i got an idea that just wouldn't go away, I mentally pursues and convinced myself it was a powerful new twist to linear counting. I had about a $12K BR but wasn't sure I could trust such radical changes to counting. I put $800 aside to test my theories as a trip BR. I was really conservative and did really well for such a modest BR and after a few trips I was up over $5K so I got bolder. The entire time I am tweaking my own system and like KJ said I was really lucky. I didn't have many big losses and they all came sandwiched between even bigger wins. I did almost as good a Cloudstreet but kept going. There was some bad patches and a nightmare were I upped my bet spread and immediately walked directly into horrible run that at up 1/3rd of my then pretty substantial BR. I eventually had to drawdown my spread just in time for the winning to start up again. It took a long time to win it all back. I have taken out far more than my seed money by an order of magnitude. The initial BR my seed money came out of became personal money and despite the bad runs and in particular the horrible changing of spread timing in one such run my results are comparable to Cloud's only for a more sustained time. I think it took a few more months to get to his mark and it was shortly after that that the bad run immediately after increasing my spread hit.

I also agree with KJ that you are not going to find the much more frequent failure stories because they are not playing or posting anymore. There are some here waiting for that fortunate run that have been treading water and some that just keep adding to their BR to continue or try again. I know when I was doing what everyone else does I was treading water. I would get ahead nice and each time I thought I was going to be unstoppable a bad run would wipe out most of my profits. It just kept happening again and again. Overtime I thought I was on my way things would fall apart for a while. It was probably more of a coincidence than anything else that the wins and losses aligned properly when I took a different path as it was a year or so before it was significantly different. By then I had a decent BR from the $800 seed money.

[KJ]

I have a recollection of some old post that you made - a nothing bankroll paying expenses, possibly even sleeping in your car, if you had one at the time. Times were tough for you.

Stupid, I don't think so,
Stupidly stubborn, perhaps so, but isn't that the stuff that dreams are made of?

Well, let's not get crazy here.....I didn't sleep in nor even own a car at the time. I was homeless for a brief period, at the end of high school, several years before I began my BJ career, so I was determined never to take that road again. It's important to have a place to retreat to, lay your head for rest and call home, no matter what circumstances you find yourself in. I honestly don't know how homeless people do it.

I did struggle financially my first 3 years, making a total of 30K from blackjack play, that's an average of 10k a year and one year I didn't even hit five figures. But I mostly was able to pay my half of our modest rent, I just couldn't seem grow my BR one bit. I think there were 2 months in those first couple years that my roommate 'helped' me out with rent. But what I did do is really skimp on food. Other than my occasional comped meals, which at my $5 minimum level were not frequent, I did eat like a homeless or near homeless person. Many meals of mac and cheese and PB & J sandwiches.

I also will a little embarrassingly, tell you that my early overnight trips to Atlantic City consisted of catching a nap at Sands or Bally's bus areas, where I was rubbing elbows with the real homeless crowds.

But it all worked out in the end. The blackjack gods, while they like to play with you at times, have really been extraordinarily good to me.

[moo321]

[QUOTE=ZeeBabar;164101]I seriously doubt that you can go from $300 to over $32k [QUOTE]

I've literally seen it happen, in a single session.

[bigplayer]

Mixing unit sizes is a real bankroll killer. If you've got a 1% advantage you should bet 1% of your kelly bankroll. If you have to play a higher than normal table minimum you need better rules or better penetration to justify it or you're gonna have to be more aggressive at table exits (or just backcount).