Many people have asked me how long does it take to become a pro blackjack player. Well that answer is difficult to give simply because speaking through experience, if it were not because of my financial backers then I wouldnt have played the game at all in all probability.
Risking money isnt easy for many people and it certainly wasnt easy for me and this was why I probably wouldnt have done anything had it not been for a serious cash injection. But this underlines that in order to be able to make money out of any form of gambling then you are going to have to accept risk and that isnt easy for many people.
Then even when you accept the risk, you then have to accept the variance which is severe. A bankroll of 150 big bets is really only adequate. Then what you have to remember is that in order to make money in BJ then you have to risk a certain amount. So having a max bet of $20 isnt going to get you a huge hourly rate.
This was why we used Shuffle Trak which was a great piece of software that tracked shuffles into the next shoe. This gave us far more frequent high card segments than merely counting. But even then, unless your maximum bet is at a decent level then your hourly rate isnt going to be big and if you are betting big then you are under more scrutiny.
This is the BJ players dilemma and it is a difficult one to overcome. We used a laptop computer that I operated on the outside and one of our team called me to give me the shuffle, within seconds I could give them back the exact info for where these cards were going into the next shoe.
But if you remember that even 150 big bets doesnt guarantee not going bust then having an half decent big bet of $50 means that you will need at least a $7500 bankroll and probably $10,000-$12,500 may be needed. Gambling for a living is like joing the foreign legion……you have to be tough enough.
See you soon and take care
Carl
