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I have said this many times and I will keep on saying it, card counting is not only a very serious business but it is also very difficult to pull off. Certain people with certain personality types are definitely not suited to playing full-time blackjack or even part time blackjack for that matter.

The thing is that it does create somewhat of a nervous situation when you are ramping your bets. When you do this for the first time, you always get the feeling that everyone in the entire building knows what it is that you are doing.

This first time nervousness and paranoia should go away but with many people it doesn’t. The fact of the matter is that anyone who goes and does the bare minimum as a blackjack player will get caught. Or at the very least will have severe counter measures taken against them.

This usually involves the dealer dealing short shoes which decreases the number of hands dealt per shoe but it also decreases the number of profitable situations for the counter as well. The best and most profitable situations tend to arise at the end of the shoe so when the shoe is cut very shallow then the really profitable situations rarely arise and the game tends to be nothing more than a process for recycling money.

This is what many novice card counters do not understand, they learn the running count but do not do true count conversions. If the first ten cards out of a four deck shoe are low cards then the running count is +10. But this figure of +10 does not represent the same ratio of high cards to low cards as it would if the count was +10 with only one deck remaining.

If we use the high-low count to show what I mean, there are 208 cards in a four deck shoe. These are broken down into 80 low cards, 80 high cards and 48 middling cards that have a count of zero. So ignoring the middling cards we can see that there are now 80 high cards and aces and 70 low cards remaining for a ratio of one high card or ace to every low card at a rate of 1.14.

But with only one deck remaining if we took a standard distribution of 20 low cards, 20 high cards and 12 middling cards, taking away ten low cards gives us a ratio of high cards and aces to low cards which is 2.00 and not the 1.14 like before.

See what I mean now

I remember clearly the first time that I ever made a non conventional blackjack move. I was scouting a casino in the north of England and was playing table minimums. I did not have too much money on me as counting and playing was not on my agenda. I did not want to ruin my chances with the team before we even started.

So what happened during the course of the evening was a little amazing if not stupid. The dealer was a nice girl and the inspector was also a nice guy and we had been making polite conversation for about thirty minutes or so.

There were a couple of other players on the table apart from me and she pulled an ace to her own hand when she already had seventeen. The rules state that the card must then be the next card out of the shoe and on this instance, the card happened to be an ace.

Without any conscious thought, I reached into my pocket and took most of the money that I had and placed a maximum bet on the first box of £200. The hush and silence became deafening as the inspector and dealer exchanged glances with each other as if to say “can he do that”.

Well of course I can and I wasn’t breaking any rules, just taking advantage of a dealer mistake. It was a bad thing to do but this is money when all said and done and the edge for the player when you know that your first card is an ace is over 50%. I won the hand although not with a natural and the mood on the table changed.

But I knew that this wouldn’t get reported because what dealer or inspector would want their superiors to know that they were not doing their jobs properly?

That really was a defining day and I made that same move numerous times although not always with an ace as it was often with a ten value card.

See you soon

Carl
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There is a special type of buzz when you enter a casino with the intention of taking money from them. Casinos at the end of the day are businesses and any business is concentrating on making money and not on losing it.

But at the end of the day they are providing entertainment. They don’t mind people winning money as long as winning money is all that they are doing. There is of course a world of difference between winning money and earning money. When you are earning money then you have a positive long term expectation.

You are no longer winning money by getting lucky like a normal punter but slowly extracting money from the casino. It is possible that some card counters could be allowed to ply their trade if the casino was gaining in some other way.

For instance I once knew of a gaming manager who allowed a winning small-stakes counter to ply his trade simply because he didn’t want to risk upsetting the big hitting roulette players that he came in with who were his friends.

It is when you know that the casino don’t know what you are doing that creates the biggest buzz. This is something that a lifetime of online poker cannot replicate. This constant cat and mouse game is in itself quite a thrill.

Alas of course, it is very difficult to make blackjack a career. This is why I was playing online poker just a few years later. Just like with online poker where you are struggling to find profitable games, it is often better to play semi-professionally or as a serious amateur than to try and go full-time.

I certainly do recommend though that you try and play blackjack in a live setting because it will be well worth it.

See you soon

Carl
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There have been big debates down the years about the merits of card counting systems and comparing one to the other. This kind of reminds me of online poker and what is the best way to operate. With online poker then there is simply no one shoe fits all policy and there never can be in a million years.

Much depends on how good you are, how fast you can play, if you have rakeback, how your game stands up to multi-tabling, does watching your opponents figure greatly in your play and the list goes on and on. Usually you need to find your own level in online poker or any other form of poker to be able to make money.

Players that cannot find their own level or are constantly trying to move up and be big shots usually bust out. There is little difference with blackjack, the best card counting system is basically specific to each individual. You cannot quote some level 4 type system as being optimal if the individual cannot use it properly without losing count.

So if a certain system is “best” for you then it is “best” and it is that simple. It is the same when financial consultants recommend financial products to clients. There is no stand out best product, only what products are best for certain people.

So a blackjack player who struggles with adding up and true count conversions may find the KO Count optimal. Then again, someone who was playing long hours who was also shuffle tracking and wanted to incorporate everything as efficiently as possible may find the high/low optimal (like we did).

Then again, a player who has the mental fortitude and is doing nothing but counting and wants optimal power and results may use a level four system. So there is no such thing as the “best system” in the world…..only what is best for the individual.

See you soon

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
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How difficult is card counting in blackjack? Or should I say, how difficult is keeping the count in blackjack? The answer is……it depends. If you are using a basic level 1 counting system then all you have to do is add and subtract in units of 1. That hardly seems daunting and it isn’t when you put it as plainly as that. But there are numerous factors at work that can lead to a counter losing the count totally.

Firstly inexperienced counters get flustered by fast dealers, table talk and nerves that are brought about by doing something that they know full well that if they were to get caught then they simply would not be able to play the game in the same way and could even lead to them being prevented from playing at all.

But fatigue is the number one factor with regards to losing the count for skilled counters. Keeping the count at the start of the session is easy and especially so if it is a level 1 counting system. But the problem later on in that same session is that your concentration levels start to fall and you often can find yourself blindly staring at the table.

This kind of brain freeze is a classic warning sign with card counting and a sign that you need to end the session and quickly. Adding and subtracting in units of one may sound simple but doing it constantly for hour after hour after hour is a mental drain. You can easily reach a stage where you simply cannot think anymore. With shuffle tracking then it can be even worse because if you are not fully concentrating on where the high card segments have been dispersed to for the next shoe then you could easily end up signalling the BP into situations that were negative and not positive….not good.

So keep in mind that card counting is a mental exercise and as with all types of exercise then it eventually leads to fatigue and fatigue leads to errors and in gambling then errors means losing money.

see you soon

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

In poker, if you see your opponents hand without actually trying to do so then that is not cheating. Part of the game is in concealing your own hand. In casino blackjack of course then the casino is fair game and so is the dealer if they are careless with exposing cards.

So just how do dealers expose cards in blackjack when it is being dealt from a shoe? Well there are numerous ways to do this but the main one is when dealers for whatever reason are either not holding the card correctly or not pulling the card correctly. Even many experienced dealers apply pressure to the wrong area of the card and inadvertently make it visible to an alert player at first base. If this card is a ten value card or an ace then that is a big advantage for the player.

Now of course that card needs to be the first card out of the next hand so that the player on first base gets the card. But the problem is with individual counters that if you escalate your bet dramatically to take advantage of this then it is blatant to the casino staff. You will be suspected as a card counter even if in this instance you are not counting.

If you went from £5 to £200 with the knowledge that the next card out of the shoe is an ace then the edge is around 52% for the player. This means that the expectation is +£104 on the bet. Do you want to risk your entire operation for £104? This is even supposing that you win the hand, an ace is no guarantee of victory. This tactic is better when you have a BP (big player) as you are going to be signalling them in with big bets anyway.

Quite often, aggressive male dealers have this flaw and especially if they are fresh at the start of a shift or they are annoyed for whatever reason. Different dealers deal the cards in different ways and flaws that were present at the start of shift may dissapear with time and vice versa.

In the next post I want to talk about actual spooking ploys that we used,

see you soon

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

Many attribute successful blackjack players as being individuals but they never work on their own. Even if they might happen to practice on their own, they are operating with knowledge gained from some of the greatest exponents on the planet. I know from past experience that even when I was on my own as a counter, I still had an arsenal of world renowned experts swimming around in my head.

In my mind, I was never going into a casino on my own as I had other people there with me in spirit. I had read Million Dollar Blackjack by Ken Uston more times than I can care to remember. Ken ran what was perhaps the most successful blackjack operation in the history of the game and I did learn an awful lot from him from reading that one single book. Then we had Professional Blackjack by Stanford Wong, an absolute classic of a book and still as relevant today as it was when the first edition came out back in the eighties.

I had started the process off by reading Beat the Dealer by Edward Thorp  back in 1990 and that really kick started the whole process. The book was dated compared to the others but it was still a gem. This was the first great blackjack book and it must have kick started the careers of thousands of card counters.

Then we had Playing Blackjack as a Business by Lawrence Revere, like Stanford Wong this name was an alias but Revere also had a dark side as well. Rumour had it that he also worked as a card counter spotter for casinos and that he also caught the very people who he had trained up.

Many would argue that Blackjack for Blood by Bryce Carlson should also be up there. The sections on the Advanced Omega 2 counting system and evasion techniques were great information. Then I had Blackjack Attack by Donald Schlesinger. This for me could be the greatest blackjack book ever printed and was the first book to properly explain how strategy deviations were of less importance and the “sweet 16″ and “illustrious 18″ were formed in that book.

Then I had The Theory of Blackjack by Peter Griffin, a very mathematically heavy book but still very good reading. I also have to mention the articles on shuffle tracking in Blackjack Forum by Arnold Snyder as being excellent value. I could mention countless others, the Shuffle Trak program by Mesa Verde Software, Stanford Wong’s Professional Count Analyzer are also up there.

So I was never on my own, I had the best team on the planet helping me……The Blackjack All Stars……what casino can stand up to that kind of team without changing the game or the rules……none!

See you soon

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

Let us say that you want to achieve a bet spread of £2 to £100 without getting noticed. You want to play as little as possible without getting noticed when the count goes negative. In blackjack then you know when the dealer has the advantage and when you have it. Ideally you would like to play the absolute minimum when the dealer has the advantage and then expand to the maximum whenever you have it. In reality of course then the situation is far different as you will quickly get detected doing this.

So you start your bet at the start of the shoe at £5 and not £2 as I said previously. Here the running count is zero and the house edge means that you are under a -0.5% disadvantage at this stage. But if the running count starts going negative then you can leave the table. But you need to have cover when you do this so I would advise going and standing behind a roulette table as if you are waiting to bet on roulette.

This has then reduced your blackjack bets not to the table minimum of £2 but to absolute zero. It also allows you to look more like a gambler who is flitting between two tables. Of course you throw the odd cover bet onto roulette even money chances every once in a while but that is just for cover. You are only losing 1.35% per spin on even chance bets so 4 bets of £50 every hour is only costing you £2.70 per hour.

Your blackjack hourly rate will offset this and increase the length of your career. Then when the count stays at around neutral you can increase your bets by doubling it up and you can even tell the dealer to “double you up”. You can do this after a winning hand so that it makes you look as if you are letting winnings ride or after a losing hand so that you are chasing losses.

Also your £50 bets on roulette exceed your bets on blackjack at this stage so when you increase your bets on blackjack to match them or even exceed them then no one will think anything of it but be sure to let the blackjack dealers know that your £50 bet on roulette has either won or lost…..got to be sneaky

see you soon

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

How do you get the money onto a blackjack table without looking like a card counter? This is the problem that you face as a pro blackjack player. Let us say that you have a $2 table minimum and a $200 table maximum. But due to bankroll limitations, your maximum bet is $100. This is still a bet spread of 50/1 if you deviate between betting $2 and betting $100.

This is called bet spread and will get you caught in any casino for the simple reason being that this is what they look for. So you need to reduce your spread, if you think that this is reducing your profit then you are wrong. Let us say that your could theoretically make £10,000 in a six month period but after that six month period, you were basically prevented from playing   wherever you went as your details were now on some database of undesirables.

Let us also say that had you reduced your spread during that same period, your theoretical earn rate would only have been a mere £4000. During that six month period, it is easy to think that you are maximising your earnings but that is merely an illusion.

It is like a tortoise and the hare type situation where the player who is earning less has the ability to carry on doing so at a rate of £8k a year. Let us say that his playing career lasts for 10 years at the same rate, he has then made £80k compared to the other players £10k and all because he chose a more realistic bet spread.

You need to sacrifice profit, if you try for the maximum possible then you will fail for the simple reason being that you will expose your operation. If you could start betting £5 instead of £2 then that would be a start, straight away you have reduced the spread to 20/1 from 50/1 when you max out with your £100 bet. You could then use a typical gambling doubling up system and make it known to everyone that this is what you are doing. You prepare for the jumps by increasing your bets in neutral counts.

This has the added effect of confusing any member of staff who can card count as you will be increasing your bet when the count isn’t positive but it also allows you to get to your maximum bet faster should the count continue to escalate.

You have to work smarter

see you soon

Carl

It has taken a while but I have finally watched the mover “21” with Kevin Spacey. I think as with all movies that surround technical fields like sports and games, there are going to be numerous things that are not accurate. Today’s video shows the preview for the movie and has been selected by me because it sort of fits in with what I have been saying about blackjack.

At the end of the day, anything that has been written, spoken or filmed about the game of blackjack rightfully takes its place in the blackjack world whether people agree with it or not. It is inevitable that Hollywood will do their stuff and change what the MIT team did just for dramatic effect.

So we have a situation where reality and fantasy merge. Even when I wrote my book “Princes of Darkness: The World of High-stakes blackjack”, it was difficult to get across the reality of it and I was the one who was writing the book. In fact I have to confess that I slightly inflated and dressed up certain things in a minor way and I think that is kind of inevitable during the process.

I remember a few years ago watching Rounders with Matt Damon and even though that is probably the best film on poker ever made due to its accuracy, I found it very clichéd and done in a way that still didn’t depict true reality. Watching the movie “21” will not reveal how to run a successful blackjack team although it will reveal useful tips if you zoom in on them.

But things like using two big players on the same table isn’t needed for instance as this just brings too much heat down and tipping is not something that a professional blackjack player does on any great scale simply because the edge is so small. By all means watch the movie if you have never watched it before but do remember that you are watching Hollywood at work here.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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