Had an Interesting Night Dealing Blackjack last night

Been dealing for about two months now, and last night was a wild one. Just as I started a fresh shoe, a guy in his early 30s sat down at my table. He bought in for $500—not unusual—and started off with minimum $25 bets.

I don’t normally keep track of the count while dealing since there’s a lot going on, but he suddenly jumped his bet from $25 to $200. I dealt him a 9 vs. 7, he doubled, got an ace, and easily beat my 17. Right after that, the count went through the roof, and he started firing $800 a hand—and kept winning.

Then I started noticing his plays—he was taking insurance, doubling soft 19 vs. a 4, and splitting 9s vs. a 7. At one point, he had 15 vs. a 10, and I was so locked into the pace of the game that I accidentally flipped his card without waiting for a signal—realized it right after, but he wouldn’t have hit anyway since surrender isn’t offered. I ended up drawing to a bust anyway lol. He didn’t say anything about it, just gave a little smirk, then put a $10 bet up for the dealer with a smile on the next hand.

About 20 minutes later, my supervisor walked over and told him he was no longer allowed to play blackjack. They colored him up, and he walked away turning his $500 into $4.5k. Not bad for a quick session—if only it were always that easy lol.

I just played BJ for fun before the pandemic. Didn’t care if I won or loss and just saw it as entertainment.

Pandemic hits and decided to get better since I was at home a lot. Learned basic strategy, card counting, bet spreads. Definitely could see I was losing a lot less hands.

Fast forward and I go out to Vegas last month. I messed around with a couple of $10 3:2 games with a continuous shuffler while doing martingale betting. End up a couple hundred.

Since I was up for the trip, I decided to step up into the 3:2 $25 6-deck. Bought in for $500 and left up $300 in 2 hours of play. I was counting the whole time and bet spreading though I didn’t go past $50. But it seemed nobody cared that I was counting. I wasn’t making it outright obvious, but I was certainly paying attention to everyone’s cards every hand and looking at the discard tray.

My thing is that it all seemed so easy to do. Did I train myself so that I wasn’t making it obvious? Was it not enough money for the casino managers to care? Probably not a lot of money for you guys on this subreddit, but for a small time guy like me it’s certainly something.

Hey everyone,

I first heard about card counting the same way most people do, through movies. But I quickly learned it’s nothing like what you see on screen. It’s not easy, it’s not glamorous, and it definitely doesn’t mean you win all the time. Like a lot of folks here have said before, the reality is a grind where variance is very real. I started playing blackjack just for fun around a year and a half ago. I’ve been grinding consistently and logging hours. These pictures are just some of my wins from that stretch.

I’ve been counting for about 13–14 months and tracked roughly 855 hours of play. Based on my results, that works out to about $48/hour EV, which lines up pretty close with what I expected. Overall profit: $41,500.

That said, I think my blackjack/carding days are coming to an end. The emotional toll and grind it takes isn’t worth it for me personally. I’ve had a couple of nasty $15k–$20k downswings along the way, and while I know variance smooths out in the long run, I’m not interested in pushing through it anymore.

I also travel a lot for work, so my travel expenses are basically nonexistent, which means everything I earned was pure profit. But the tradeoff has been a lot of late nights and early mornings before work just to squeeze out another $50/hour. I’ve got a solid career already, and that’s more important than this side grind. Falling asleep in meetings and being dead tired during the day is starting to affect my day job and that’s not something I’m willing to gamble with.

On top of that, I played rated for too long in the beginning, and now I’m flagged at Caesars, MGM, and Penn properties. The writing’s kind of on the wall.

I’m quitting while I’m ahead. Just wanted to share the ride, my results, and the pictures as a way of closing the book on this chapter.

Good luck to my fellow AP’s out there!

P.S. just realized after I wrote this that I can’t attach pictures on this forum… lame

With perfect play you can turn the odds of blackjack in your favour if you keep a count of previous cards.

Casinos could put a stop to this with increased shuffling or other measures.

My theory they want people to think they can have an edge as people won't play optimally after a couple of drinks or will lose concentration or stamina. Even if they do play optimally there is a good chance they will lose their stake and have to stop playing (random walk).

The money they lose to the odd persons n pulling off the strategy before they get kicked out is a great advertisement for the casinos who take it in off the people who think they will be able to pull it off but can't.

I started learning to card count around Christmas 2021, practiced almost everyday for 2 months before have basic strategy, keeping the running count and true count conversion down. Started playing in a casino for the first time in March 2022.

I'm playing in Mexico so all values are in pesos, all the time has been at the same casino with good rules and pen. 3:2, S17, LS, DAS, Split up to 4 times, no resplitting aces. Pen normally between 1 and 1 1/2 decks. Limits are 100-2000 pesos (5 to 100 dollars) and I've been using a 1-10 bet spread.

https://imgur.com/a/Jka3SmO

My first time counting cards at a casino in a country that will remain anonymous. Headed to the blackjack table. Six deck shoe with 90% penetration I had about $400 and my bet spread was 0 for <0 TC. And then TC1 = 25, TC2 = 50 and TC3 = 100 and TC4 = 300

Obviously this comes with insane risk of ruin and I was really risking it but eventually I turned to $400 into $4,000. Some of the other players caught on and asked me if I was counting and I was about 10 beers deep at this point so literally just said yes, then we started talking about the true count and running count every time a new card came off, the craziest part ? The casino didn’t care. It got to the point where we were speaking about the count so loudly and telling the dealer the count and they didn’t care.

Left the casino the first day with about $8,000

I went back the next day and they still didn’t care about us counting so I didn’t even try and hide it, I mean literally counting out loud when the cards were being dealt. Bought in the second day for $2,000 and left with $20,000 in total from first and second day winnings.

Obviously this has to be luck right because the statistics say I should’ve gone bankrupt. But it was an extremely good run.

Unfortunately my dumb drunk ass and my dumb drunk ass friend decided to take all 20k and go play baccarat at another casino and ended up losing it all

I first got into blackjack when I first went to Atlantic City for my birthday. It was my first time there and a very good adult birthday celebration. I went there three more times before I stumbled upon learning how to count cards. The first few weeks of learning were the hardest; I couldn't understand why ten to Ace was a -1 when they were literally high cards. It clicked when I realized for every big card that comes out of the shoe, there is a small card in there. So if 8 small cards come out, the count is +8, meaning 8 more big cards in the deck. It took me about 50 seconds to go through one deck of cards on the third week of counting. I am now at 24-25 seconds. Since then, I want to share some lessons for future and better card counters.

FIRST AND FOREMOST LESSON

In the first failed session of card counting, I went in not prepared. I was only able to count through 2 decks of cards while losing the count. I had no clue what the deviations were nor did I know anything about bet size. In other words, I was there just to gamble. It is important that you practically perfect the count and the deviations. I mention this as my first point because even a seasonal counter would need practice. It does not matter if you are 3 months in, 1 year in, or even 5 years in. Practice never hurts.

For counting cards, there are several ways to go about it. One method is count through 1 deck, 2 decks, 4 decks, or even 6 whole decks. Heck, if you're that good, go through 8 decks. Another method of counting is to practice keeping the count while playing those decks. Start off with 1 deck then slowly work up to 8 decks. Practice while recording yourself and saying the count out loud. If your count at the end was off, figure out where the count went wrong. You have a recording and should be able to figure out where the count got messed up. Did you accidentally add 2 to the RC while seeing a Jack? Or perhaps you said D1 while showing a low card. I personally use a good webcam with Quicktime on Mac or windows' fault camera app. That way, i don't have to import or even save the footage.

For deviations, I used flashcards and utilized a macro on Excel I created to test out my strategy tables (9 tables total). One problem with deviations now is the source. In Mastering Blackjack by Steven Wong, for H17, a hard 12 vs a dealer's 3 is a stand on a TC of +1. In BJA, it is a +2. Or 16 vs a dealer's 9 is a stand on a true count of 5+ in Mastering Blackjack but a 4+ in BJA (again, for H17). A few people on reddit advises using Mastering Blackjack's chart instead. Anyways, remember the deviations. If you can remember the extended ones, that would be great too (ex: hitting 12 vs a 4 on any negative count)

The first lesson here is to be prepared. Keep on practicing counting and remembering the deviations. It should be perfect. Afterall, you did start counting to gain the edge (to make money), right? While throw it out and not practice to use/keep that edge?

LESSON TWO
The side bets and tips. For tips, I don't mind tipping the dealer as at the end of the day because dealing is considered a service. And if you like the dealer, $25 throughout the game wouldn't hurt and also maybe formulate less heat. However, tip 2 is not about the tip (pun not intended).

During my third session of counting, I remember hitting matching 10's on a side bet on my first $100 side-bet bet. That resulted in a $2000 payout, which was great. However, I gave that all back in the next session. One way to think about playing side bets is from the perspective of "edge". The metaphor here is we always prefer playing a 3-2 Blackjack payout table as opposed to 6 to 5 because you lose potential money with a Blackjack hit. A $50 bet pays $75 on a 3:2 and pays $60 on a 6:5. That is a whole $15 difference! And if you're betting $200, that's $60. You would be losing the edge on a 6:5 table.

It is the same idea with the side bets. Suppose the following: the scenario 1, you put out a $50 bet with no side bet. You win the round, and you get paid 1:1 ($50). In another scenario, you put out a $50 bet and a $5 side bet. In this case, you won the $50 bet and you lost the $5 bet. Now, you are only profiting $50-$5 = 45. You are now being paid 1:0.9. You only win 90 cents on the dollar for that win. That prospect of 'edge' made me stop doing the side bets.

For the lucky ladies, I was also able to utilize chat GPT in calculating my probability of hitting 10s or even a match. Did you know, that even at a true count of 3, you only have 18% of hitting any pair 10's. At that rate, you were better off at the roulette table.

You don't even want to know the percentage for match-the-dealer.

Tip two: do not play side bets.

THIRD LESSON
Another tip is to be disciplined. There were way too many times I did not stay playing one hand of minimum when the count was below a true 1. I varied between 1 to 2 hands or I increased my bet to two chips instead of one. Another mistake was just not even increasing my bet enough because I was scared. A perfect card counter follows the rules; they follow the math. Bet low when you do not have the edge, and bet higher when you do have the edge.

Also, bet spread and sizing. Specifically, I like the 1:8 bet spread better with a 25 minimum to a 200 maximum. My bankroll was not big enough for me to play the $100 minimums with a 1:4 bet spread. I believe the ROR and EV were lower on because i hopped into the high limit. Remember, utilize CVCX or BJA calculator to help you with this. it is important. I say this because I increased my risk by going to the $100 tables. Personally, my mistake was being carried away with making fast(er) money. At the end of the day, we're human. While counting, be a human but be disciplined.

THE BACK-OFF
Since I am planning to stop blackjack, I didn't mind being backed off from the very start. Atlantic City is in the state of New Jersey. NJ prohibits casinos from stopping players from playing when counting. Long story short, I made myself into the high-limit room. The count was at least a true 5. I had three hands of $400 each out. In my first hand, I get dealt a pair of 2's against the dealer's 7. I ended up splitting this into three hands in which I doubled down on one of the three hands. My second hand was a hard total of 10, which I doubled. My final hand was a hard 20, so I stood. The dealer draws and is a made hand and I end up just winning $400. This was where the "backoff" came. Pitboss tells the dealer to shuffle and he tells me that it will be half-shoed.

In the right conditions (keeping the count, remembering deviations, good bankroll, and enough casino hopping), a good card counter can make a very pretty dime. Between that and needing to hide this from friends and family (or even embarrassed to share with friends), I have my "grand finale" at Vegas next month and then I will call it quits.

Thank you for the read.

Hey everyone,
As part of my series on Card Counting, I've put together an explanation of how to count cards.

I figure most of you will know this anyway, but I wanted to provide a guide that didn't skim over any of the details. I find most videos would just be '+1, 0, -1' tada. This one is a bit more thorough.

Here's the video: https://youtu.be/QLYsck5fsLU

Let me know if I got anything wrong!

(and here's the link to my previous video where I got my first ever backoff on film)