I’m skeptical of get-rich-quick schemes, but someone was telling me about this…Couldn’t anybody with $7,000 to spare just take the course with these dudes and make lots and lots of money relatively easily?:
Sure. Except that you’ll probably end up getting kicked out of every casino you start winning in.
Anyone who thinks gambling for a living is easy money doesn’t have the work ethic it requires to make a living gambling. Gambling is hard work, and even with perfect play and card counting your edge is vanishingly small. Add to this the fact that card counting, while not illegal, will get you banned, and the casinos share the names and photographs of card counters, and you’ll realize that selling $7,000 courses to chumps is the best way to make money off this system.
I’m not going to scour that site for details that might explain where you got that idea, or where this $7000 comes from, but…no. Card counting is difficult, chancy, and time-consuming at best, and nearly impossible at the high-dollar tables of major casinos. That’s why it took an entire team of MIT students communicating surreptitiously to make hundreds of thousands of dollars, which they still had to split.
Sophisticated card counting calls for some behavior which will attract the attention of casino authorities, such as hitting on 18 once in a while. You will get kicked out if you do stuff like this and win consistently. (Source: a “win at blackjack” book I read a while back)
Own a casino. But slots are better for the owner of a casino.
As others have said, card counting is banned in most casinos nowadays, because it does work.
I have a blackjack game on my iPod. I got two face cards once, and doubled down. I got a message asking, ‘Are you sure?’ I said yes, since I’d forgotten that to double down I’d have to take another card. I drew an ace. 
I’ve thought of learning how to count cards, but it’s too much work and I’m too lazy. I’m just aware that there are four times as many tens as other cards. On my iPod and IRL, I decide if it’s worth the risk based on the dealer’s card. If it’s less than 7, then I tend to stand. If it’s greater than seven and I have, like, a 12, then I’ll usually hit assuming the dealer has a ten in the hole. Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn’t. The last time I gambled IRL I came out $300 ahead. On the iPod (as a single player) I’m up about $100.
Overall, casinos only want money to flow one way, and that is into their hands, not yours. If they notice you card counting, they’ll just start shuffling in between every deal. If you still somehow manage to make money, they’ll just ban you from the casino. It’s not a fair game.
To be more clear, they don’t ban all card counting. They’ll even sell you books in the gift shop on how to do it. They only ban you if you’re actually good at it. But there are enough more fools who think they can count cards than those who actually can that it’s good business for casinos to encourage folks to try.
Yeah, this is the real way to win a million at blackjack.
I think the idea of counting cards is fine, since more people are terrible at it and will lose anyway. The casinos don’t mind you trying, but you won’t be able to do it.
How to become a millionaire with Blackjack?
Start with $10 million.
Casinos will not ban you just because you are winning. Where in the world did you get that idea?
I believe he was distinguishing between sufficiently skillful card counters and card counters who do not beat the house odds.
Then what’s the logic behind not allowing good card counters? Especially when they encourage card counting?
The vast majority of “good card-counters” are actually cheaters; the casinos just haven’t, or can’t be bothered to figured out how they do it. The likelihood of being a legit, profitable card-counter is so far dwarfed by the likelihood of one just being a clever cheater that it’s not really worth considering the possibility.
Start a card-counting tutorial program, get 143 suckers to shell out $7,000 for the “secrets to winning at blackjack.”
Try to read more about this system at Wikipedia.
Basically, the way it works:
When the odds are neutral or against you, bet X.
When the odds are in your favor, bet 100X.
The way the MIT blackjack team worked is that they had small players who would farm a deck until the odds turned towards the player’s favor. Then, the “high roller” would come in, seemingly randomly, and place a few big bets which miraculously won.
If one player does this on their own, usually they don’t bet 100X. However, if one player does go through this pattern of long stretches of X followed by a few big hits of 100X, the casino will ask them to leave. The reason the MIT Blackjack team were so successful is that they used teams of people to do this, which is why they weren’t caught for such a long time.
An important thing to understand is that the winning strategy in card counting isn’t so much about the play as about the betting. Placing larger bets when the count is favorable is pretty much the only way to actually win money, and the MIT teams used additional tricks to raise their percentages: tracking groups of cards through the shuffle, tracking aces, and peeking at hole cards. This work was done by confederates, who used signals to communicate the count to the big players, which also helped to disguise the team. With all that, their theoretical advantage was still only 4%, and they seldom did better than 2%. They started out with huge stakes, lost money until they learned their rigorous style of team play, and it took weeks of play to double the stake – money which had to be split with non-playing members of the team, as well as investors.
No, it ain’t easy money. Especially not when you start with $7000.
Many years ago I supplemented my income nicely with blackjack, individually rather than in a team. American casinos were certainly well aware of the card-counting threat, and I was barred from several casinos, but most used other countermeasures or almost ignored you altogether. (And at that time, Atlantic City casinos were not permitted to bar counters.) Speaking very roughly, by betting in the $10 - $300 range you could expect to average over $50 winnings per hour, but would need to have thousands of dollars in your pocket and be willing to risk losing it if luck went against you. (For just as a bad player can win, for a brief streak, by chance, so a good player can lose, briefly, by chance.)
I solved the problem of making one’s large bet range inconspicious by counting shoes and taking a chair only when the deck was already good. I remember standing near the bar in the Las Vegas Club and counting three separate shoes many yards away via a ceiling mirror, sitting down when one shoe turned good. (Second day I tried this, floor manager then came over and ordered a shuffle. :mad: ) None of the foreign casinos I visited seemed aware of card-counting.
One does not need to be a math genius or memory expert. One does need much discipline, much concentration and a belief in mathematics. (It’s surprising how many people after reading about computer-derived strategy will then try to improve that strategy by applying their own intuition!)
There are several reasons I play no more. I’m afraid I now lack the mental acuity, physical stamina, youthful hunger and even the required eyesight!