Blackjack counting Myth?

[ccibball50]

Is the entire blackjack counting cards thing a myth? Is it a Hoax? I have been 10 time and one twice out of the ten times. One time I won $30 and the other $40. Every other time i have dropped anywhere from $100 to $200.

I play at a 2 deck table, dealer stands on soft 17, double any 2 cards up to four times, double after spilts, split Aces(one card after split), and minimum bet of $5, with a 1 to 5 spread. I know perfect basic strategy, and I know how to count almost perfectly. I count down 2 decks of cards in about 58 seconds accurately. I have practiced for months. I am down over $1000. If it is possible to count, can someone help me on what I am doing wrong? Does anyone go to any of the MS casino's so that I can watch and learn? Vicksburg, Philidelphia, or anywhere on the coast. I go to all of them all of them. I would definately like opinions and hard cold facts to persuade me. As of now I am beginning to think card counting is a hoax.

[KIDDO]

Cardcounting is based on the law of large numbers. your 0.5% to 1.5% edge over the house. how do you acheive this? by card counting, taking your running count and dividing by the # of decks left in the shoe to give you a true count, Playing PERFECT basic strategy, negative and positive NRS and shuffle/ACE/ten tracking. when I say perfect that has rules that websites never post such as when TC>3 TAKE INSURANCE on your BET against ACE. or when TC>3 surrender all 15 and 16s against 10s and alot of other charts you must memorize in order to succeed.

The way card counting works is you have to play enough hands to remove luck from the game by playing enough hands and winning 0.5%-1.5% of all your hands in a long run after you play 1 million hands you are EXPECTED to make $1,000,000 +/- 1 std. deviation which is $110,000 with an average bet of around $100. I can go on about this all day and how MIT actually made money and how some players today are still making money using the MIT methods, because I used to employ them when I played blackjack. But to win with the MIT method there is no room for mistakes period. I have yet to try WCB or NBJ I heard they are great! but I don't have the experience to advise about them. you being at minus 1000 is just a fluctuation in your deviation away from the expected value doesn't mean it doesn't work. If you can play perfectly to give you that 0.5-1.5% edge then you have to play 100,000 hands to see the hardwork pay off.

Cardcounting is cardcounting, and only works if done right. If you went to some cheap website to learn the HI/LO count or the omega red count etc... they do not provide the proper training to give you that mathematical advantage. Learning is learning but I will not post any more info about this on a public forum. Please don't knock on card counting because of a few bad shoes. It works you just need the right tools to make it work. And besides... if NBJ has an advantage of 6% HEHE imagine how much you can make in a million hands!

[gablaw]

Card counting hardly works anymore, mainly because the shuffle is so soon. In 2 deck games only one deck or slightly more is dealt. The money in card counting is at the tail end of the decks or shoes. And then there's the shuffles which clump the cards--see a lot of 20-20 pushes? dealer draw 2-4 low cards to make a hand?

Card counting definitely can work-back in the 80s I didn't get barred from multiple casinos because I was a loser.

[Mad Dog]

Back counting works if you wait for a really high count. It takes a lot of waiting or some kind of team. I play NBJ because I can do it all by myself.

[gablaw]

Try checking out Ellis' count reversal (or zero proximity) threads here. To me, it explains why sometimes I'd lose big time as the count was going up. It's going up because low cards are still coming out. It comes down only when 10s start coming , which is when you want to spread.

And don't be too discouraged. When I first learned counting, I pretty much broke even playing $2 and $3 games in downtown Reno, and gave up trying to make money with it. But I figured if I could break even, why not play green and get comped at Harrah's Lake Tahoe. Guess what? I started winning and kept on going until one night I played at the $100 table in the bac room (which had been $25 that afternoon) and won $8000 in 4 hours. They had me down for a $4000 win but I was barred the next trip (after I was down a grand, of course). Funny too, the guy next to me kept telling me I didn't know how to play the game. (Hit a soft 18, hit a 13 against a 2 with a negative count?) When I was barred in front of the whole table, he was shocked.

Btw, I saw my action on the casino's computer and they expected me to lose 2 average size bets per hour. Unfortunately, it also showed me winning 2 average bets per hour (even after pocketing chips whenever I could). I wouldn't be surprised if the casinos program a much larger expected win nowadays.

[Keith Smith]

Card counting works on a computer simulation. The one thing that a computer simulation does is produce close to random cards. In the real world, it is obvious that the cards are not random and are clumped. Clumped meaning that statistically a high card will follow a high card more than they do randomly and the same happens with low cards. When this occurs with low cards, it produces a game that favors dealer strategy. That's why the house seems to hit with impunity in a multiple deck game. What we teach you is how to play a non random game.

Edited January 6, 2009 by Keith Smith

[Keith Smith]

Where are you playing the two deck game at? How many times in that game did you lose 3 hands in a row?