Card counting, comping, and carousing

[STLantny]

Situation- Youre a 22 year old male, with a decent job, supplemented income from poker, not much to do, and bored out of your mind.
Solution- Take up card counting, and comp whoring???

I was just wondering on the viabliity of taking monthly/weekly/semi weekly etc, trips to vegas with myself and a few friends, tottally free. I bought Shapiro's comp city and will soon start teaching myself to count cards. But just was wondering if this is a pipe dream and im spinning my wheels. According to Shapiro, the comps alone will even out the loss you sustain at a BJ table, ie, you can start with a roll of 15k, be a high roller, get Room/food/beverage any time you want, but you lose about 200 or so per trip average, but you make all that back in cristal, filet's and room/airfare etc. But being the cheap bastard that I am, I was wondering if anyone has any experience with combining the comp city style of play, and card counting, to at least win a bit while sitting at the bj tables, or at least breaking even (cash-wise) would be fine with me.....

[lunapark]

You'll make more going for sign up bonuses playing at the online casinos.

[STLantny]

erm Did you read my post at all?
the point is not to make money, its to kick back in a decadent form, treat my friends, and have a killer time, for little to no money on my part. I cant justify wasting money 2 times a month to live like this, but i could if it was free.......

[Kenrick]

Yes, you can take advantage of casino comps. Yes, you will still wind up paying for them, but less so than a typical guy out for some fun. I've never heard of Shapiro. I've got Max Rubin's book from years ago, though. Also have the Cigar Aficionado magazine where he took the writer on a comp ride to show him what's up. Free Tyson fight tickets for them. Fun stuff.

I'd rather have a $10 bill in my pocket than $40 in casino comps, but whatever floats your boat.

[STLantny]

Ya, im an idiot, i meant rubin. for some reason i wrote shapiro???? Im in the same boat as you though, Id rather have 10 dollars, then 40 in comps. Thats why I asked on the feasiblity of counting cards well enough to break even at BJ.

[MicroBob]

In the short-run you have no guarantee of breaking-even or profiting or losing at BJ with card-counting.

And the short-run is MUCH longer than you might think.
If you are counting cards and playing a +EV game you can still be a net-loser over 10k hands or more.

You will be helping your expectation by learning to count cards but the variance involved in card-counting is SIGNIFICANTLY wilder than that in poker.

Plus, it takes a decent degree of discipline, which is certainly not going to be easy to maintain while you are hanging out with your friends and getting blitzed at the table.

Additionally, many of today's BJ games in LV are not extremely counter-friendly. The idiotic pit-people are still decent at spotting counters. Varying your bet-sizes is a DEAD give-away.
And the games themselves aren't as good. The single-deck games are more and more going to the 6:5 pay-off for BJ which makes them virtually unbeatable for normal counters.

etc etc etc.

I think you are over-romanticizing the possibilities of a counter.
It's not difficult to do once you learn how to do it, memorize a few tables, etc etc...but you can go through some REALLY wild swings.

I haven't read Rubin's book and I'm not all turned on by comps (although that could change if I get the bankroll to throw around and try to look impressive WHILE still playing a profitable game) so your strategies to get the luxury-suite and steaks and champagne may be worthwhile. and if you can do it reasonably effectively without counting cards then the answer is, yes, counting-cards will help your expectation in the long-run (assuming the casino doesn't see that you are counting cards).


For more info you can go to BJ21.com which is pretty much the 2+2 of BJ card-counting.

[MicroBob]

BTW - If Max Shapiro ever wrote a book on comp-hustling I would buy that up in a second.
that could be one wacky read.

[tek]

Card counting is not as easy as it was years ago. I used to do it and it was not real fun, but it worked. Poker is much easier to beat and the house doesn't care who wins.

When you count, you are going to war with the house--and they don't like it. If you are good they will tell you your game is too good. They won't necessarily bar you permanently, unless you keep coming back to often and get known. The Stardust was always my favorite when it came to asking me to leave. They would ask me if I was hungry and hand me a meal comp. Classy!

But now sadly, we have shuffle machines, poor cut-card penetration (poor penetration in anything is always -EV [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img] ), six card shoes, mid-deck shuffle-ups if you win a few hands. I've also heard that the new thing is cards that have bar codes or something so the HOUSE will be counting and it if the shoe goes way + (don't know what the exact plus count would be) they will reshuffle.

I'd recommend hitting a fish table at poker and then blow the profit on show tickets, fine meals and limo rides. Much more fun all the way around. Every game in the house, except poker is -EV any way you look at it. Playing for comps is also -EV.

There's an old expression is Vegas: My $1.99 breakfast cost me $85.00.

Do you see why? [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[STLantny]

I dont really think that playing for comps is -EV per se, to qualify for two nights Room Food BEVERAGE (that means free cristal) at the Nugget downtown, its 100$ per hand for 8 hours, playing for 100 hours, your expected loss is 1200$, that is, if you dont play as Rubin says, smoke breaks, dropping bets down when the pit boss isnt paying attention etc. Thats about 12 trips. Which isnt too damn bad imo, but id really rather have the money. Ill be doing some research, and practicing over the next 6 months or so, if anyone has any suggestions on counting tecniques, give me a holler. Thanks.

[MicroBob]

right.

i agree that if you're going to play BJ for comps you should at least learn to count.
even if counting can't really be very profitable on the specific game you are playing you can at least make it closer to a break-even game in the long-run.


For counting systems....Knock-out BJ is a fairly simple method that a lot of people like.
Stanford Wong's Professional BJ has some good tables in there.
World's Greatest Blackjack Book is a bit outdated but the charts will get the job done for your purposes.

Hell, you could go all the way back to Revere's Playing BJ as a Business or Thorpe's BJ book and you wouldn't be doing too terribly...and those books were written 20-30 years ago.

If you want to make your brain hurt from college-level calculus type discussions get Theory of Blackjack by Peter Griffin...which makes Sklansky's Theory of Poker look like 'See Spot Run'.


Again, go to BJ21.com and you will gain MUCH insight on the world of card-counting.
Most of the best posters there are in the $25/6-mths subscription side. But you should gain enough knowledge in the free-forums there and I'm sure there will be a couple of people over there who have some good comp-hustling tips for you too.


Anyway, I think the key here is that you are just trying to minimze your losses when you DO play BJ. you aren't looking to make a killing or make a living at the tables.

And I would recommend that ANYONE who has ANY interest in playing ANY BJ learn the correct strategies and teach themselves a simple count-system.


you do need to be aware of the very REAL possibility that you could lose $2k-$3k or more in your efforts to get $1k worth of comps.
But, otherwise, if you're going to sit at the tables, then learning how to play the game properly is a good idea.