June 5th Blackjack Bootcamp- Last training for a while!

April 21st, 2010

Hey Soldiers of the BJA Army!

I wanted to let everyone know that the Bootcamp scheduled for June 5th will be our last bootcamp for a while. Both Ben and I are getting bogged down with projects, both Blackjack and non-Blackjack related, and we will be holding off having another bootcamp for a while.

What this means for you: If you want to get trained to take money from the Blackjack tables, sign up now, while there are still spots available! If you’re not convinced it’s worth your money, watch the video testimonials or set up a phone consultation with Ben.

Fear not, fellow Card Counters… BlackjackApprenticeship.com is not going anywhere! We are as excited as ever about this site. We just won’t have time to train people in Vegas  in a Bootcamp setting for a while. But we’re amped for the June bootcamp, just over 6 weeks away!

To read more about the bootcamp, click here.

Posted in Boot Camp, The Keys, Uncategorized, beating blackjack, card counting | No Comments »

Time will tell. Or if you don’t want to waste time, I will.

February 25th, 2010

Almost every week I get an email (or someone asking on the Member’s Forum) how they can  know if they’re playing a winning game. The email goes something like this,

“I’ve played [X number of hours] at a casino now. I’m [up or down X amount of money]. I don’t know if I’m just getting [lucky or unlucky]. How do I know if I’m playing right

This is a legitimate question. I’ve known Card Counters who have played hundreds of hours, haven’t won any money, and came to me to find out why they’re getting so unlucky. But after I’ve spent 5 minutes with them, I can tell they don’t have a winning game. There is plenty of money to be made at Blackjack, but when we’re dealing with fractions of percentages in our advantage, your game must be razor sharp.

So, to help you guys out, here’s 3 ways you can know if you really are an Advantage Card Counter, all of which are totally valid:

1. Wait until you’ve played hundreds of hours, and if you’ve won more than you’ve lost, you’re a winning player! If not, you’ve got some tragic flaws in your game. [WARNING: Could be VERY expensive]

2. Find someone else who also knows how to count cards, and test each other. If you can play 5 shoes at home and 10 shoes in a casino without making a single mistake (counting, basic strategy, betting, or deviation), then you should be legit!

3. Find a pro. For those who want to get their game assessed (and all bugs worked out) in a proficient manner, we here at BlackjackApprenticeship.com are committed to providing the resources necessary. People leave our bootcamps with the tools necessary to beat the casino. Get on the forum and talk to people who have trained under us. They’ll attest to the money they’re making.

I hate to be a salesman, but when people keep asking how to know if they’re good, all I can say is, time will tell. Or if you don’t want to wait, get your game assessed by a pro. We love training players, and having trained probably 100 people at this point, we’re really good at it. Nearly all bootcamp attenders come in thinking they can flawlessly beat the game, but by the time they leave, they realize how many weaknesses their game still has. So if you’re interested in attending a bootcamp, our next one is scheduled for June 5. You can read about it here.

Posted in The Keys, beating blackjack, card counting, card counting systems | 2 Comments »

Don’t Sell Yourself Short! (in Card Counting or in Life)

January 18th, 2010

Recently, I got the opportunity to talk to several of the most successful Blackjack card counters and blackjack team managers of all time. We spent several hours swapping stories and talking shop. And one of the most valuable things I took away from the discussion is that we’ve all had times when we weren’t winning like we should, and it came down to one simple problem: we lowered our standards.

Not long after that, a good friend of mine was challenging me to look at my life and my businesses, and evaluate ways that I’m selling myself short. He didn’t want to watch me as I myself settle for 2nd place because I’m complacent, content, or just plain lazy. I don’t want to look back 5 years from now and say that I didn’t live to my potential!

In being a professional Blackjack player (and in life), there are a lot of things that are outside of your control (which days you win and lose, what the casino conditions will be, etc). But there is 1 thing you can control, and that is the quality of your game. It is never acceptable to play a flawed game! You have all the resources at your disposal to be a perfect blackjack player. And the higher your standard, the more money you will make at blackjack, the more successful you will be in life, and the greater chance you will have of living to your full potential. I hate to think of the loads of money that card counters have let casinos keep by not taking their game seriously enough. Don’t be one of those people!

One of my favorite parts of our Boot Camps is the opportunity to raise the bar several notches, so players can take their game to a whole new level! So use this pep talk as an opportunity to put your Blackjack game, and your life, under a microscope and see if your standards are where they should be.

Posted in The Keys, beating blackjack, card counting, card counting systems, practice | No Comments »

Card Counting Darwinism- Learn to Adapt!

December 8th, 2009

0020A while back, I came across a casino with a great game. Good rules and INSANE pen. After walking around the casino floor to figure out my best option, I ordered a beer, sat down at a table, and started firing away. OK. Let me clarify. I ordered the beer for the “image” it would give, I actually stood at the table, and by “firing away”, I mean I was betting the table limit within the first 2 decks of the 6 deck shoe. I was high fiving players, asking the pit crew to comp me energy drinks, and doing whatever else I could to generate as much EV as I could before they caught on.

From the get go, everything was going my way. I only had to buy in for 2 big bets, and before I knew it, I was up 10 units. The cocktail waitress was bringing me free drinks the size of a fishbowl… I wasn’t ordering them, the pit boss was telling her to bring them to me. And by the time I called it a night, I was up over 23 big bets! They say you can shear a sheep many times, and I left that night praying that I hadn’t just skinned that sheep.

Fast-forward to a month later. I get a chance to make it back to this casino, and upon first impression, they’re giving me the same treatment. Then it happens. As soon as I sit down at my reserved table, the pit boss whispers something to the dealer, and the pen instantly goes from less than 1 deck to over 2 decks being cut off! Now I’m out in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to do, nowhere else to go, and not even a decent poker game to play. So I do what any decent advantage player would do: go out to my car, pull up CVCX, and figure out if there’s still a way to BEAT THEIR GAME! Normally, I would just have moved on to a different casino, and I NEVER encourage someone to play a game with such horrible pen. But I had nowhere else to go, a reserved table, and now I had personal reasons to take their money!

Like I said, the rules were REALLY good. And since I had a very healthy bankroll to back me up, I figured out that if I bet the table minimum below a true one, then worked my way up to the table maximum after a true one, I was playing a positive EV game with low risk, and even an acceptable N-zero (that’s a mathy  way of calculating the long-run). So I sat there all night, trying to coax the dealers into giving me better pen on each shoe, and watching the pit sweat every time I raised my bet.

I eventually found out that the casino manager knew that I was counting, but wasn’t willing to turn down my action. So they let me play, reluctantly. And after 8 hours of some of the most mind-numbing blackjack of my career, I was up a few units, had cleared out the rack, and decided to call it a night. I don’t expect they’ll let me play there again, but if I find myself in the area, I’ll have to find out!

Here’s the point: Card counters have to learn to adapt. It’s what we’ve been doing for nearly 50 years… adapting to the casino’s counter-measures. There’s only so much we can do, but it’s the innovators who will continue to find ways to extract money from casinos. I’m sure there were many a card counter who threw their hands up and quit when casinos went from 1 deck to 2, or 2 decks to 6, etc. But the shrewd advantage player isn’t just looking for a smart way to gamble, but for ways to continue to liberate money from the clutches of casinos. So in your quest as a professional Blackjack player, look for ways to start THINKING like an Advantage player, and I guarantee you, the opportunities are out there!

Posted in The Keys, Uncategorized, beating blackjack, card counting | 4 Comments »

How to Practice Blackjack Pt. III- Getting to the True Count

November 12th, 2009

OK. So it’s been far too long since my last installment of “How to Practice Blackjack”.

In Part I, I talked about Basic Strategy being the foundation of being a card counter. In Part II, I discussed some tips on keeping the running count accurately and quickly. Today, I’m going to give some practice tips for getting from the running count to the true count.

First off, remember that being a good card counter is just being able to multitask several processes very well. So if the individual processes are poor, then multitasking is going to be a nightmare. Meaning: MAKE SURE YOUR BASIC STRATEGY IS EFFORTLESS AND KEEPING THE RUNNING COUNT IS SECOND NATURE. A lot of people begin having issues when they start dividing by the true count, but if you separate the individual processes and master them, it’s not too complicated to put it all together.

So here’s some tips to practice the individual process of converting from running to true count.

1. Assuming you’re practicing for a 6 deck game, get out your discard tray and 6 decks of cards. Then write the numbers 1 to 30 on scraps of paper and place them in a hat, cup, whatever. Then, starting with less than 1 deck in the discard tray, start pulling numbers out of the hat and practice dividing the number by 6 (the number of decks remaining). Do this 20 or 30 times. Then, put one full deck in the discard tray and start over, dividing by 5. Do this for every deck increment until you’re dividing by 1 deck remaining. Wash, rinse, repeat. Over and over.

2. If you want to practice throughout the day, then while you’re driving, exercising, taking a shower, whatever, just start dividing random numbers by 6, then 5, then 4, 3, 2, and 1.

Before long, with these 2 drills, you should be able to divide any running count by any true count. The goal is to be able to do so in a quick second, without having to take too much energy away from keeping the running count and making your basic strategy (and eventually deviation) decisions. Keep practicing this over and over until there is never a time when you have to spend more than a second or 2 deciding the true count. Then, practice doing so WHILE playing basic strategy and keeping the running count.

If you want to take it to the next level, start the whole process over with 1/2 deck increments. So use a divisor of 6 decks, 5.5 decks, 5, 4.5, etc.

Before long, converting to true count will be just another quick process you’re doing while playing basic strategy and adding and subtracting by one.

Practice makes perfect (blackjack). And perfect blackjack makes money!

Posted in The Keys, beating blackjack, practice | 10 Comments »

It’s all in a Name, or so I’ve been told

October 2nd, 2009

Why the hell did we name our site, “Blackjackapprenticeship.com”!?!

BJA Logo

So for some reason, we chose a long, confusing, hard to remember and spell name. Well, part of the problem is there weren’t a lot of available options with “Blackjack” in the title. We could have chosen “Hotblackjackforyou.com” or “newblackjacklive.com”, but those don’t really get the idea of the site across.

The second reason is we were modeling our site after a friend’s “apprenticeship” model: We’re the experts, and we’ll train you everything you need to know (if you apprentice under us). But even Blackjackapprentice.com wasn’t available. True, BJApprentice.com was available (and we own it), but that could easily get lots of hits from people who are looking for a whole different training…

So long story short, we ended up with this 23 character domain name that I don’t even like saying. So that’s why we call it BJA.com. And along with the hard-to-remember name comes a slew of mis-spellings. Here’s a list of things people have typed into Google in an effort to find our website.

blackjack apprenetice
blackjackappretice.com
blackjack aprenticeship
blackjackapprentiship.com
www.blackjackaprentice.com
black jack aprentice
blackjach apprentice
blackjack apprentices
blackjack apprenticship
blackjack apprentish (my personal favorite)
blackjack aprenticeship.com
blackjack aprentiship
the black jack aprentice.com
apperntice blackjack
black jack apprentices
black jack aprendice
blackjack apprenticeships
blackjack apprentishship
blackjack aprentici
blackjack apretiship

I guess that’s cool that people are looking for our site. I’m not sure if typing in “Blackjack Apprentish” is the way to go. But the good news is, you can find it within the top 3 or 4 results if you type in “Colin blackjack” or “Ben card counting”!

Colin Blackjack

Ben Card Counting

Posted in The Keys | No Comments »

For those who still don’t know why to Count Cards

September 22nd, 2009

I received this email last week, and thought I’d use it as an opportunity to break it down for those wondering “why do you keep a count of the cards“:

  • Hi guys I’m lost on one thing about card counting. Now is counting cards and knowing the count just to help you know when to rise and lower your bets, or to be able to determine what card could come up next? Do you change basic strategy, or always follow basic strategy? Like say you have 10-6 the dealer has 5, basic strategy says you shouldn’t hit but if the true count is -3 should you change basic strategy and hit? Or just use the count to alter your bet’s. Thank’s guy’s for taking the time to answer my question. All the best, DUDER.

DUDER, that’s a good question. There are 2 reasons to keep the count.

The first, and by far the most important reason to keep the count is to know when the advantage shifts from the Casino to the player so that you can bet accordingly. It’s that simple. If you don’t know when you have the advantage, you can’t capitalize on it. If you can’t capitalize on your advantage, you can’t win.

The second reason to count cards is to know when to deviate from basic strategy. Deviations aren’t how

you’ll make all your money. But it is sort of like the icing on the cake; Basic Strategy and changing your bets properly will make you money, but implementing Deviations will add more value to what you’re doing. Like my Physics teacher used to say, “You need to learn the rules, so that you can know when to break the rules.” If you know perfect Basic Strategy, then by keeping count, you can know when and how to play differently from Basic Strategy.

So, DUDER, you were right about both things. The only thing you were wrong about, is that you won’t ever know exactly what the next card will be. But you will know what TYPE of cards you have a good chance of being dealt, and with that information, you take the advantage away from the Casino.

Now, I know some of you out there think that you don’t need to count cards to make money at Blackjack. But you’re wrong. Keep playing, and you can kiss your money goodbye. And others are saying, “can you REALLY make a living at blackjack by counting cards?” And the answer is, Yes. Ben and I haven’t had jobs in 7 years, and it’s not because we’re making a killing at this website.

Tags:
Posted in Deviations, The Keys, Uncategorized, basic strategy, beating blackjack, card counting, card counting systems | 3 Comments »

Another Satisfied Member

May 11th, 2009
Someone on the BJA forum posted this last week, and I thought it was such an awesome testimonial, I asked if I could post it here on the blog. To protect his anonymity, I’ve removed any of the parts that talked about where exactly he plays. But the rest is completely unedited.
This is a fantastic site for the serious blackjack player.
At the moment, I’m up about 7K this year, card counting, using deviations and mainly playing positive decks. These are all strategies that I have learned from this site. In addition, I try to use a stop loss when I play, per table.

I consider myself risk adverse (at least at this point), which means I’m trying to limit my down shoes and ride my profits. I believe that Colin said somewhere on the site that his best advice was not to play a negative shoe. In my opinion, that is why I’m up this year. I have no problem moving from table to table to find a positive shoe or to just stop playing and watch the dealer wipe out the table.

Needless to say, after playing every weekend this year, I’m noticed by a lot of the pit bosses and dealers. But I receive no heat. In fact, many go out of their way to say hi. I’m guessing it’s because I’m not making huge up bets. I also receive comped rooms (on weekends) and a lot of comped food, which isn’t calculated in my profits.
I attribute all my success to this site and am looking forward to eventually mastering the betting strategy, which will take my game to the next level.
Good luck to everyone!
XXXXX
Join the ranks of the money-making card counters!
-Colin

Edit/Delete Message

Posted in Deviations, Money management, The Keys, basic strategy, beating blackjack, card counting, card counting systems, customer emails, story time | No Comments »

So You’re 15 and You Want to Count Cards?

May 4th, 2009

We get a lot of emails from kids ages 12+ that want to know if they should learn to count cards. That way, when they’re 21, they can get right to work at taking money from the casinos. Here’s my opinion on this:

DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME OR YOUTH

There are a thousand hobbies that an underage person can get into, that they can actually use NOW, not having to wait several years until they can do anything about it. So wait until you’re 21, then if you’re still interested, learn how to count cards at that point. It shouldn’t take several years to learn, so you’re just wasting time anyway.

Also, people are much more likely to become addicted to gambling if they start when they are teenagers. Granted I think counting cards is very different from gambling, but it still exposes you to that world. And I would never recommend someone to start drinking when they’re underage. But when they’re 21, hopefully you’ll be a LITTLE wiser about what you’re getting yourself into.

So if you’re a teenager and you’re wanting to learn how to master Card Counting, just drop it for now. You can have it mastered in a few months, so wait until you’d be able to put it into practice. If you want a way to make money, start a business. Find a market that you can capture on E-bay or something. Then, you might be ready with a $20K bankroll when you turn 21!

Posted in The Keys, beating blackjack, card counting, practice | 2 Comments »

How to Practice Blackjack Pt. II

April 20th, 2009

In Part I, I talked about Basic Strategy being the foundation of being a card counter. I want to emphasize that you should continue to keep going through all the basic strategy decisions regularly. Just recite the entire chart from memory in the car once a day, and you won’t find yourself at the casino in the middle of a big hand wondering, “does A,7 hit or stand against 9?”.

In this post, I’m going to talk about practicing counting cards. Ben gives a thorough explanation in one of our videos. But I’m going to give a few tips.

1. The obvious first step is to take a deck of cards and count through it, one at a time. If you don’t end up at zero, then you did something wrong. This will help you in creating new associations with cards. When you’re playing at a table, you want to see a 4 of clubs primarily as “+1″, not as a 4 of clubs. After time, you’ll start to see cards simply as +1, 0, or -1.

2. Have an approach to cancel that is foolproof. I see lots of rookie card counters trying to get too fancy with cancellations at the table. They wait until all the cards are out on the table, and are cancelling a 10 on one side of the table with a 2 on the other side. This is going to result in problems sooner or later. So have a method that you do the same every time, and that leaves no room for error.

3. Practice by going into a casino and standing behind the table, and just watching. If you can get thru an entire shoe without dropping the count, missing a card, or getting mentally fatigued, then you’ll have a better time when you’re actually trying to play while counting.

4. Buy CVBJ. This software will tell you when you’re off on the count, and so much more.

Remember that being a 99% accurate card counter won’t cut it. But a 100% accurate card counter can turn the tables on the casino!

In part III, I’ll talk about practicing true count conversions.

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Posted in The Keys, beating blackjack, card counting, practice | 3 Comments »

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