Some Numbers
Part of the answer to your question is that 30 hours a week is very difficult to get in. Full time pros who can average 20 hours a week (about 1000 hours a year) are doing quite well. Many can�t do that much. To get in these kinds of hours betting serious money requires a great deal of travel, and putting up with all kinds of other hassles.
To get back to some numbers, let us suppose that can play with a SCORE of 50. If you bet at a fixed level with a 10K bank at the benchmark 13.5% RoR, you would make $50 an hour. Over 1500 hours a year you would make about 75,000 a year. Sounds pretty good?
But this assumes that you have no expenses, and no tips. And even with that, 13.5% of the people will go broke even if they never spend a penny of their winnings.
To make $50 an hour, it would be more realistic to have a $25K bank, which would reduce the RoR to a reasonably low level. With 20 hours a week, you would make $50K a year before expenses and taxes. At the end of the year, you might have doubled your 25K bank.
This is assuming that you don�t have to use any of your winnings for food and rent. Perhaps you have a wealthy spouse, or retired on a pension? If you have to start tapping into your profits for income, then your RoR goes up drastically.
If can reinvest all your profits, and you double your bank every year, then you do have a money machine. If you double your betting levels every years, then in 10 years your bank would have increased 1000-fold. But this is not realistic, because this means that you would end up betting 1000 time higher, making 50K an hour. You will not be able to find any casinos that will accept wagers at that level, and fewer will graciously accept card counters.
Because of the fluctuation, making an EV of 25K a year playing BJ is a lot worse than making 25K with a paycheck. Some years you may make 50K; some years you may make nothing.
