Just touching base

Hey there! I've been gone for, oh, a week or so now. I haven't had a lot of time to practice but I have put in a few hours when I can. I have memorized all of your general Basic Strategy for multi-deck games, though I still have a slower reaction time than I would like. Also, I held a mock 4 deck game of blackjack with 6 other friends, one of them being dealer, just to see if I could keep the running count and play all of my hands correctly. I don't think I did all that bad, though it made my head feel like it was about to explode. That could also have been thanks to the general rambunctious-ness of the particular crowd I was playing with, though I chalked that up to good distraction experience. I even managed to convert the running count into what I thought was a fairly accurate true count on occasion. For minimal practice, I was rather pleased. Figuring out how to put together a bankroll and determine a betting spread AND calculate RoR seems a rather daunting task. Any tips or suggested reading material would be lovely. :) I spend an hour or so here and there stuck at a bookstore and the only helpful reading material they have there is "Blackjack: Play Like The Pros by John Bukofsky" It's an ok book. I've read it twice now, but I found the RoR and bankroll calculation section to be lacking. Well, if you have encouragement, or would like to suggest I don't use the forum as a "personal blog" (I wasn't sure if I would encounter that viewpoint due to my absurdly long posts, any input is greatly appreciated.

I don�t know how you are practicing basic strategy but if you are doing so by playing out hands, that is a very slow way to learn it as some of the combinations come up very infrequently. Make a set of flash cards and practice from them. You can make sub-sets of flash cards to practice certain areas such as splits and double down combinations. What ever works for you. There are a lot of computer programs that will do the same thing for you but they cost money. You can carry the flash cards with you where ever you go in or out of the house to practice when ever you want to. You want basic to be automatic with no noticeable reaction time � i.e. see 14 v 6 you stand without thinking. If you only see that combination once every two hours while playing hands it will take much longer for you to make that an automatic. You can use short cuts for the flash cards such as 14 v 2 � 6 (one card) instead of a card for each combination of 14 v low cards (14 v 2, 14 v 3, etc.). You can do the same with index plays. Make a separate set of cards for them. Flash cards are inexpensive and work very well.

As for acquiring a bankroll, I can�t help you there but for betting ramp, ROR etc. raise about 75 bucks (or put it on a credit card and pay it off) and buy Blackjack Risk Manager by John Auston. You can get it right here. It will answer all your questions in that area. It�s very simple to use. Try to keep your betting ramp simple to remember especially when you are just learning. There�s a lot going on. For instance you could bet one unit less then the true count or some thing like that - easy to remember and easy to calculate. Again, BJRM will be a big help with this.

One more hint - know the order you do things a the table. For instance I glance at the discard tray at the end of a hand. I then already have the true count for the new hand to come (good for 6 & 8 deck shoes). I then start my counting sequence, then play of my hand(s), etc.