Question to the experts

I want to become a professional bj player and try to make a living. I know the basics and have several years of experience in bj. However, I am hesitant to leave my job before hearing how other successful professionals have done so. I would appreciate hearing your advice if you are actually doing so presently.

What do you suggest in order to achieve my goal? Please give me as comprehensive an answer as possible. How do you actually go about making a living playing bj as your profession. What kind of time you spend playing and what do you think would be a fair picture of the life of a professional bj player. Thank you.

This may sound sort of dumb, but you really will. Before becomming a pro you should be a very serious semi-pro with a gambling income that rivals your full time job (for the last couple of years). You sould have a bankroll in excess of your annual income. You should have a good working knowledge of all major gambling markets in the US. You should have completely mastered the comp hustling game. Your mailbox should be so full of casino mail that you could literally live off of it for six months without playing a hand of blackjack. You should be nearly debt free. You should be able to keep going strong after you've lost 30% of your bankroll in a 9 or 10 month period without drawing a dime in pay. And you should be well beyond the stage of asking questions on the miscl free page.

You would also do well to have developed a good set of other skills. like video poker and other forms of advantage play. This is an area where I am severely lacking and am playing catch up.

or... you could be lucky enough to find someone to finance you. Don't count on this unless you are fairly well connected.

that you have to be able to handle. You can go for months and your winnings just keep increasing and you think, "gee I actually know what I am doing because this is working". Then one day out of nowhere everything that you thought was working just stops and you can't win at any table, in any casino. You lose 9 double downs for every one you win. Everytime you get 20 you either push or lose. You hit a 12 and you get 10. You double 11 and you get an ace. Most of your hands on good counts are 14, 15 and 16's. The count is minus 3 and you don't insure and the dealer has blackjack. The count is plus 4 and you insure and the dealer doesn't have it. You split aces and you get a deuce and a three. You finally get a nine on a double down and the dealer hits 5 card 21. There are three other players at the table and all winning and you are down 60 units for the day in just a few hours. The dealers look at you with pity in their eyes and voices saying "man you better take a break". You take a break for the day and go get them the next day and it is even worse.

Besides the bankroll to ride out the storm you must have a stomach of steel to keep from steaming and giving up all the winnings. After all the years of reading and kitchen table practicing, and actual successful play over a period of months, mentally you get hit with a sledge hammer that puts into question everything you have thought or done with the game. All of a sudden all of the highs are at your feet and your tail is ready to go between your legs. You absolutely cannot believe what is happening.

You have just experienced the big dipper of blackjack.

If your mind is capable of surviving the big dipper you will soon realize that a very long climb is just around the bend.

It is all about odds obviously and sometimes when we have won big we tend to think we are a much better player than the 1 1/2 or 2 % edge that we should enjoy. Sometimes we get too far ahead and sometimes we simply get whacked with the old standard deviation. Time, patience, knowledge and excellent skills (under the most trying of circumstances) makes you the winner you dream of being.

As for the size of your stake I can only give you the results of my experience. In over 30 years of playing semi-pro I have never had a big dipper greater than 175 units.

Las Vegas does not offer the good games of the old days so you have to do some shopping for rules and penetration. When you are tempted to settle into a bad game stop and think of what your impatience will cost. When you are bankrolled and know what you are doing you want as few players at the table as possible. You are looking to get in as many hands as possible so you may have to change your working hours around a bit and do some sleeping in the early evening hours.

While being friendly at the table I do not play long with dealers, players or pit personnel who wish to engage me in constant conversation. I play regularly at certain casinos but rarely for very long with one dealer or shift. I generally constantly shift between the different casinos I regularly hit. I never set at a table and immediately start playing the count. Simply play BS for a few hands and let the dealers and the pit go to sleep on me. Even though I have a lot of player rating cards for the different casino's I live off of small bite wins and let them enjoy my losses on a 3 to 1 ratio. When I win one game of x units I am gone for the day or week on that shift and when losing I let them have 3x units. They seem to remember the losses more than they remember the wins. Once had a pit lady say "x you just never win do you?"

Good counting and playing to you.

What you say makes a lot of sense! I have always admired your posts as they have been "most" accurate.

quark...

Firstly, I would like to thank you for an enlightening letter. However I am always interested in the size and length of the losing periods that so many contributers speak of. The 175 units you mention losing during your worst continual losing run, were they your max bets or single units, also how long (in hours) did this run continue? Thanks again for your input.

O.L.M.

at least to me. Most players don't limit themselves to one single type of game or spread, thus this could frequently be different. Playing to a very tiny ROR, I've lost half my bank once in the last five years. But the duration of the poor luck will be more significant than its magnitude. Your bankroll is not being used for any other purpose than playing bj anyway, or shouldn't be, and your risk of going broke should be about zero if you're playing professionally. But you might still go a very long time between all time highs. I've gone well over a year between highs, even though I've been lucky enough to never have a losing calendar year. I was a very big loser for the year on Oct 31 of last year but had a phenomenal last two months. A ten or eleven month break even streak is worse than a severe downstreak that only takes a month or two to get past.

Most pro players are on teams. Some of these are big well organized teams and others are just two or three partners. And some play a combination of team and solo. There are very few who are out there doing it alone, with bj as their only income source, and having success over the long term. I personally only know of one such person, and it isn't me. I'm not talking about unemployed people with a few thousand dollars in their pocket they call a bankroll. I'm talking about middle class people with homes, cars, families, etc, who have succeded at having a somewhat normal life with gambling as an occupation. Very few.

I appreciate your input. Your response tells me that you're indeed a professional. I myself have done some of what you suggested by practicing as a semi-pro, but only in bj. Thanks for the advice.

Tulsa, I appreciate very much for taking the time to describe the trials and tribulations of a professional. It takes character fortitude to take a long losing streak that can easily shake one's self-confidence and still keep plugging. You describe the episodes of losing so beautifully and vividly that it occured to me that you probably should consider writing a book. That way you can give the benefit of your own experience- in great factuality and realism - to people interested in following such a difficult yet challenging career.

I treasure your statement "Time, patience, knowledge and excellent skills (under the most trying of circumstances) makes you the winner you dream of being". Thank you very much.

PS: I hope you wouldn't mind if I contact you by email, only after your approval.

You will find that combining both will test your bankroll due to the higher sd/ev ratio in VP but will at least triple the comps per money placed in play that you recieve and the VP will be good cover. Might I suggest that you keep your VP coin size about 2 denominations lower than your Blackjack Unit size and use different players cards for playing VP and Blackjack but in the same name. You will find that casino hosts in the slots department will also tend to give you cover for your BJ play.

You should not however use different personal information for the 2 cards but act like you didn't know that they were the same "card" if you will. You can really sell the casino in total that you are just smart enough to have accumulated the money and not smart enough to win it from them. Another variation of this would be to wait sometimes in upsizing your blackjack units until you have hit a royal and immeadiately go to the blackjack pit. You will be suprised at the welcome you recieve as they salivate hoping you are going to piss away that Royal.

These may seem obvious and sorry if they do, but the combination is not one for growing a backroll, but very helpful to keep the income phase of your playing going.

is play machines either where they have no worth while blackjack or where you have already been backed off. This can be your comp store and you won't have to worry about getting thrown out of your hotel room for blackjack play. Some properties are now throwing out skilled machine players, but it is not as common. If you do really well on the machines somewhere, because of quality games, cash backs, comps, etc, I would advise staying clear of the bj tables. Why risk throwing away a good thing?

At a glance from a rank amateur. Howard, I'd say that you are nowhere near ready to chuck in your job.
I think that you really have to understand your actual win rate, your risk of ruin, and your personal capabilities before you could even consider relying on BJ for an income.
As in a previous post by "Mathprof". He said that he had a net loss for one year and didn't win enough the next year to make it up. So that's a 2-year net loss.
I've run quite a few computer simulations that have given me a much better understanding about a lot of factors in the game. For example: A simulation of 1 million hands that represents about 15 years of play for me (about 10 hours per week), takes only seconds to complete. The fluctuations during these short simulations are comparatively enormous.
I liked the earlier reply by Tulsa about the "Blackjack big dipper", because I lost my stomach for about 3 years on what may have only been a "little dipper".
I would think that professional players are very good at "flying by the seat of their pants" and dancing on the edge of staying in the game, and being barred. Not to mention all of the other required skills.
It's an exciting prospect to be a professional player, but I think that you almost need a bankroll large enough to be classified "rich" in the first place if you want to try to generate a satisfactory income. For this "satisfactory income", you would probably have to be actually playing for about 30 hours per week, and spend about 10 more researching and practising.
Anyway, I don't want to put you off. It's just my opinion, and the game still excites me :)

Aldough.

Looking like you are dumping off a royal at the blackjack tables again. You are right about the backoff VP comp room as a base.