Security at BJ School?

I am intrigued at the idea of attending a BJ school, say like a 2 day course to teach a counting method hands on. I wonder, though...
What are the chances the party would be secretly crashed by casino personnel who might take pictures of people in the class and provide them to casinos, especially ones that use facial recognition software to identify players? Is this something to be concerned about when considering a course like this?

I heard that the casinos also host blackjack classes. They are more than happy to teach you the basic strategy. They think even you know the basic strategy, once for a while you'll make mistakes and eventually you'll lose. The classes also help the casinos because they want to make playing blackjack more enjoyable by reducing dummy plays. If they are willing to teach you, I wonder if they care about your attending other classes? I might be wrong but this is my thinking.

I am speaking of taking a class on how to count, not just for BS. I would think the casinos would like to have info on people that are taking classes on how to count. Or am I just too paranoid?

wear dark glasses and a ball cap.

I agree with G. This is not rocket science. The main point to ensure success is lots of practice. CV BJ is a good start. But playing in a casino with all the distractions is also important.

I can certainly remember my first few times out. I could count with no problem. But I'd get involved in something and before I knew it, two rounds had been played while I totally forgot about counting. If you do it enough, you begin to do it automatically. When you find yourself counting while standing behind a table talking to a friend, you know you are "getting there". If you have to remember to count, one of the many distractions will bust you. In 2d, it might not be so bad, but in a shoe game, you end up playing BS for the shoe, or else starting from zero and losing accuracy...

practice. practice. practice. A "school" isn't going to help you much there. They will show you what to practice, but then you can get that from the online BJ school here, for free...

Hopefully you aren't looking for the easy way out. It doesn't exist... The key to success is simply practice, practice, practice.

Oh yes, did I mention practice? :)

Well of course I'm looking for the easy way out. I'm a lazy bastard at heart. :)

However, there is nothing at all wrong with teaching myself. I'm doing that now. I started with the High Low method but switched to KO after reading up on it and deciding it really was a better system for me as a casual player. I'm really only looking to improve my game and get myself on the positive advantage side for my occasional trips to LV. I was a ploppy player before although usually a pleasant one, not a crass one. ;) I am interested in the Speed Count method which sounds like a pretty good method to me, at least based upon what I have been able to find out about it. I figure it couldn't hurt to have a couple of simple counting methods in my armamentarium to use.

I started with Hi-Lo. I've stuck with it. For probably several reasons.

1. It is simple enough to do the actual counting. When I looked at a couple of other options, particularly those that have a irregular "pattern" (ie red-7 means you don't count all the 7's, or an ace-neutral count usually excludes 2's and aces, etc, I decided that Hi-Lo would be the easiest to learn, practice, and get very fast at. I find it easy to count 2-6 and 10-A, with very little thought.

2. I found several online references to Hi-Lo with suggestions on how to practice, etc (unfortunately none of them mentioned CV blackjack, something I have just recently found, and if you are just starting, it is beyond worth the money, for the drills, not counting the actual game play it provides). With plenty of resources, and with many people using hi-lo, it seemed like a good place to start.

3. I wasn't put off by the TC conversion. A little training and you can read the discard tray very accurately. CV Blackjack can also help there although I don't find it quite as realistic since you are looking at a monitor/flat-panel which is not quite the same as dealing with 3d-space pattern recognition mentally.

4. I can use hi-lo for 1d through nd games. TC at 1d is a bit messier, but I don't find it that hard to multiply by 4, 2 and 4/3 using 1/4 deck accuracy. For 2d I usually use 1/2 deck accuracy, and for 6d I use 1d.

The main thing for big deck games is betting correlation, and hi-lo (and others) are very good. playing efficiency is lower with hi-lo, but then again it is lower with the unbalanced counts as well. Once you get surrender and insurance indices mentally fixed (again, CV BJ will drill you until you can do them blindfolded, which is a good trick since you can't see the cards. :) ) then you have gotten more than enough to play with reasonable advantage. Betting is most important, and surrender/insurance are next on my list along with what Don calls "the illustrious 18". Trying to memorize all the hi-lo indices is a daunting task if you don't play regularly, which I usually don't although I have been playing a bit more than normal the last two months or so...

My advice to anyone is to learn a count, practice it to get your speed up, and then use it effectively. I _still_ favor 2d games so your counting system needs to be reasonable there. There's a great deal of difference between playing 2d and 6d from an hourly wage perspective. But in 2d, you need to get all those 2-card counting drills done, as when the dealer gets a 10-up and an A-down and he flips that Ace over, everyone will toss in their two cards at once. If you can do the 2-card drill (cancellation) well, you will have no trouble, and the rest of the game is trivial to count once you get the idea of how the dealer deals, and how he pays, and you learn to not count the same card twice which can be confusing at first...

The thing I like about Hi-Lo (or other balanced counts although this is the only one I personally use) is that my playing indices are based on a TC that is calculated the same way each time I play, regardless of the number of decks. IE my IRC always starts at 0.

However, this is somewhat like programming languages in computer science, some like X, some like Y. IE C vs ADA. I'm quite capable of doing anything I want/need in C, and therefore I stick with it. Same for Hi-Lo... You'll probably learn to feel the same way about KO or whatever you end up choosing. I would not bounce around too much however. Better to be a master of one as opposed to a mediocre player of all...

Casinos are not worried about people learning to count. In fact they make quite a bit of money off of those types. Do not worry about that. Going to a seminar is a waste of $$$. Do yer homework. you will learn no more there than from a book.