Originally Posted by kewlJ View Post
there are NO card counters making 500k a year.

Almost any way you slice it, from a grinder getting in 20-25 hours at just under $500max bet, to playing double that stakes but less hours, to attempting to play that high stakes slash and burn from 20 years ago and getting 2-3 months in, it all adds up to just about the same 75k to 100k on a good year. That really is the ceiling for a fulltime card counter. You can focus on finding and playing the best games with deep penetration, exiting negative counts aggressively (as I do), and maybe if you are lucky exiting right into a better game or opportunity, but none of these things including higher counts () is going to change much. 75k to 100k is the ceiling if you are trying to achieve any kind of longevity. Otherwise slash and burn for a very short 3 or 4 months and then run bootcamps and seminars.
Originally Posted by kewlJ View Post
Before I answer this, I did forget to mention the travel expenses associated with all the travel that most professional BJ players do. With all the flying and driving, and meal on the road, even if you some how get rooms and meals comped which is going to dramatically shorten longevity, just living on the road, and purchasing everything you need and run out of, all these expenses are going to dramatically cut into profits. Somebody not playing high limits like Zeebabar (from another forum), it can eat 1/3 of your profits. Even at high stakes it eats into them significantly.
With card counting at least the number of hours of research are minimal – just go to any casino with 3:2 and a low house edge to begin with, and count, and hope that you win before the variance gets you and before they give you the boot in any case, win or lose.
But still, I have been saying this all along – that when you figure all the time and travel, room and board expenses because you’re playing under the radar and not getting comp’ed, you’re barely getting by.
And this is card counting, which is much higher end than these slot cheats pushing buttons for a living. BJ card counting is, if you want to use the criminal hierarchy, on the level of drug dealing versus pimping. Pimping is low class in the same way that playing advantage slots for a living is low class. And with the slot cheats they have to spend massive amounts of TIME researching, in ADDITION to all the time, travel, and living expenses, such that they are barely making minimum wage.

As J points out, these “advantage” plays are all grinds. And they’re not really making that much per hour, especially when expenses are figured in. All the time sweaty palmed and hiding out from casino security. Big chiropractic bills from always craning their necks looking over their shoulders eat up what little they have left after other expenses.

With my play, they are PAYING me to win – I’m staying in average thousand dollar a night suites, fully RFB (room food beverage) comped, and even getting occasional gifts from the casino, AND winning. If you figure that 2019 was the first full year that I played since coming back after that long break, and that the casinos have me down on their win losses for winning 115,025. that year, which I believe I won more than that but that is what they have me down for, and I believe we ended up staying somewhere in the area of about three full months in Vegas that year, that’s a win of over a hundred grand plus about a hundred grand in comps. This is stratospherically above the level of grinding.