My max bet is $50, so I definitely qualify as a "small BR" player. I have put aside 5 grand to do this. If you don't even have 5 grand, you should not do this.
Card counting is a really crappy way to make money if you don't already have multiple tens of thousands of dollars that you're willing to wholly devote to the venture. Not money you need for ANYTHING else, but just money you're willing to put up for the investment.
I've been counting for a short while, and if I really look at it rationally, I've been wasting time better spent on other activities. But for whatever reason, I like hanging out at a casino by myself and seeing what I can scrounge up. Here are some observations that may help illustrate to you what a threadbare operation low-stakes counting really is:
--Whenever you play, remember two things: First, EVERY employee in the casino--the dealer, the cashier, the janitor--is making more per hour than you are. Second, unlike the drink server or the janitor, you stand a non-trivial chance of losing your ENTIRE trip roll on ANY given day.
--Play as optimally as you can and don't worry about heat. It's not that heat isn't an issue for the low-level red chipper, it's that you simply can't afford to do anything about it. Leave after a short session and come back? You'll eat up your EV in gas money. At low amounts, the miserable dicks who work in the pit don't care if you count or what the hell you do as long as you don't win, and plenty of times you won't win. So to bring scrutiny, you must be winning in an obvious fashion, the eye or pit must have nothing else better to do, and both these conditions have to happen at the same time.
When I play 6D shoes, I never play a single negative count. Ever. I will sit and watch forever and only play a tiny fraction of hands when the count is high enough. There are better players than me who can do any number of things to justify playing through negative shoes, but I'm just a straight up counter, and a poorly bankrolled one at that, so I spend at least 80% of my time watching. I buy in, decline to play, sit back, put my feet up on the chair next to save a couple spots, and pretend to watch sports. Then I come in when the count goes up. What are they going to do? Sweat my $35x2 action? Fine. Whatever.
Lately I ran into an unbelievable streak of good luck and won about 10 "large" bets (here it was 3 hands of a quarter apiece) in a row during consecutive shoes. Those were the only hands I played. The pit began to form a small audience in front of me and every one of them was staring. It takes a special kind of jerk to sweat a kid playing three hands of ONE MEASLY QUARTER as a max bet at a six-deck shoe game. But anyway, I pocketed my quarters at the shuffle, hightailed it for the exit, changed my shirt in my car, came back a half hour later, cashed in my chips, and after a break at the bar I was playing the next shift.
--Don't play bad games. Easier said than done, of course, because most games are bad, but if you don't have a marginally decent game in your area, just don't count. Learn poker or better yet get a job at McDonald's. The typical game offered in the Midwest, 6D with >1.5 pen, H17, and no surrender, is in my opinion a bad game. Add a little something extra like slightly better pen, surrender, a good casino promo, etc. and it becomes playable.
--A good part of your EV at the casino does not come from counting. Hassle the pit into giving you a free buffet. That's worth like an hour of play to you and I've found that I can get buffets even after extreme wonging and playing like 10 hands in an hour. You can eat an entire day's worth of food at a buffet.
A low-level red chipper should always play rated. At some casinos you'll rack up free slot play or comp money simply by having the pit put you in the computer. Where I play, they often are not going to notice if you hardly play any hands.
In all that time you spend watching, you can scavenge plays from ploppies. If someone wants to double their 11v6 for less, even in a bad count, you'll make money putting up the difference.
Be cheap. Never tip in a casino. This may sound like a jerk thing to do, but these people are making more money than you. Casinos are ripoff joints by design. And they are glad on the days you lose $500 of your tiny bankroll to their enterprise.
Just remember, in shoe games, your margin is very, very small.
