Need Money, To Make Money?

[Mixolydian87]

I read a lot of things on this site about bets and bank rolls, and how much of your bank roll to bet.

Well being in a position I am in, at any one time, I do not have 15k to throw around .

Instead I keep 2k for "playing money", I guess you could call that my bank roll. That is strictly blackjack money, all money won for it goes to blackjack I dont take away from it but I replenish it if it dips below 2k.

So, according to these "rules" about betting in proportion to your bank roll, it seems like I would be making such a miniscule amount an hour that I should just get a job huh?

I don't see the point....

So why count?
Can you only make money, if you have money?

 

[shadroch]

In Blackjack for Blood,there is a story of a husband and wife team that started with a smaller BR then yours($500 to be exact),began with a $5-25 spread and playing every other weekend ended up winning $250,000 in 129 trips over five years.
With a two grand replenishible BR,you don't have to play strictly red chips.If the rest of your game is squared away,you can bet a greenie or two when the time is right. Speaking for myself,I'd go $10 on the first hand and adjust to $5-25 during the draw.Let a winning $25 bet ride if it calls for it. But I play SD and DD. Playing 6-8 decks you need a bigger spread,according to those who play them.

 

[sagefr0g]

I read a lot of things on this site about bets and bank rolls, and how much of your bank roll to bet.

Well being in a position I am in, at any one time, I do not have 15k to throw around .

Instead I keep 2k for "playing money", I guess you could call that my bank roll. That is strictly blackjack money, all money won for it goes to blackjack I dont take away from it but I replenish it if it dips below 2k.

So, according to these "rules" about betting in proportion to your bank roll, it seems like I would be making such a miniscule amount an hour that I should just get a job huh?

I don't see the point....

So why count?
Can you only make money, if you have money?

so you could say your bankroll is 2k looks like to me. and being it is replenishible you could say it's still 2k when you replenish it.
i think thats how it works.
whats got a lot to do with the "rules" about betting in proportion to your bank roll is how much risk your willing to assume up to a point. another consideration is the standard deviation that your are maybe going to experience. possible just that could wipe you out but on the other hand it might give you a great albeit maybe temporary boost.
off hand though yeah it looks like you might could make a miniscule amount an hour by the long haul. so yeah if you need the money then a job is the answer.
i was lucky when i started and hard as it is for me to believe when i started i knew even less than i know now three years later. i really thought back then i knew what i was doin. lol. i realize now that i really didn't know as much as i thought i did and still don't lol. i started with $300 and got it up to $7,000 then now it's down to $6,000. i've played 225 sessions that i dunno i guess averaged a couple three hours or so. i've done what now i think i realized was a lot of 'off the wall' sort of playing along the way. but at least the vast majority of how i played was guided by what i think i understand about card counting. i've tryed to examine how it was i played but really i made so many changes over all those sessions that it's at this point virtually impossible to say just how much my results were luck and how much were skill. but i believe one thing that helped me survive being so short banked has been always playing the lowest table mins available. that was five dollar tables. just messed with ten dollar tables a couple of times or so and wonged some $25 tables a few times. kept my spread down also to keep a really low ROR also so as to not be overbetting as best as i could.
like you suggested everything i won went to build the bankroll.
as far as replenishing how i did it was i'd replenish with what i considered my trip bankroll ($300) from my general funds. once i won twice that much back i put the $300 back in my general funds instead of my bankroll. can't remmember exactly but i think i only did that maybe three or four times. so but as luck would have it i've never really been in the red far as that original $300 goes.
so that's how it's went for me so far. just a recreational player that started with big dreams that became just hope of maybe making 'some' money but found it fun along the way.

 

[unknown_aussie]

What does ROR mean?

 

[zengrifter]

I read a lot of things on this site about bets and bank rolls, and how much of your bank roll to bet.

Well being in a position I am in, at any one time, I do not have 15k to throw around .

Instead I keep 2k for "playing money", I guess you could call that my bank roll. That is strictly blackjack money, all money won for it goes to blackjack I dont take away from it but I replenish it if it dips below 2k.

So, according to these "rules" about betting in proportion to your bank roll, it seems like I would be making such a miniscule amount an hour that I should just get a job huh?

I don't see the point....

So why count?
Can you only make money, if you have money?

You could expand upon your current BR approack and replenish $500 (add to) regardless of whether you are down - its $500 every month - $6000 additional over 1-yr - then play like you got $5,000. Called a virtual BR. You gotta keep playing and keep replenishing. zg

 

[jay28]

What does ROR mean?

risk of ruin

 

[Harman]

What does ROR mean?

Risk of ruin, which means how likely you are to lose all your bankroll. If your bankroll is 800 with a max bet of 250, then you have a very high ROR meaning you are likely to go bust before you make any decent money. But this doesnt mean you will! Some people would rather play it safe by either lowering their max bet, or waiting and building up a bankroll. But even with a 2% ROR, you could still lose it all by a swing of variance!!

 

[callipygian]

Can you only make money, if you have money?

Yes. Get used to it, this is true for many aspects of life besides card counting: keep a minimum balance in the bank and avoid certain fees; put down a large down payment and get a lower interest rate; fly on an airline enough and they'll start flying you for free.

So why count?

For fun.

Seriously, if you have any dreams about getting rich counting cards, you probably shouldn't start.

Let's put it this way: You work a job, at $X per hour. Let's say you manage to save up 3 months' salary as a bankroll, or $X*40*12.5 = $X*500. You want your bankroll to be about 200 big bets, and at a spread of 1:10, that's 2000 unit bets. So each unit bet is $X/4. You'll be looking to earn about one unit bet per hour, which means chances are you'll be making 1/4 of what you earn at your "real" job when it comes to card counting, even if you put in the same amount of time. As you play for a long time, your bankroll might grow, and you can re-evaluate your career choices then. But unless you found a ton of money on the street, new card counters shouldn't expect anything more than a fun hobby.

Let's think about this another way. Let's say you're willing to put in 100 hours into a casino per year (2 hrs/week). Your expectation is to win about 100 units, or about 5% of your bankroll. You can get the exact same yield by investing your bankroll in a bond fund - with ZERO effort. So unless you're willing to sink in multiple hundreds of hours into play, chances are you're going to make more money with traditional investments (CD's, bonds, stocks, mutual funds) than with card counting.

 

[mjbballar23]

Yes. Get used to it, this is true for many aspects of life besides card counting: keep a minimum balance in the bank and avoid certain fees; put down a large down payment and get a lower interest rate; fly on an airline enough and they'll start flying you for free.



For fun.

Seriously, if you have any dreams about getting rich counting cards, you probably shouldn't start.

Let's put it this way: You work a job, at $X per hour. Let's say you manage to save up 3 months' salary as a bankroll, or $X*40*12.5 = $X*500. You want your bankroll to be about 200 big bets, and at a spread of 1:10, that's 2000 unit bets. So each unit bet is $X/4. You'll be looking to earn about one unit bet per hour, which means chances are you'll be making 1/4 of what you earn at your "real" job when it comes to card counting, even if you put in the same amount of time. As you play for a long time, your bankroll might grow, and you can re-evaluate your career choices then. But unless you found a ton of money on the street, new card counters shouldn't expect anything more than a fun hobby.

Let's think about this another way. Let's say you're willing to put in 100 hours into a casino per year (2 hrs/week). Your expectation is to win about 100 units, or about 5% of your bankroll. You can get the exact same yield by investing your bankroll in a bond fund - with ZERO effort. So unless you're willing to sink in multiple hundreds of hours into play, chances are you're going to make more money with traditional investments (CD's, bonds, stocks, mutual funds) than with card counting.

Though everything you say about counting cards for a living is pretty accurate, essentialy ALL APs that make a living in the casino do ALOT of other things outside of card counting. Card counting is just the foundation, while many more opportunities prove to be much more lucrative. Im sure you know this already but i thought it was worth mentioning.

 

[callipygian]

ALL APs that make a living in the casino do ALOT of other things outside of card counting.

I completely understand that; I know absolutely nothing about becoming a professional aside from the fact that it requires a bankroll much larger than I have.

Even the biggest names in card counting likely made more money from writing books than playing blackjack; I'm pretty sure that none of the fabled MIT team were able to retire at age 25 from playing blackjack. I'm just trying to fight the myth of a card counter with $100 in his wallet heading to Vegas and leaving a multimillionaire. Even the teams that won millions had to return all their bankroll plus half of their winnings to the investor - the remaining money was divided among a large team, and after taxes, I'd bet they had a sweet down payment for a nice house.

 

[mjbballar23]

I completely understand that; I know absolutely nothing about becoming a professional aside from the fact that it requires a bankroll much larger than I have.

Even this is not completely true. I know one person that went pro with a bankroll of only a couple thousand (primarily a poker player), a friend of mine made it with a $600 bankroll (poker again), and i talk with a poster on this site that went pro with only $500. Obviously stories like these require a good deal of luck but they were all very good at leveraging their small bankrolls in the beginning. They definitely were not counting cards though with these small bankrolls.

 

[callipygian]

Even this is not completely true. I know one person that went pro with a bankroll of only a couple thousand (primarily a poker player), a friend of mine made it with a $600 bankroll (poker again), and i talk with a poster on this site that went pro with only $500.

Going pro at poker is not at all similar with going pro as a blackjack player. In low-limit hold'em, the EV per hour is at least on par with low limit blackjack but the variance is much, much smaller.

And in poker, you're winning from the players (who are idiots), not the house (who is generally not).