Tribute,
Neither am I a "professional". I'll be honest with you and tell you that I took up Advantage Play for the challenge of trying something new. At my stakes, I had no illusions of making millions but, I thought counting could give me a slight advantage and overall, I thought I might "lose less." So far, that has happened about the way I expected it when I total up my wins and loses since I've been counting. But not exactly the "way" I thought it would happen.
You shouldn't expect to go into a casino and play for 6 or 8 hours the way you probably do now and come out with a profit of x% of the amount wagered. First of all, you probably wouldn't be able to sit at a table and count for 6 or 8 hours without getting caught and backed off! It doesn't work that way for me anyway.
When I played recreationally and flat bet, I would have a lot of sessions where I lost a little or won a little and a few where I lost a lot! The goal was to "survive" on my bankroll long enough to complete the trip.
I still have winning and losing sessions just as before. However, instead of a lot of mild loses and wins with the loses coming more often, what I see is a lot of sessions with much larger "swings". That makes sense when you think about the way you are going to be spreading your bets with the count. You are going to be putting a lot more money in the circle when you have an advantage. However, just because you have an advantage doesn't mean that you are going to win the hand! You "should" win more than you lose but in grinding through those hands, you might not have luck on your side and consequently, may lose a lot more of those big bet hands than you expect and that makes for a huge loss session. To offset that, you will have winning sessions that are way above what you might expect.
I guess that we as gamblers, have an optimistic attitude or we wouldn't be involved in our obsession! We remember the "wins" and tend to minimize the loses. In my case, I seem to have more wins than loses and when I tally up my sessions, I am ahead. But I've taken some large unit loses along the way too and unfortunately, I haven't been able to "minimize" them enough I guess <LOL>
Should you put in the effort to learn Advantage Play? Well, of course that's up to you. It does take time and it does take practice. A lot of the practice you can get by dealing to yourself and counting, by playing simulators to get your speed and accuracy up, but the real practice will come from playing at the tables. Can you do it and play realistically just two or three times a year...I don't know. I know I'd have trouble doing that and keeping my skills honed for those two or three times without losing interest. And if you sit at a table and make mistakes, well, that's doom financially! With inaccurate counting, you'll likely be putting large bets out when you do NOT have an advantage and also betting small when you should be pushing it out!
I used to "not care" at least that is what i told myself.
