Fairly experienced, but still not "connected"
I am also interested in this topic of how one goes about finding teamates or being accepted onto a team. I would love to get involved in team play w/an existing team but, although I'm already an experienced player familiar with counting and to some extent shuffle tracking, I'm virtually unknown to the a.p. community. This is because, as I've stated in other threads, I'm limited to the venues that I can play and am not entirely sure that I've ever even encountered another counter at the tables much less openly met one in person. Plus I've only recently begun engaging w/other a.p.'s here on the forum - with virtually all of my learning to this point done passively through books or the info on this and other forums (except for my actual casino experience). Therefore I must take issue w/some of the posters in other threads that state that anyone who is sufficently competent to ply their skills in the actual casino world will already be sufficently "networked" to be a candidate for team play. That assumption does not fit my profile at all. So the main issue for consideration there would be trust since I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have any problems getting through the necessary check outs to qualify for a team.
In this regard, I'm wondering what the veteran players and team managers think is the biggest problem when considering new players; trust or the hassle and time investment of training already trusted associates. From what I've read here and in other communications w/players, training already familiar people is usually a major pain in the a$$ since they often lack the devotion and commitment necessary to become sufficently skilled, or they just give up out of boredom. So obviously, taking on someone who's already invested the time and commitment to develop their skills would be a major benefit - assuming you don't think they would try and rob you blind of course. But how big of a problem is that really? It seems to me that doing something capricious like stealing or skimming team funds would be a huge detriment to longevity for a commited player since something like that, if discovered, would spread like a viral video through the a.p. community and you could effectively be blackballed from the game. How many teams or team managers have actually had problems with players cheating the teams bank? I don't recall any of the teams I've read about talking about this being much of an issue, but this could just be more a result of careful recruitment I guess.