It is true that blackjack may just be one of the hardest fields in which to make a living over the long term. Of course the arrival of the automated shuffling machines have made the situation even worse but there are still plenty of shoe games available for a player to make a little money for themselves. Firstly to be a card counter you have to acquire card counting knowledge. The problem with this is akin to the poker player who reaches a certain level and then thinks that they have enough knowledge to beat the game.

Card counting knowledge by itself is not enough in most cases. You will need a good bankroll behind you and a certain attitude towards risk as the variance in blackjack is severe. You will also need to be an actor as well as building and following a different persona is all part of the job. You will then need to be very mentally agile and also be able to perform under scrutiny which isn’t easy.

But to be a really good blackjack player then you will need to be very adept at spotting and detecting heat inside casinos. But the trick is to avoid the heat in the first place. This comes down to preparation and planning. Then you will need to be able to get your money onto the table in such a way so that you do not look like a counter. So you will need to look at ways to build the image of a gambler and this will mean making cover plays on other casino games.

This will all eat into your profits of course but it is something that you will have to do at some stage and especially if there are not many casinos within your area. If you play at any one casino often enough then your patterns are going to be detected even if you are a winning player and taking great effort to disguise your play. One thing that is difficult to disguise is the money that you win.

Taking money off the table and giving it to other punters to cash in is one such way. This obviously involves an element of trust between you and the other person. What we used to do was remove chips from the table and place them into our pockets. This means that the dealer and inspector cannot easily ascertain how much money you have on you and when they have a staff change then the new dealer and inspector cannot possibly know if the information does not get passed on.

If you are losing money then this does not really matter. If you have bought in for £500 then the casino will know that you have bought in for £500 as this will get marked down by the inspector. If you cash out £300 then you do not need to disguise this fact and can easily do it because you are showing a £200 loss which makes you look like a normal punter. But if you had £700 then it would be a good idea to disguise the fact that you have £700 and cash out £500.

This leaves your result in the eyes of the casino as breaking even and not winning £200. If you can trust another player to cash these chips in for you then this will help you greatly as long as this other person is a player themselves. Like I said earlier, professional blackjack is all about preparation and planning.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson