Mods, obviously this is an other gambling games topic, but please leave it here. That forum is dead, and this question directly correlates to my target audience in this forum, and my debacle of leaving 1-2 / 2-5, and focusing on blackjack.

Been poking around on a lot of blackjack forums, and the general consensus is you can make $50 an hour with very little heat playing blackjack. (counting cards)

You can make ALOT more, but have to deal with driving to lots of different casinos / getting kicked out.

Now $50 an hour playing live poker is a very respectable number, you have to be quite skilled, and play tougher games.

So what I don't understand is, why aren't more live low stakes players playing blackjack?

It seems to me it has a much higher ceiling and smaller learning curve.

It's boring?

Also I might be wrong, I'm not an expert, but I'd be surprised if you could make 50/hour most places without attracting heat.

This is something I've heard munchkin say a few times so they might be getting it from him.

As above, it is excruciating to both learn and play for many poker players. Other gambling is usually static systems that computer programmer types like. Poker is dynamic and creative. Also social.

You need a much bigger BR for bj.

It's not like you can waltz into any place you want and play for 8 or 10 hours straight making $50/hr. You have to run around a lot in between your little stretches of $50/hr.

As with people who say a non genius can make $85k a year at 1/3, you gotta wonder why half the population ain't doing it then.

Yeah like no doubt you could sit for an hour or whatever and make 50 bucks, but if you think most casinos are going to let you sit there and win 400/day, 5 days a week, I think you are going to be mistaken.

1. Smoke
2. Blackjack players are less interesting and less pleasant to be around than poker players
3. I don't know where you live, but here I highly doubt I could put in full-time hours at blackjack making $50 without significant heat.
4. You're not making a fair comparison. You need to compare the utility of the same bankroll playing different games. I'll leave that work to you, but when I have done it in the past it was rare that a blackjack game had better utility than a poker game. If I see a very good blackjack game, I'll play, but there are none that I'm aware of where I live (6/8 pen, machine shuffle or a complex hand shuffle)
5. Blackjack feels like more of a routine than a strategy game, which makes it less intellectually stimulating.

Basic card counting is not as good as on opportunity as poker. If you can find a game where shuffle tracking, hole-carding or other techniques are possible, or a game with very good penetration (I don't play worse than 5.0/6) you can get a big enough edge to make blackjack worthwhile over poker, IMO.

Like others have said the barriers are BR requirements and
access to viable games.

you can play low stakes poker almost anywhere with as little as a few hundred bucks. Not the case with BJ. Also it's not like you can just sit and grind 8hrs day in a day out. Once you start making any money you will be noticed, scrutinized and kicked out.

There are certain regions where very lucrative BJ opportunities are available but on average if you want to make real money playing BJ you need to travel and move around a lot. There are also bigger edges to be had besides card counting as well. Card counting should be one single tool in the AP's tool box.

This. I think it would suck the life out of me totally.

First of all, I'm going to page Dr. Squid Face. He has the experience of winning in poker and BJ. He can tell you how realistic it is to pull $50/hr without getting noticed in BJ.

I personally don't think anyone who is pulling $7000 a month out of a casino is going to go unnoticed for very long. Especially someone who refuses to sign up the players club.

I wouldn’t want to deal with getting kicked out.

And I’m often skeptical of numbers/winrates that people throw around. Reminds me of the people that say you can beat 4-8 limit for $30 an hour.

Well, a nice thing about blackjack is that you can know your winrate much more precisely.

I don't do bj. But I have mostly eschewed poker for more profitable stuff.

It does in fact suck though I am kinda spoiled. I wake up to a bunch of texts from people I'm indifferent to and send like 30 or 40 more during the day. Plus phone calls and meet ups. I drive all over town. I fill out spreadsheets which legit makes me feel physically bad.

There is an initial puzzle solving phase that is kinda fun. I like all my partners. But other gambling is horrible unless 1) you have the degem bug. 2) you are on the spectrum.

I WAS burned on poker. But when I get to play now it is a breathe of fresh air.

Obviously, I think it's worth the money but it is like grinding a dull office job.

QUOTE=venice10;54180048]

I personally don't think anyone who is pulling $7000 a month out of a casino is going to go unnoticed for very long. Especially someone who refuses to sign up the players club.[/QUOTE]

It's going to be somewhat tricky as a counter. Certainly a low stakes guy straight up counting for hours a day ain't gonna work.

I've seen other stuff where people get away with murder for ever. One thing that's an open secret is parlay cards. They've clamped down a bit though.

Can't imagine this is possible in today's climate. The travel involved would eat you alive due to the expenses involved. If there is even one blackjack pro, I would love to hear them come in to the thread and post. My guess is that they have to travel to a different casino every day of the week across the country. That's a tough life but interesting nonetheless.

Poker is more interesting, more social, more scalable, more respectable, and so on. What's more, the casinos around here offer games where a blackjack pays 6 to 5. I don't think they're beatable. Even if they are, I would rather work at McDonald's than run the same card counting system all day.

This thread should be insta-locked.

@OP... If consensus says you can make $50/hr playing blackjack, why aren't you doing this right now and keeping your mouth shut about it?

Easy$$$ right?

At my local casinos in Niagara falls no one.cares if you are counting cards. You can count them using a piece of paper if you want. However we havent tried this while actually winning a lot

My guess would be the game conditions are not great. No reason to make them good in a place without fierce competition.

Links please, because that's BS. In 2018 blackjack cannot be played consistently for even $20\hour. Degenerate gamblers and MBAs have made that win rate no longer possible.

25 years ago was blackjack nirvana--casinos opened all across the US. All throughout the land you could find single deck and double deck games with deep cuts, great rules (re-split Aces, double down after splits, 3:2 blackjack) and pit personel who had no idea what card counting looked like.

Then the spreadsheet jockeys realized that more decks, or even better continous shuffler machines increased the house odds. And degenerate gamblers accepted them. Then the nerds realized that making certain options unavailable (resplitting, surrender (look that up kids), doubling after splits) increased the house take as well. And degenerate gamblers didn't even notice. Then the MBA's said "hell, if the idiots keep playing after all that, let's just make blackjack pay 6:5 and the idiots will still eat it up". And they were right.

Getting made as a card counter isn't even an issue any more. The games themselves are so horrible there's no need for the house to worry about card counters.

The only beatable blackjack games any more are in Vegas, but off the STrip. Orleans, El Cortez, etc.

Many of the MGM games are still beatable theoretically, but the min bets are usually $50 and heat comes on fast.

I always thought surrender was one of the best rules. Saved me so much money when I had a lot of money out during high counts and I got 16 vs a T.

By "degenerate gamblers" there you just mean "gamblers". Your everyday gambler didn't react to the rule changes and why would they, they don't even know basic strategy. Those rule changes would amount to a fraction of the money they lose and make no perceptible difference to their experience.

I didn't realise 6 to 5 blackjack was so common in the US now. My local in Australia still pays 3 to 2. I think it's an 8-deck shoe with like 6-deck penetration, double on 9,10,11 including after split, no surrender, no resplit aces.

There's also a weird variant where you can double and split with house money, but all dealer 22s push. It's net negative to the player, but not by much.

This is just incorrect. There are absolutely good blackjack games outside of Vegas. I know of a double deck game that cuts less than a deck sometimes and has liberal rules. I know of 6-deck games with surrender that only cut one deck. I know of games that use a single riffle shuffle (not sure what the shuffle is actually called, but it’s exploitable).

There is a resource called CJBN that gives details on all the blackjack games in the country and updates year round. It’s possible some of the best games aren’t in there for obvious reasons, but there are some great games in there.

Even if a game is good, how long can you go without drawing heat? 2 days max? For the amount of time it would take to practice counting cards, it would be a waste of time to practice for that long to only use it for 10 hours of play before you get escorted out by security.

You find a bunch of +ev spots. Some ok some pretty good. You don't stay long. You learn to hide what you are doing. You rotate. I know people who do it.

A better point is that it is silly to focus on just 1 form of gambling if it is a big chunk of your livelihood.

I have actually won significantly more playing 21 than I have playing poker. I have played 21 in literally every dump in north america. If you think your local casino does not care about card counting/advantage play you are wrong. They all are extremely protective of their money period. Ya you can get down - but the idea of cranking out full time hours flying under the radar playing a straight count game knocking back 50 bux per hour aint gunna happen.