Quote:
"The reason that even good counters still can't beat the blackjack games is because the stinkin casinos go to great lengths to stop them."
Similar to poker-players...the number of card-counters who think they are good is FAR greater than the number of card-counters who actually are good.
And there you have it.
I actually managed to come out ahead over my entire blackjack career. I was a decent card counter, but was only able to get to Las Vegas to play a few times a year. For every one of me, there were tens of thousands of slightly worse card counters who left their money behind on their occasional weekend trips.
In 1973, I spent hundreds of hours on an IBM 1130 with a buddy of mine, verifying Thorpe's theory and running simulations before heading to Las Vegas to try it out. We studied and practiced for weeks, but when we got to Las Vegas my buddy suddenly decided that he could "read" the deck and "knew" what card was coming next. Again, for every one of me, there are tens of thousands of him.
I don't know if I could ever have been good enough to make a living at it, and as the countermeasures increased, decided to never give it a try. Then the poker boom came along.