Save yourself 1500!
A two day seminar could do little to help a novice player or even a relatively experienced nonprofessional player in my humble opinion. You can buy a few books and slowly soak them in and flip cards at your kitchen table over coffee for a few hours at a pop and over a period of time, a lot longer than two days is all, you will gain 100 times what any two day seminar could possibly do for you. That's my best guess, anyway.
I never attended any seminars...my blackjack playing started back in around 1985 after hearing about "card-counting" and an advantage and blah blah blah. I was still in the Navy at the time and I aced exams that were impossible to ace, memorized portions of tech manuals to the point of being able to recite paragraphs word per word, hence being able to score 4.0 on any given exam, etc., so I figured I could track cards and diddled about with it. At that point I hadn't read Ed Thorp's book so devised in my own head what made sense for me as far as counting and being able to figure out what cards were in the remainder of the shoe. I practiced it a bit and got to the point of being able to flip through 2 or more decks and tell you what the last remaining batch of cards was.
I still had never played blackjack before in a casino, though! The first time I ever played for real was a "casino night" for the Navy Relief Society, a fundraiser thing where I put my practice to the test on a $1 minimum and $10 dollar maximum. The blackjack table was doing well until I started playing and I ended up breaking the bank and they had to shut down the blackjack game! (I never felt bad about whacking this particular charity because Navy Relief is one of those strange charities that the command pushes people to give to and it rakes in a ton of money yet they really do about NOTHING for the guys and if someone needed emergency leave, Navy Relief would give them an "interest free" loan for a family emergency at best; In all my years I never saw them actually give 10 cents to ANYONE that they didn't have to pay back so where the hell did all that money GO???).
I was thinking maybe I was on to something here and eventually started playing in actual casinos and did quite well...BEFORE I ever started reading any books. I found out that my counting method was "above and beyond the call of duty" as compared to a high/low count but stuck with it because that's how I initially learned so that's what I stuck with. I felt that knowing of an abundance or lack of 6-9 meant a lot with reference to player 12/13 against the dealer's 2/3 showing. There's more to it but I will bore you will that part. I started reading ALL the blackjack books then, although I did not go with the other counting methods, I tried to learn all I could from these true masters of the game beyond just the counting parts.
I have never been to a blackjack seminar or anything like that; I am completely self taught but even though I have been a very successful player for all these years, I still take advantage of reading or knowing what truly remarkable players of notariety have to say. You can buy a few books and learn more than what you could EVER learn at some seminar. You can hang out here and read what some of these guys have to say, some of them are experts and I read every word of what they say avidly. Stanford Wong and Arnold Snyder and a few other great pros of notoriety have websites where you can buy a few books and also gather much knowledge just poking around the site!
Time, effort, $200 worth of books and reading through some of the stuff on here that guys like Zengrifter and a few others write will get you more than any two day seminar, I think. Would I go to some sort of seminar or something 'er other? Only if it were a social thing to hang out!...not because I feel it would enhance my game any! I spend 30 hours a week playing in the casinos and never see other counters to speak of, so the socialization factor and being able to hang out with other blackjack players (REAL blackjack players and not the dummies I may play alongside at the casinos all day, that is...) is appealing...but not worth $1500 to me just the same!
