Team Results
- Thread starter bluewhale
- Start date
Now thats just not true and you know it, and if you don't you should. Even your backyard casino with 8 decks has up to $3000 dollar limits on the regular mid shoe entry floor, with most others at least $1000. Even those casinos with max bet tables of $500 can be manipulated for decent profit with big spreads and multiple hands. Hey if you don't have the bankroll to bet large enough to support team play thats one thing, but if you do, crying about table limits is just ignorant. Having a bankroll that is big enough to have max bets surpass the table limit doesn't mean you can't play a profitable game. But limiting yourself to playing only those venues on the other hand, is not that bright either. If your bankroll is one that $500 or mutiple hands of that cannot meet your betting requirements, then you have enough money to travel to find good games that will, and believe me there are many out there.Automatic Monkey said:
no casino we've been to has had table maxes over 500 in the regular gaming area (the high roller sections do, but usually no mid shoe). in fact most of the games are 300 max. in fact about 70 hrs of our chart came from games with 100max tables. i realize that with bets like what you're talking about, ie 500x2 spots or more, then BP would be quite effective. so i think AM is right in saying you have to go up against table maxes to make a decent wage using BP, at least at the level and the games we were playing.Bojack1 said:
another problem we encountered was comps, our spotters didn't play at all (backcounting only), so obviously they earned no comps. while the BP earned $100 bucks after 3 hrs of play. we tried to order take out from the restaurant but this ended up eating a ton of time.
also some of the missed call ins came from spots where the count reached two, and i signaled, then the count quickly went back to 1, and i canceled my signal. this happened 3 times during my 3 hour session. a full blown missed count of 4 happened once while he was at another table.
I believe that someone who actually goes out and does something will have far more knowledge than someone who researches it. And i've actually been trying to organize a BJ team, and in my experience the BP method loses a lot of EV and should only be reserved for bets of $500++.
@Bojack does your BP backcount tables.... how does he busy himself while not called in.
Automatic Monkey
Banned
Yes as Bluewhale noted, I specified a crap 8D game. Foxwoods is a decent 8D game with LS and good pen, doesn't apply. You also don't have to worry about heat in this part of the country and a Wonger can hit and run all day for many days without getting caught. I've been doing it for years and when I checked my W/L at this store I was astounded. I had no idea how much money I've been making!Bojack1 said:
These guys are in a challenging situation and doing very well despite it, and playing independently from a shared bankroll is the best thing they can do. I'm not even sure surveillance is fooled by "BP" any more, too many guys blowing about it in books and on TV.
Hey all who remember me.
So the summer for us started at the end of April.
A teammate and I practiced counting and went for a 3 day trip to the Seneca Niagara region to do some banking work and count. We strictly backcountetd the whole time and ended up down a little over 6k. Shitty way to start out the summer.
But back after meeting up with our 3rd man we began by training for 5 days (8-10hrs/day) to get back in shape. Counting took a day (for the 3rd guy; the two of us were already good); and then we got BP down very good. Went to a local casino and tested out BP there with a mini ramp of $100 max and it worked amazingly well.
So now we're on our second trip; 10 days through NY and CT. We play a dbl deck game with 50% pen spreading 50-450 (heads up) and get destroyed. We continue on and start big player. It works amazingly well with the pitbosses clearly having NO idea what we were doing. manage to win about 3k on the first day. Then the next 6 days are one big loss after the other. We drop something like 11k on the trip total.
At this point our hourly has gone to ****. We've lost pretty much all our winnings. And we're banned from every casino within a cpl hours. So we've halted all further team play and the investors are getting their money back. It really sucks that it ends this way but nobody (incl me) really wants to work for very low wages and super high variance because a cpl of us have alternatives.
Myself and another counter both play poker a lot and have massive winnings there. My overall gambling winnings have recently crossed the 6 figure mark :eyepatch:. So for now I'm going to stick to the forms of gambling that have actually won me that money. I definately see myself going back into counting; and certainly doing it once in a while. But not on the level we were doing it for a while at least.
So the summer for us started at the end of April.
A teammate and I practiced counting and went for a 3 day trip to the Seneca Niagara region to do some banking work and count. We strictly backcountetd the whole time and ended up down a little over 6k. Shitty way to start out the summer.
But back after meeting up with our 3rd man we began by training for 5 days (8-10hrs/day) to get back in shape. Counting took a day (for the 3rd guy; the two of us were already good); and then we got BP down very good. Went to a local casino and tested out BP there with a mini ramp of $100 max and it worked amazingly well.
So now we're on our second trip; 10 days through NY and CT. We play a dbl deck game with 50% pen spreading 50-450 (heads up) and get destroyed. We continue on and start big player. It works amazingly well with the pitbosses clearly having NO idea what we were doing. manage to win about 3k on the first day. Then the next 6 days are one big loss after the other. We drop something like 11k on the trip total.
At this point our hourly has gone to ****. We've lost pretty much all our winnings. And we're banned from every casino within a cpl hours. So we've halted all further team play and the investors are getting their money back. It really sucks that it ends this way but nobody (incl me) really wants to work for very low wages and super high variance because a cpl of us have alternatives.
Myself and another counter both play poker a lot and have massive winnings there. My overall gambling winnings have recently crossed the 6 figure mark :eyepatch:. So for now I'm going to stick to the forms of gambling that have actually won me that money. I definately see myself going back into counting; and certainly doing it once in a while. But not on the level we were doing it for a while at least.
I will admit I was curious about how your summer blackjack tour was going. Sorry to hear it didn't go too well. Not to add insult to injury, but your results are not so surprising.bluewhale said:
First off you ended up playing some pretty poor games compared to whats available out there cosidering you had plenty of time and money to travel. I will assume the DD game you played was at the Turning Stone since that is pretty much it for that in the NY, CT area. Thats not a very good game for DD not to mention that place is ripe for so many other AP techniques on their 8 deckers. With a little more planning and training that might have been a better stop for you.
As far as the team play situation, bad things can happen as well as good as you have seen. But what puzzles me is why would you waste time playing these weaker venues when you could have gone so many other places. I have played quite a bit on the NY CT area but I know my team would not survive if thats all we fed on. Truly trying to make a run at putting up nice numbers as team requires a few important things. Time to travel, which you had. A sizeable bankroll, which you had enough for at least a small venture. Skill, which I hope and assume you had. And very importantly discipline, for not allowing yourselves to get sucked into playing games that aren't optimal when you have the resources to choose. Thats where I question your judgement.
Based on what you had to work with I think you messed up with your logistical plan. You had a relatively short window to try to make as much money as you could. Given that I would have charted out a plan to hit not the casinos closest to me, but the casinos offering the best games. DD games in Tunica and certain Midwest casinos blow away anything you played in NY. Traveling west to Vegas and Reno could've offered you much better shoe games and single deck that would make your mouth water. Hell even in Canada there is a nice little 6 decker that I believe I mentioned to you. Those are only the well known spots, there are so many more but those would have done for now. As far as expenses, at your betting level it really would only cost you 1 day of playing to get just about every stop comped. And at anytime if things didn't go well, as it tends to happen sometimes, you could have come back home like you did, but this way at least you know you gave it your best shot.
Anyway, I really am sorry you didn't get the experience you were looking for, most don't. To get what I believe you were looking for would've meant leaving your comfort zone a little bit. Very few ever do, in turn very few ever find what they expect to. At least you have other successful forms of gambling working for you. Best of luck to you.
Sure I do and, well, you know what I'm wondering about. I am sorry things didn't work out.bluewhale said:
Trust me, I don't know crappola, and the only thing I even might be able to do in an unrealistic way is ask about the details.
Like how often the team captain analyzed results or not, etc. Ultimately, however you played for how long, BP or some other way, what did you expect from either along the way?
Broadly speaking, how was the team managed? Ever re-size or think about it etc? Just woke up one day with no money?
No big deal - what's done is done and I wouoldn't want to re-hash the details either.
We re-sized frequently. We were actually underbetting our roll quite severely... betting 300x2 when we had 53k. Bringing that down as we lost money.
We actually didn't get banned from any place where we used BP. All my poker is online.
The MAIN reason why we stopped isn't the losses really. Its the cost benefit of playing blackjack as opposed to other gambling. We can make a lot of money playing poker with very little variance and discomfort so continuing to travel and count makes no sense right now. I probably will do count semi-recreationally with some kind of small 2x200 max bet whenever i happen to go to a casino. I just won't be going for week long 8hr/day trips.
We actually didn't get banned from any place where we used BP. All my poker is online.
The MAIN reason why we stopped isn't the losses really. Its the cost benefit of playing blackjack as opposed to other gambling. We can make a lot of money playing poker with very little variance and discomfort so continuing to travel and count makes no sense right now. I probably will do count semi-recreationally with some kind of small 2x200 max bet whenever i happen to go to a casino. I just won't be going for week long 8hr/day trips.