Hey folks.

I'm not sure if the Philippine blackjack culture is different in other places but I found out that bet riding/bet behind is normal.

Anyway, I played my first IRL blackjack and found it fun. However, I am new in the casino scene and was just playing in Stake for awhile. At first I was surprised someone wanted to ride behind my hand and I got anxious and suddenly got intimidated by these veterans, lol (not used to having other peoples money riding behind my decision) After a few hands, I refused another player from betting behind me because I didn't want to get confused and got mad, saying if I refused her, I should refuse everyone. That left a sour note on my game, started deviating from BS and left.

Any notes or tips for next time? Just gotta have more spine or honestly not care if they bet behind?

Also, what happens normally if I decided to split or double? Are they required to bet in that as well?

Well, honestly, want overall tips as someone new in casino. Thanks folks

I can very easily count heads up. But when it’s a full table, especially after the first initial deal of the 2 cards for each player sometimes have a hard time struggling to keep the running count. Any tips/resources or tricks any you fellow AP’s have in this regard

I do not take credit for this system, I first learned about it from JohnStathis(JSTAT) over 10 years ago. It has been working wonders.

2-9+1
Tens -2
Side count Aces.

To me, this feels like a 1.5 level system, the difficulty is a tad higher than Hi-lo due to Aces side count. Claude and GPT is estimating a a 7% improvement over hi-lo mainly due to the high IC.

Can someone with CVCX verify this and if anyone have CV data post the Indices. I would love to compare the indices with what Claude + chatgpt gave me.

We all know it’s great to win big, but when you go from being -$1000 to +$200 (as a $25 table player) nobody can tell you anything as you strut out the door.

I had enough bankroll for once to keep playing top3 each time @£5 and a few times upped the perfect pair side bet from £5 to £10 and a few times to £25. Then I suddenly had a feeling about the next hand, and put £10 on top3 and £25 on perfect pair and £10 on 21+3. And then i got a perfect pair of queens, and the dealer had a queen so trips, total sidebet win £25 x 30 + £10 x 90 + £10 x £20 = £1850. Great feeling! Yeah, i know - don't play side bets. Hahaha.

It’s so pretty

I bet $25, the whole table plays basic strategy perfectly.

I bet $100, and everyone loses their minds and I lose.

I know it's just maths and there is no rhythm or flow to the cards, but man... every time I raise, the guy who keeps getting 16 v 10 alternates his strategy based on how many cigarette buts are in the ashtray or something and I lose.

Sure it's just bad luck, but it still sucks.

I had an interesting conversation with a casino host last night and his conversations with the floor manager regarding counters who does the majority of back offs. I’ve personally witnessed him backing off at least 4 players. Once even while I was at the table playing and he backed off the guy back counting the 6D I was playing at. The host told me the casino is currently in the red and they’re trying to recover but their marketing team is so bad they are doing a poor job getting people in. I told him that the casino should allow more card counters to play because because “even though I don’t count myself I’ve been around long enough to notice and I’m not dumb, that there is a huge influx of young players who think they can count but I believe they’re mostly all losing players”. I gave all the reasons why I believe this and that they mostly overbet and don’t have a big enough bankroll etc. He then said no they can’t do that because some of them are winning players and if they indentify a winning player they will lose money. What they do however is if they can, they wait until they’re losing and then they back them off as they understand the swings of of variance.

got in a debate at a double deck table, dealer hit soft 17, DAS allowed

6,6 against a 7. split or no?

7,7 against an 8. split or no?

googling shows some say split, some say hit.

Can anyone confirm if CBJN is correct that they have 3:2 H17 at a $15 minimum here?

So i have been wondering if this online casino Evolution is really rigging or not. Every round there is always some guy or (bot) who is gonna hit on something absurd. I just lost 29 out of 32 hands, is this just a coincidence?

Should I try to get an advantage without counting, by identifying potential counters and tagging along, even if that’s just taking a bathroom break. Or maybe that rare player that plays perfect BS does some variations, maybe I should follow? I play a lot and it’s rare to see good BS play; maybe that’s because people varying based on the count. I play at one of the larger casinos, but not Vegas. I usually play 8 deck shoe game. Excluding the kids and the drunks, how widespread are counters?

I’ve played blackjack maybe twice before this so I basically know hit/stay and that’s about it. Went with a group of friends and for most of the night they were feeding me plays like hit and stay and split and whatever since I had no clue what I was doing beyond the absolute basics.

At some point I get dealt 8s and someone tells me to split. Cool it worked out I was up a decent amount but in my head I just filed that away as pairs means split and no further logic than that lol.

Later my friends wander off to check out other tables and it’s just me at the table with this other older lady. I’m still up big. Then I get dealt 10 10. Following my genius any pair = split logic from earlier I split the 10s.

That’s when the pit boss comes over. Starts questioning me and it got weirdly tense like they basically paused the hand and it felt like they weren’t letting me touch my own chips for a minute. I’m just sitting there like this is literally my 2nd or 3rd time ever playing I don’t know what I’m doing. They looked into it for a bit then I guess concluded I was just a clueless nobody and not doing anything shady and eventually let me keep playing.

I was kinda over it after that so I just got up and cashed out and left. Anyone else had this happen?

Had my largest win as a 3 year advantage player today. For some reason Mohegan sun offers $50 and $75 mins in the main pits (h17, packed tables), but you can also just go into HL and ask if you can play $50 min. Ended up playing for an hour and a half and cashed out 6k from a $800 buy in (spreading $50-$500). Had a pretty awesome 1k double down (A-5v5) and dealer drew a 4 card bust. Favorite hand had to be my 14vA at a true 7 with $500 out. First took insurance to no avail, then hit and got an ace. Stood on 15 and dealer flipped a 3, then an ace, then a 7, 3, and finally a 10 all while the pit boss counted it out loud. Genuinely the most rewarding session of my career.

Hey guys. Playing at some out of state casinos and I came across a weird rule I’ve never encountered before.

Split aces only one time as normal, but they offered an option to double (or double for less) to “buy” another card. Only 1 split allowed and no hits as per normal.

Wondering if this is a common rule anywhere besides tribal Casinos in Michigan?

If this is a popular rule in places, does anyone have a basic strat chart for what the best decisions to do with split aces would be in this unique rule?

Thanks in advance for the feedback

My friend got really into this "AP slot" stuff a few months ago, and kept telling me how fucking awesome it is. He's always talking about how much he makes and how much fun it is and I just didn't believe him, his story seems to good to be true. But he made it sound so great I had to try it. I set out to give it an honest try and to log 100 hours.

Overall summary: It does work, but not really for much at all. ~$10-15/hr.

After a full month of giving this an honest go these are my numbers:

Software / tools review:

-SlotLog - $15: App to record profits / losses. Not strictly necessary, could just use a spreadsheet, just makes it much easier.

-MachineProClub - $2000 lifetime subscription: A forum of people who discuss when to play the machines. They share data and try to nail down the exact "entry points". It literally has every game and the most common ways of playing them. Super useful if you're brand new, but also expensive as hell. Might not be needed in all honesty if you're not trying to make this your life.

-WizardOfOdds / Random Discords: Many of the numbers for the most popular games are widely shared. Wizard of odds has a ton of the most popular machines with entry points on their website, and what they have pretty much always lines up with MachineProClub. Certainly missing many games, but lots of the most popular are there for learning. And if you search around you can find chat rooms / discords where people talk about it, many of them do share their entry points and discuss numbers. This is why I said MachineProClub might not be needed. It's helpful sure, but also crazy expensive. I don't personally believe this is a huge opportunity where you'll make $2000 back in no time no problem, not really sure if it's worth it.

I set out to give it a real effort and try to reach 100 hours. I'm currently at an average of $16/hr, but you'll notice I had some crazy wins pretty recently. Before that it would consistently average 10-12/hr.

At first it was kinda fun, especially in vegas you can just walk around drinking drinks and checking machines. Then every once in a while you get to play a slot, and feel good about it like you're making money. App says I find ~1.3 play per hour, so most of the time you're just walking and touching screens. That's also an average, there were many days I would walk around and not find anything playable all day. I was just some drunk guy on fremont touching every screen I came across. After not very long it becomes pretty annoying. Not finding any plays is a huge bummer, and actually taking a loss absolutely sucks. Losses are generally rare, and not very big, lots of the games seem somewhat "low variance" and you'll probably make or win less than $80 most of the time, but some machines are more expensive. A few times I lost $400-500 and it absolutely sucked. Day ruined. But every job has its downsides, if I thought I could actually make even $30/hr doing this I would probably keep doing it pretty often.

There is also, believe it or not, a ton of competition. If you start looking for it, it seems like at least 15% of the people in any vegas casino are doing this. They know eachother and have complicated networks, could be a modern mafia doing it haha.

There are many people in competition heavy casinos that will get somewhat aggressive with it. I've seen people sit and watch a regular player play for multiple hours, and would get in disputes and little arguments over who gets to take the machine if the player gets up. In some places like vegas this might be the only way to make any more money doing this, but it seems scummy. I would just wander and check empty machines. Maybe I'd be able to make another $8/hr if I started being a scumbag.

I've actually met some pretty cool people doing this, it's pretty easy to spot others once you start doing it. There is certainly a community behind it, and once you start talking to people you can usually find someone to "chop" a more expensive play with you. You both take half the action to limit big losses.

Some people do this to rack up casino rewards points, but they've actually been cracking down on this lately. Apparently they've been wiping AP slot players rewards every once in a while lately. I bet it was pretty awesome back in the day to do slot AP all day, make a quick hundred on a good play and get given a free dinner. You can still get free drink while playing though, important to make use of that.

If you really dive into this, you'll find that there are no absolute concrete numbers to play at. It's all just the wisdom of the crowd, there's no real way to get concrete numbers / odds on the games (except certain games and leaked info). Apparently the crowd is smart enough though, because if you stick to the games that the crowd believes they have an answer for, it does seem like you'll make money. On average about $15/hr I'd say.

Many people on the forums and in real life SWEAR that they're making AT LEAST $50-75/hr. Maybe, I just don't know. I never got any absolutely life changing wins which would in theory factor into the expect value. Could always take a play expecting to spend $200 and you win the major maxor gargantuan grand delux prize for 7 mil.

Some games are very expensive in vegas, there are cetainly games you can play where you have a very real chance at losing $5,000. Many AP games have $10 or $25 spins in vegas. I would largely avoid these unless I have enough people around to "chop" with. Maybe if you had a bankroll of hundreds of thousands and you wanted to stomach these expensive games yourself you could make a good bit more in EV.

Overall take: I probably won't keep doing it much. It might be actually fun to do if you're in a gambling town like vegas or reno and don't want to just gamble normal. I wouldn't do it expecting to make huge money, but who knows.

If you disagree (and I'm sure many will) share your SlotLog DB, or just whatever spreadsheet you use. I'll attach mine after I make sure there's no personal info in the play comments. I'd be genuinely interested if someone has a many thousand hour DB file I could load up and poke around on.

Here are some more detailed graphs for nerds:

So I played blackjack yesterday at my local casino and walked away with 300 dollars profit . this was only my second time in a casino and I already feel like I want to go back today and play more blackjack. It was low key fun as hell but I would feel real shitty if I lost my 300 dollars back that I made yesterday. But like I said it was super fun so what should I do ?

Hi, i paid for a blackjack apprenticeship membership to finally cancel it a week after because I realise it's not for me at the moment. Their policies state that you can cancel and have you money back before 2 week of your subscription

It's been a month now since my cancelation(they say on the website refund could take a week of more)and after numerous email to the support team, not a peep, no response, nothing.... I'm afraid of what could happen(I assume the worst)

What to do if they ghost me? Should I call my bank? Should I blast them with loads of email? Has anyone ever got a refund ?

Please help, I'm in a bind with my money :'(