How do you become a “professional” BlackJack player?
to be a pro – you do NEED to count like said above optimal rules count as EVERY % point helps if you aren’t counting you don’t know whats coming other than theory based on how many cards in a 52 card deck you are ALWAYS at a disadvantage to get a desired card on a draw of ONE CARD if you know the deck has a lot more high cards remaining you can sway that theoretical disadvantage of drawing a desired card into a positive one – but you cant take advantage of it on every hand, so the edge is still a small one there’s a lot of reasons a player is ALWAYS at a disadvantage in blackjack – one you bet before you know the first two cards unlike in poker for example. and since there is a lot more two card combination’s your favored to LOSE and not WIN over time the house has an EDGE two you have to go first – meaning both player and dealer can bust and you the player lose money. and #3 you have to play and assume dealer has hole card you cant know for CERTAIN and you are hoping next card is valu
Blackjack tournaments aren’t really that lucrative. They aren’t really that common and the prize pools aren’t that big (usually the top prize is $1,000 or less). You’d have to cash in pretty much every single one you played in to make a decent living, which is not realistic. Professional blackjack players are all card counters. Even if you tried making a living as a tournament player, step one is still “learn to count cards.” Plus, most of the best tournament blackjack players are banned from the regular blackjack tables because they are excellent card counters. I read a book by one of the guys who appeared on the tournament blackjack show that was on the game show network, and he said that often when he would go to a casino for a tournament they would tell him they were watching him and if he even tried to sit down at a blackjack table outside the tournament they were going to throw his butt out. So anyway, if you want to go pro, you have to become a proficient card counter, and be ab
Pitting yourself against the house is a sure-fire way to go against the odds. The beauty of Blackjack however, is that in certain situations you’re able to swing the odds to slightly above 50% in your favor. In those moments, you can cash in big my increasing your bet size (as well as reducing your bet size when the odds are heavily against you). The best way to get ahead of the game is to recognize when the odds are in your favor, and contrary to what Hollywood will have you believe, it’s not all that difficult. I’ve provided links below to a general Blackjack strategy guide, as well as a how-to guide on card counting in Blackjack. These are both definitely worth a read, especially if you’re considering becoming a “professional” Blackjack player.
A lot of them will play in Tournament Blackjack, where there theoretically is no house edge, because you are playing against other players for a prize pool, not against the house. In a tournament, strategy and skill are big factors, although you still need some luck to win one. So a “Professional” player will want to find as many tournaments as they can, and hopefully ones with some lesser experienced players in them. One casino here recently had a $100,000 prize pool for a BJ tourney that attracted around 1500 people from all over. The winner walked away with $50,000 (I think) and they paid out the rest to the top 10% or so of the entrants. Also there was a LOT of side betting, lol.
You can win money playing blackjack in a variety of ways. The most common way is to count cards, which give the player an edge of about 0.7-1.5% over the casino depending on how it is employed. You can play tournaments strategically to hold an edge, sometimes this doesnt even require player skill because the casinos will let you enter them for free, or will add prize money to the pool for different reasons. Theres also other ways to beat the game while your being dealt it at the table. These less common methods include… Shuffle tracking, which is the process of following known/seen/unsseen cards through the shuffle process and using that information to guide play in the next shoe. This may sm impossible but in reality a casino style multi deck shuffle can be VERY ineficient. To povre the point, i ahve sat at a table watched the first shoe be dealt, then played only off the information i saw by manipulating the cards with the cut card to my liking and betting acoordingly. I would repe
