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Blackjack Insider Newsletter, April 2004, #51

JPB has been playing blackjack and counting cards part-time since 1996. He plays throughout the country but primarily in Missouri. He has been a Green Chip member of BJ21.com for four years and one-time winner of the Post-of-the-Month. JPB is a professional engineer with three engineering degrees and works as a consulting engineer.

I made my first visit to Las Vegas in 1986 playing low stakes blackjack. I quickly learned basic strategy and purchased Lawrence Revere’s "Playing Blackjack as a Business" (a horrible book for the novice card counter). I tried card counting on my second trip. I made a handful of trips to Las Vegas over the next ten years card counting low stakes blackjack games but was not very successful even though I could keep a near perfect running count. I attribute my lack of success to underbetting (#1 below) and not having enough information (#2 below). Because of my poor selection of a guide book and my ignorance to not seek a better resource, I did not understand critical issues such as the casino advantage for various rules variations, true count vs. running count, and the importance of penetration and bet spread.

It was not until blackjack came to Missouri in the mid 1990s and I read "Blackjack: Take the Money and Run" (call me a suck- up but it is true) that I became a successful advantage player. Over the past few years I have had several friends and relatives dabble in the card counting world. I have tried to compile my observations on why more smart people are not successful at card counting.

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