What does it take to be a professional blackjack player? Can you make a living at it?
Yes, you can play blackjack professionally and make a living wage, though it’s a lot harder than it used to be for the average card counter. First, you need to string together a positive expectation, meaning that either the games themselves, or the games in conjunction with the promotions, comps, and other casino considerations provide a greater than 100% payback.
However, and here comes the big but, to be a professional gambler, to win year in and year out, you have to be part mathematician, part banker, part actor, part geek, part martial artist. You have to be skilled, dedicated, and disciplined. You have to be willing to spend your life in casinos. You have to eat, sleep, and dream game theory. You have to carry a lot of cash and chase small edges with big bucks. You have to stay healthy as a racehorse in unholy environments, alert as a hoot owl under distracting conditions, and cool as a spring breeze under the blazing heat of scrutiny.
You have to be able to get away with the money. The casinos are managed by the most suspicious people in the private sector, who breathe down your neck every minute of your working day. Casinos are also the most surveilled environments this side of the National Security Agency.
You have to ride the financial and emotional roller coaster of gigantic bankroll swings. You have to take the big losses in stride. And you have to take the big wins without going on tilt and blowing the whole wad, which you’ll undoubtedly need to see you through long losing streaks in the future.
Harder still, your family and friends wonder what kind of life you’ve chosen for yourself. And for them.
Many many books have been written on blackjack over the past 50-odd years and that’s the subject of the next page. All of them, to one degree or another, detail “the life” — what it’s like to earn your living beating the casinos at their own game. The most successful blackjack players who’ve written how-to books, such as Bryce Carlson, Ian Anderson, Rick Blaine, and Kevin Blackwood, often paint an enticing picture of the money, the perks, and the putative glamour of playing 21 as a pro.
But three books look at what it’s really like to live the life of a blackjack pro. Two are diaries the depict short bursts of intense play; the third is a memoir that takes place from the initial inspiration to the wild success at the tables.
Las Vegas Blackjack Diary
Though outdated (published in 1997 about a two-month period in 1994), this is an honest depiction of the preparation, playing experience, and the financial and emotional swings of 269 sessions of blackjack betting up to $400 per round by author Stuart Perry. It’s like being at the table with a blackjack pro (and a serviceable writer).
Blackjack Autumn
Barry Meadow got it into his head to play 21 in every casino in Nevada and spent the better part of six months doing just that. A fabulous writer who’s also done stand-up comedy and written for sitcoms, he tells it exactly like it is — literally, figuratively, and spiritually.
The Blackjack Life
Nathaniel Tilton was a regular guy with a regular guy when he read Bringing Down the House, the story of the MIT blackjack team, and put his life through a radical change. Tilton teamed up with a friend who also knew very little about the game and they blazed their own trail to becoming blackjack pros; the subtext is just as much about finding his strengths, values, and place in the world in the process.
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