{"id":121716,"date":"2021-06-21T16:00:11","date_gmt":"2021-06-21T23:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/gambling-with-an-edge\/?p=121716"},"modified":"2021-06-21T16:00:11","modified_gmt":"2021-06-21T23:00:11","slug":"colin-jones-s1-e2-the-devil-is-mr-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blog\/colin-jones-s1-e2-the-devil-is-mr-jones\/","title":{"rendered":"Colin Jones (S1 E2): The Devil is Mr. Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For the amount of vitriol directed at Colin Jones online,\nyou\u2019d think the man eats babies. In reality, he\u2019s guilty of a far greater\nsin\u2014he wrote a card-counting book, The 21st<\/sup>-Century Card Counter<\/em>.\nThat book is one pillar of a viral card-counting enterprise also supported by\nthe documentary movie Holy Rollers<\/em>, the website\nblackjackapprenticeship.com (BJA), and the in-person boot camps offered from\ntime to time. Before I continue with the multi-part book review I began in my\nlast post, let me address the mild controversy surrounding the book\u2019s author,\nMr. Jones (\u201cJones\u201d? Really?).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a disclaimer, let me say that other than reading CJ\u2019s book, I have no connection whatsoever to the BJA empire. I\u2019ve never attended a boot camp, and I know CJ only from meeting him a few times at Max Rubin\u2019s annual Blackjack Ball. I won\u2019t bother to start with the perfunctory, empty statement, \u201cHe\u2019s a really nice guy,\u201d because that definition of \u201cnice\u201d carries no weight with me. I\u2019ve known friendly talkers who would buy you coffee or pick you up from the airport, but still abuse you and steal six or seven figures from you, so what does \u201cnice\u201d really mean, anyway? But since you asked about CJ, yeah, he\u2019s a really nice guy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

But let\u2019s skip the personalities and focus on the business activity. My read on the room is probably a bit biased to start with, because I empathize with CJ and the attacks he receives, so if the overall player-community opinion on the man is in fact positive, then I’m defending the preacher to the choir. I\u2019ve certainly seen a lot of positive feedback regarding the boot camps, I\u2019m a fan of the book, and I\u2019m a believer in using online videos and software as a teaching tool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the knocks I\u2019ve heard is that CJ makes card counting\nsound like an easy way to get rich, and that exaggerating or glorifying card\ncounting is dishonest. I can\u2019t speak to the boot camps, but the book doesn\u2019t\nmisrepresent card counting in that way. CJ admits he got lucky with a couple of\nkey breaks early on (page 8) that changed his entire life narrative: \u201cI\u2019m\ncertain I would have lost my $2000 if something incredibly fortuitous hadn\u2019t\nhappened. \u2026 Ben also agreed to test me out. I failed miserably.\u201d CJ\u2019s origin\nstory describes how he thought he was ready to play, but then got humbled by\nthe test. And now BJA offers that same necessary experience to new players via\nthe boot camps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course CJ is selling a product, and is therefore an advocate. The book describes his own successful card-counting journey, and perhaps inspires others to try. Are we to fault the man for having a biased rose-colored worldview, as a consequence of having enough good luck to avoid card-counting hell? That certainly doesn\u2019t make him dishonest. That counting has a dark side\u2014losing, heat, grinding travel, loneliness\u2014is no secret, and there are plenty of voices who will send that message (Arnold Snyder says, \u201cYou will lose.\u201d I say, \u201cCard counting is a prerequisite tool, not an end goal.\u201d). I don\u2019t think the onus is on CJ to be a discouraging voice for the strongest students to overcome (Navy Seal training model). As far as the book goes, I don\u2019t get the feeling of players who win every time while getting comped to the penthouse suite, the way the movies Rain Man<\/em> and 21<\/em> might portray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book has interviews with BJA players interspersed throughout, and I would concede that I felt the book was lacking interviews with losers (I love watching and learning from a train wreck). But losers and quitters disappear from our community, and probably don\u2019t want to be interviewed for a book about it, so I didn\u2019t feel that the omission of such material was dishonest. Besides, this isn\u2019t a textbook. If it\u2019s a bit of a feel-good book, so what? Do you really want to read another Las Vegas Blackjack Diary<\/em>? I felt that The 21st<\/sup>-Century Card Counter <\/em>paints the dark side of counting in a different way: the hero of the tale turns $2000 into $600000, but then gives it up! Even success is empty, boring. You could make some money counting, and then what? +1, +2, +3 true, bet two max bets, back to +2, now -2, wong out, repeat. Is that what you want your career to be? Is that what you want your life<\/em> to be? And do you want to leave your family, go to Iowa, and stay in a dumpy motel to do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So CJ moved on to build BJA, including the boot camps, which have now become so successful that they are fully subscribed even at a price per head around $3000, for which CJ gets further criticism! It\u2019s a bit bewildering that players in the AP community can criticize a businessman for selling his product at the price the market will bear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having not attended a boot camp, I won\u2019t comment on whether the price is worth it, but that really depends on a customer\u2019s individual circumstances. But for a two-day seminar providing niche instructional material, that price isn\u2019t an outlier. I\u2019ve heard price complaints about my own work, too (Howard Schwartz, then proprietor of the Gambler\u2019s Book Club, said that my book, Beyond Counting<\/em>, was overpriced\u2014it was $40), but I can’t say I’m sympathetic to the customers. Developing quality content takes a lot more time and work than customers realize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think it\u2019s good that the price of the boot camp is high. Price barriers in the AP world greatly weed out casino spies, trolls, and unmotivated students. Part of the reason Stanford Wong\u2019s Green Chip was such a great site for so long was that even a modest $60 weeds out a lot of the hacks and trolls, while not deterring anyone serious. If anyone questions CJ on the price of a boot camp, I hope he parrots my answer to people: “If you\u2019re wondering if the price is too high, then you\u2019re not part of my target market, so I would advise you not to buy the product.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mainly, CJ gets criticized for churning out lots of BJA\nplayers who are going to \u201ckill the game.\u201d All of us players and former players\nthink about this when we distribute information in the AP world. In CJ\u2019s case,\nI\u2019d make several points. First, if a guy doesn\u2019t know you, is it his job to\nprotect your game, or even worry about it? Why would a stranger to you owe you\nanything? If he was once a friend or teammate of yours, you might have some\nstanding to complain, but how can you fault him otherwise? He\u2019s running a\nbusiness, making a living for his family, and in this case helping others do\nthe same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now if a person claims to be a player advocate, then I do\nthink we can impose a higher standard: Does the business benefit players or\nnot? For answering that question, the obvious perspective is not whether the\nbusiness benefits you personally, but the player community as a whole. I\u2019ve got\nas much of a personal gripe as anyone, since one of my target games was\ndirectly killed by the amateurishness of some BJA rookies. That said, I believe\nthat the BJA empire will lead to a greater net, aggregate amount of money\nsucked out of casinos. So I don\u2019t think CJ is a hypocrite or con man at all,\nand BJA has a growing list of success stories. CJ might already be the most\nsuccessful trainer of blackjack players in the history of the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to killing games, that\u2019s part of the ecosystem. If there\u2019s one bottle of water in the desert, do you criticize a guy for drinking it? Is he supposed to save it for the next guy, who is then supposed to save it for the next guy? At the end of this recursion, there has to be someone who drinks it. It doesn\u2019t bother me when games get killed as a result of someone making a bunch of money. It only bothers me when a game gets wasted (a la Chevy Chase in the Three Amigos<\/em>, wasting and spilling the water instead of drinking it). But if fair professional competition kills a game, then that\u2019s efficient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have seen some of the reckless amateurism: a bunch of BJA\nminions all sitting at the same table, all rubbernecking at each other\u2019s cards\non insurance decisions (and then using the clich\u00e9 excuses for buying it), all\ncapping their green chip bets with a red chip when it\u2019s unnecessary, etc. But\nthis behavior isn\u2019t because CJ is a bad teacher\u2014it\u2019s because these players are\nrookies!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A 6-year-old who has played the violin for six months sounds terrible, but it\u2019s not because the teacher is bad. It\u2019s because the kid\u2019s a rookie without much experience. If you look at self-taught APs, they\u2019re equally abysmal during their rookie years, and far beyond. I know many \u201cAPs\u201d who\u2019ve been HCing for a decade or more, and they\u2019re terrible! Chinning the rail, the gimmicky drunk act, the 8-hour massage, the knees up on the rail, the wheelchair or slot-machine chair (Wow! Never thought of that! You’re so clever!), buying insurance on the spotter\u2019s trivial bet\u2014I could go on and on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The emergence of the BJA army has killed some games, and will continue to do so, but probably some money will be made while they do it. In the case of card counting, the threat to the game is overblown. Card counting isn\u2019t that easy to kill. Dozens of books have been written about it over the past sixty years, and counting is still alive. And if you\u2019re an AP, facing increased competition, then maybe you should up your game, instead of criticizing CJ. I\u2019ve been watching this mushroom cloud as it creeps towards me, with a new generation of counters looking to evolve beyond counting, and while I don\u2019t personally like it, we\u2019ll be ready to compete. Our crew continues to train. There are too many targets to kill. We can always get a game. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the amount of vitriol directed at Colin Jones online, you\u2019d think the man eats babies. In reality, he\u2019s guilty of a far greater sin\u2014he wrote a card-counting book, The 21st-Century Card Counter. That book is one pillar of a viral card-counting enterprise also supported by the documentary movie Holy Rollers, the website blackjackapprenticeship.com (BJA), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[558],"tags":[560,1332,1371],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121716"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}