Your bankroll protects you from risk and enables better profits.
A successful card counter needs two things: a brain and a bankroll.
By now you’ve covered Steps 1-6. These are the “Brains” part. By learning those skills, you have all the mental tools you need to beat the game. But the reality is that you need money to make money at card counting.
Here’s why.
As a card counter, the reality is that you will experience both wins and losses. There is no 100% guarantee on any hand. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either inexperienced or lying to you – or lying to themselves.
The truth is that card counting doesn’t remove the chance of losses completely. It just shifts the advantage from the casino to the card counter.
Any gambler can get lucky on a given day at the casino. But given enough time, the gambler is guaranteed to lose it all. It’s how the casinos make their money. In the same way, the more hours a card counter plays, the more their wins will outweigh their losses.
To spend more time playing, you need a bankroll. The larger the bankroll, the more you can make. It’s like working your way up from a small investment portfolio to a large one.
The exciting thing is that the more money you have, the more you can expect to make. And you are way better off with a puny bankroll and a perfect game than a massive bankroll but a flawed game.
I started out with $2,000 of savings (though I don’t think I ever ended up using more than the first $500). I wasn’t making a ton of money in the beginning, but I didn’t care. I was doing something exciting. I was beating the greedy casino industry at their own game!
And the more I played, the more my profits grew. Within a year I had grown my bankroll to over $50,000. At this point, I was taking multiple six-figures a year from casinos. And all before I transitioned into co-managing a blackjack team.
Now, not everyone’s card counting career starts out the same way. And if you’re investing $10,000 or more into card counting, let me quickly offer some advice.
Do not mistake money for mastery.
I’ve known people with six-figure bankrolls who were unwilling to commit.
They thought their funds meant that they didn’t need to learn their craft, that they could cover their losses and learn as they played – only to call me a year later and say that they had lost it all.
There is no bankroll large enough to overcome an imperfect game.
Be humble.
Respect the math. Put your money aside and stay out of the casinos while you work towards being a perfect card counter. Then, when you have learned how to play blackjack correctly, you’ll truly be able to put your money to good use.
I’ve had the privilege of watching card counting apprentices grow their humble bankrolls into six-figure bankrolls within a year or two. The one thing they all had in common? They mastered their skills and put in the time at the tables.