Well my blackjack career has officially come to a close, given my backing off at Barona. I was expecting this at some point. I have always played blackjack casually in the past, and that's how I started off at Barona. But after a little bit, I got pretty serious at it, and started really studying the game. I knew that blackjack could be beaten mathematically, and that it was only a matter of time, discipline, and having a large enough bankroll to overcome variance, as well as the stomach to be able to book large losses along with large wins.
There are other casinos in the area, that also have beatable blackjack games, but I am not interested in playing anymore. I think I was doing it more for the challenge to see if I could beat the casino at its own game, and I did it. I made a 6 figure score, over the course of 600+ hours in the span of one calendar year. Plus all of the other casinos in the area are a fairly long commute for me, and I am not interested in spending an extra 90 minutes on the road just to play.
I have gotten back out and started playing poker again. I was out on vacation from my real job since April 5th. I took the family to Disneyland for little less than a week. My girls loved it. I got out one night to play at Commerce casino. My streak continues there. Have yet to book a win at Commerce, or at least I can't seem to remember ever booking a win there. Excluding my Commerce excursion, at my home base of Oceans-11, I have won a modest $1,200 in about 50 hours of play this month. So nothing great, but I will admit that the swings are tremendously less than they were at blackjack, and I don't think I will ever complain about the variance of limit holdem anymore, after having played blackjack for as long as I did.
I will stay play blackjack whenever I get out to Vegas. But I don't think I can play it casually anymore, with my new found blackjack knowledge, but I certainly don't want to wear out my welcome there, so I will tone it way back, since I like going to Vegas and having the casinos pay for everything, and as long as I can come away break even or slightly positive, I will be happy. Looking to book a trip to Vegas this summer, sometime around the 4th of July holiday, which happens to coincide with the start of the main event. And no I won't be playing the main event this year. But possibly in about 3 years or so, as a 40 year old birthday gift to myself.
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What's this blog about?
This blog is intended mostly for me. I plan on using it as an on-line journal to muse and post and pretty much put up whatever I feel like ranting and raving about. It will probably have a lot of poker content, as I like to think and play a lot of poker, but I will likely post on other topics as I see fit.
2 comments:
If you don't want to share, I completely understand. But if you're feeling generous, what introductory material would you recommend for a mathematically-inclined blackjack noob looking to learn how to gain an edge?
First find good games that have favorable rules. Best rules to look for are obviously 3:2 on blackjack, stay on soft 17, surrender, double any 2, double after split, resplit aces in approximately that order. Learn and play perfect basic strategy for the game type that you are playing. Perfect basic strategy is different for say like a double deck game, hit soft 17, with surrender, DAS, RSA, versus 6 decks stay on soft 17, no surrender. Know how the rule variations affect you, and have basic strategy down pat for the games that you play. After you have this perfected then you can start counting.
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