Can I make money counting cards?

Thanks to @StevenBridges for teaching me. Go check out his channel for REAL card counting in the casino for real money.

This week I learned to count cards. We replicated a real blackjack game to see, if working in a team with Steven Bridges, we could make a profit. I spent 4 days learning to count cards.

[stevenbridges]

Dude I had an absolute blast filming this video with you! You smashed it!

For anyone that wants a bit more info on the specifics:

Learning to count cards takes months or years of training, so the challenge in this video was to see how many corners we could get Mike to cut where he'd still be an asset to a blackjack team, with only a few days training.

So we focused purely on counting, and skipped out basic strategy completely. We simulated a real blackjack game that I've played, that has very favourable rules and a huge range between the table minimum and the maximum. This means that even if Mike is a blackjack player, the amount he'd lose playing would be totally offset by the value he'd bring by counting.

Mike was playing the role of a spotter. When we count as a team though, we won't just have one spotter. We'll have a spotter at each table. This ensures that the Big Player (The one who's betting big) is being regularly signalled in by spotters. The more time the BP is playing the more money we can win.

There's a really nice thing Mike said that I don't think he got on film, and I think it perfectly outlines the difficulty of what he was trying to do. He said that he thought card counting would be a very complex system, that once he understood would be relatively easy to implement, but in reality, it was a very simple system, that is incredibly difficult to implement. I think that's such a good way of putting it.

And for the love of everything good in this world, please don't spend 4 days learning to count cards and then try it at a casino, it will not go well. 😂

[iLeetjeeh]

Mike secretly regretting not filming this in an actual casino and putting everything on 25

[elenas]

“You have a calculator are you counting cards?”
“No I’m looking up 9+7”

[MiLSyeah]

I'm a casino dealer in France. In my country, card counting is virtually impossible as all the shoes have been replaced with machines that continually shuffle the cards. You are right, it is not cheating, and kicking you out is absolutely wrong. If casinos want to keep their edge, they need to invest in electronic shoes. Don't tell people they're cheating when they're not, just fix your broken game.

[seanylewl]

Thank you for finding someone who actually knows what they are talking about! There are so many people out there who claim to be card counters, but don't really understand what it actually means in a practical sense. I was concerned when I saw the shots of him handling big bundles of bills, but was relieved as soon as he spoke and it was clear that he was the real deal. Your simulation was good, and counting was hard - now imagine doing it in a room with flashing lights, loud music, people and staff chatting to you, etc etc. Great video!

[egodreas]

I've been told by a friend who works at a casino in London that restricting card counting is actually of no benefit to the house. There are many more bad card counters that end up losing money than there are good ones winning, so the casinos would actually benefit from encouraging the practice. Abusing card counters the way many casinos do is actually hurting their bottom line. So even though you'd think that their main goal would be making as much money as possible, it's apparently even more important to them to be sadistic assholes.

[jonathanvandagriff]

Steven's channel is one of the greatest on Youtube. His card counting series is a masterpiece

[xxbeatuupzz]

Two things will always stick with me from card counting.

1) the statistics of it. I'm a guy who likes maths and numbers, so seeing that applied to gambling was really interesting to me, and got me hooked instantly.

2) the money you need to guarantee success. Something that wasn't as emphasised in this video compared to others was how much money you needed to guarantee success. The problem with card counting is the statistical anomalies that are guaranteed to happen to someone somewhere. Given Infinite time and money, card counting is guaranteed to produce money at a steady rate per hand played. But money isn't Infinite. So you need to get as close to Infinite as possible by having ridiculously high bankrolls that most people won't ever have in savings in their lifetime. Steven in this video scenario said he was simulating a half a million dollar bankroll. Half a million is more than what some people will earn in their entire lives.

[yaskynemma]

I love how a magician always has to handle chips frenetically when he has them near him. Steven is great

[Too_Merciful]

Perfect timing mike, exactly when I wanted to learn how to count cards

[TheMagicClassroom]

Such a cool collab. We should do one together next! I want to see how many of the skills you've learnt you can combine, like memorising a deck or solving a cube underwater, or saying pi while juggling, while unicycling, etc.

[Pookie]

Watching the MIT Blackjack Team doc I have to realize that the house will always win in the end. The grind you have to put in also seems so crazy and cant even imagine the pressure trying to keep the count with all the background noise of a casino. Good work

[harrylong]

Mike is seriously one of best creators on the platform.

[kewkabe]

I tried pro BJ in the late 90's in Vegas/Tahoe/Primm NV and it was a miserable slog. My expected winnings were $35 an hour but after almost a year my actual came out to about $10. Avoiding heat means enough compromises (limited spreads, lower average bets, staying out of the high roller room so worse rules, etc) that really put a damper on any kind of big money in the long run. And the "business" has only gotten worse since, with continuous shuffle machines, terrible rules, no midshoe deck entry so no old school team play, etc. 12 hours a day of intense concentration in a room full of distractions, noise and (back then) smoke just wasn't worth it for $10 an hour, even then.

[jessec.]

Tip for anybody learning (i learned the basics a decade back but never did much) carry a deck around all day and as fast as you can just flip cards and count. Then once you got that do it while going about your day (like sitting at a cafeteria table having a conversation) Or have somebody else flip and call out the cards while trying to play a video game and try to keep count. Makes the process much more natural. First and foremost you gotta learn blackjack. Once you can count while half asleep and drunk start doing it at games, the faster the dealer the better, have distractions, practice and keep track of what you would be making if it were a real game (like they did). Then take it to a real casino.

[WaffleSnow_]

I remember having a ‘is it cheating’ convo with some friends watching football a while back, where during a penalty shootout, the goalkeeper (both sides keepers did this), have a list of where each opposition player is most likely to place the ball, noted down on their water bottles, that’s not cheating, it’s using stats. Are they always right, well no of course not, but it can give them an advantage, 4 times to the right, once to the left, none down the middle... they’re likely to go right.

It’s the same as what’s being said here about card counting or poker stats etc. It’s not cheating, it’s finding an advantage and using it

[nicjansen]

When it gets a bit warmer, I'm interested to see how fast you could learn to sail a 1-man boat inshore. Some people can get to where they want to go in a day or two, but others take a lot longer, so I'm interested in your strategies

Getting into sailing is probably about as difficult as getting into counting cards: you need to do a few things at once. However, sailing fast takes years

[timtse]

I learned to count recently and this is the best explanation I’ve heard so far!

[AcidGamesYT]

Crazy to see steven in this i used to watch his channel all the time for his magic tricks and such and he was one of my fav's i think it would be fun to learn card counting to mess with friends during card nights lol.

[cammomate]

Discovered Steven's channel a few weeks ago and was stoked when I found out you two were doing a colab. Keep up the good work guys!!