One of the big reasons a lot of good card counters don't keep playing Blackjack is that
counting cards is not a "get rich quick" scheme. The reality of Blackjack is that it
takes quite a while to turn your 1 - 2% advantage into a bankroll multiplier. The
excitement of first understanding that you CAN have an edge by counting will
many times settle into a much more sober understanding of this simple truth.
People will try to use the initial excitement of counting to sell you things. They
use the same hype to try and sell systems that DON'T work.
Let's do a little math to understand how our advantage works. At times we play at a disadvantage, others an advantage that can be much higher than 2%, but it all averages down to around 1 1/2% for a good counter using the Illustrious 18. If you bet your total bankroll of $10,000 over one session you can expect to win about $150. Let's say it takes you all day a few hours at a time. It will take you 67 straight days to double your bankroll if you don't add your winnings to the original bankroll. And that is if all goes well. Losing streaks, bad nerves, mistakes, being messed with by the casinos, there are many problems in this field. You could also have a great run and do it in less than a month. Over the long run, things will settle towards your 1 - 2% advantage. It's not easy!
Never satisfied with making a few dollars when I know I should be making more
(sounds like my day job!), I wanted to think of ways to maximize these winnings into
much more. First off, any winnings are AFTER TAX money since they would not be
claimed as income. For instance, if I won $5,000, it would have took me an income
of about $7,700 at a 35% tax bracket to "take home" the $5,000. This gives us a
better felling about the value of table winnings, but how can we multiply the actual
5K?
The quickest way to do it is put it into a tax shelter. By taking this $5,000 and putting it into an RRSP, you will get back money from your income tax return. Using the 35% income tax rate, you will get back $1,750 of the deducted income from your pay cheques! You just turned your 5K into $6,750. The original 5K is locked into your bankroll, and the $1,750 can remain available for table play. If you started with 10K, you now have $16,750, $5,000 of which is now protected, and earning you income that will not be taxed either. Your entire bankroll should stay in the bank anyway, earning you money while you play against casino credit.
Get in the habit of putting any of your winnings (or extra income) into tax shelters to leverage your 1 - 2% advantage into potentially much more.
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