Blackjack Team

Trying to manage and coordinate a large team would be difficult. Generally, people have different levels of availability for AP activity.

Here is a lesson from the espionage and terrorism business: In terrorism and espionage, people tend to organize into cells of 5 people or less - to maintain secrecy and to reduce the chances of miscommunications and personality conflicts. Only one person in the cell knows who they report to.

A team is more attractive when you want to work a game where multiple counts (of different things) would increase EV or where information in your hands needs to be shared.

Let me just share some personal thoughts on this team play concept. It is not a criticism of anyone's plan, nor meant as discouragemnet.

Team play is nothing new. Someone mentioned Kenny Uston's team and that was 40 years ago. There have been MIT teams since the 60's. In my opinion the call in approach has been over utilized by now. Casinos and personnel are pretty good at spotting the signs. Now, the OP wasn't really talking about the "call in" approach. He was talking more the EMFH team style and I do think their is some benefit to this, especially for a small number of players with smaller BR's. This allows them to play higher stakes.

Any talk of a large team is a disaster waiting to happen. (again, only my opinion). A larger team, 10, 15, 20 or more players requires a fulltime manager, doing NOTHING but managing. Just the same as when a business gets bigger they need fulltime managers, HR reps, the whole works. And the issue is ALWAYS trust.

Let's talk money and a big team. Say you get 20 guys putting in 50k BR for a million dollar BR. These 20 guys expect to double or triple (or more) their investment. That means the team has to win several million for a successful outcome....not an easy task. I remember reading about one team (I think it was one of the versions of MIT), playing large stakes and immediately went in the hole to the tune of hundreds of thousands. Spent significant time trying to dig out and I don't know, did they get back to even before breaking the bank? Maybe made a small profit? Some of you must remember the story.

And like I said, casinos are much better at identifying that kind of team, playing together, staying in the same suite like in the movies. So you play for months, dig out of a deep hole and have burned out your name (names can be replaced) and face (faces can't).


I much prefer a very small EMFH team, among a few people you REALLY know and trust. This way you aren't playing together, making it harder to associate everyone with each other and you don't have to score multi-millions to get the desired return.

And let's face it, how much BR do you need? You get many members contributing and build a million dollar BR as I described before, what stakes are you playing? Stakes that ARE going to be noticed and draw attention. In my opinion the upper end of spread or max bet is more practically going to be determined by casino thresholds of tolerance than anything else. One you get above max bets of $1000 or even $500 for my style, there is no flying under the radar. It's all out in the open. You go higher, $5000 and there is no rat-holing, no hiding anything. The casino knows every minute detail of your play.

So the bottom line, I like an EMFH team that allows a very few players to combine small BR that allows them to bump up in stakes, and play a level they otherwise wouldn't be able to. Everything else is overkill, complicates things and most importantly has been OVER-done.

Quote: kewlj

Let me just share some personal thoughts on this team play concept. It is not a criticism of anyone's plan, nor meant as discouragemnet.

Team play is nothing new. Someone mentioned Kenny Uston's team and that was 40 years ago. There have been MIT teams since the 60's. In my opinion the call in approach has been over utilized by now. Casinos and personnel are pretty good at spotting the signs. Now, the OP wasn't really talking about the "call in" approach. He was talking more the EMFH team style and I do think their is some benefit to this, especially for a small number of players with smaller BR's. This allows them to play higher stakes.

Any talk of a large team is a disaster waiting to happen. (again, only my opinion). A larger team, 10, 15, 20 or more players requires a fulltime manager, doing NOTHING but managing. Just the same as when a business gets bigger they need fulltime managers, HR reps, the whole works. And the issue is ALWAYS trust.

Let's talk money and a big team. Say you get 20 guys putting in 50k BR for a million dollar BR. These 20 guys expect to double or triple (or more) their investment. That means the team has to win several million for a successful outcome....not an easy task. I remember reading about one team (I think it was one of the versions of MIT), playing large stakes and immediately went in the hole to the tune of hundreds of thousands. Spent significant time trying to dig out and I don't know, did they get back to even before breaking the bank? Maybe made a small profit? Some of you must remember the story.

And like I said, casinos are much better at identifying that kind of team, playing together, staying in the same suite like in the movies. So you play for months, dig out of a deep hole and have burned out your name (names can be replaced) and face (faces can't).


I much prefer a very small EMFH team, among a few people you REALLY know and trust. This way you aren't playing together, making it harder to associate everyone with each other and you don't have to score multi-millions to get the desired return.

And let's face it, how much BR do you need? You get many members contributing and build a million dollar BR as I described before, what stakes are you playing? Stakes that ARE going to be noticed and draw attention. In my opinion the upper end of spread or max bet is more practically going to be determined by casino thresholds of tolerance than anything else. One you get above max bets of $1000 or even $500 for my style, there is no flying under the radar. It's all out in the open. You go higher, $5000 and there is no rat-holing, no hiding anything. The casino knows every minute detail of your play.

So the bottom line, I like an EMFH team that allows a very few players to combine small BR that allows them to bump up in stakes, and play a level they otherwise wouldn't be able to. Everything else is overkill, complicates things and most importantly has been OVER-done.

I agree with everything you said 100% Kewlj. It seems to me the most practical approach would be along the lines of what I mentioned earlier in this thread, creating a small team of 4 or 5 players. Each member playing with their own separate money, just perhaps doing some traveling together and sharing experiences with eachother and building relationships. That could eventually lead to players choosing to play on a bankroll together, but either way it would certainly make being a full-time or even part-time AP a much more enjoyable experience.

When I was serious about starting a team and ran all sorts of models, I decided seven was the ideal number. Tried to make eight work, but seven fit the bill. This was all theoretical, just me working various scenarios out on yellow note pads. Start with three and expand to seven. I had a few candidates but it never got beyond the initial planning steps.
My conclusion was if you can put together a few people and a bankroll, there are much better ways to beat the house.

Quote: theOmega623

It seems to me the most practical approach would be along the lines of what I mentioned earlier in this thread, creating a small team of 4 or 5 players. Each member playing with their own separate money, just perhaps doing some traveling together and sharing experiences with eachother and building relationships. That could eventually lead to players choosing to play on a bankroll together, but either way it would certainly make being a full-time or even part-time AP a much more enjoyable experience.

THIS!!!

What you describe does not depend on trust! Kind of like if you want to go fishing... sharing a boat will save on expenses.... but you can each keep whatever you individually catch.

i have a few friends i would 100% trust would not try to cheat me, but I would NOT 100% trust them to be as diligent as myself with respect to proper play, correct betting levels, count, etc...

A team of 20 will have at least three people stealing.

Quote: lilredrooster

the really ironic thing is that 𝑴𝒊𝒍𝒍𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑫𝒐𝒍𝒍𝒂𝒓 𝑩𝒍𝒂𝒄𝒌𝒋𝒂𝒄𝒌 was published in 1982 and authored by Ken Uston<snip>

lilredrooster,

Way off topic, so let me apologize in advance.

I don't know what it is about many of your posts, but my Fire tablet seems to have trouble with certain portions of your posts. For example, in the above-quoted post, the words between "... thing is that ..." and " ... was published... " are rendered on my Fire as a series of x-ed out boxes.

Did you use a strange font or something? I ask because many of your posts contain such lacunae.

Also, do any other readers have a similar problem?

Dog Hand

I've run across this occasionally on my fire tablets. No idea what causes it. It generally fixes itself over time.

Yes he did use a different font that may not be supported on your kindle. I remember in Windows 98 I had to download fonts and they used up a lot of my 384 MB of RAM.
I'm on a couple 8GB RAM computers and had to up the SWAP file to 24,000 MB - 32,000 MB.

Quote: ChumpChange

Yes he did use a different font that may not be supported on your kindle. I remember in Windows 98 I had to download fonts and they used up a lot of my 384 MB of RAM.
I'm on a couple 8GB RAM computers and had to up the SWAP file to 24,000 MB - 32,000 MB.

I also remember having to turn the rabbit ears... just so... to get a clear image on one of my earlier systems as well. I think it was my Philco 54.