Why do card counters sleep in their cars? (article)
https://freequentflyerbook.com/blog/2024/1/17/why-do-card-counters-sleep-in-their-cars
SUCCESSFUL CARD COUNTERS AND TRAVEL HACKERS DON’T LAST LONG
What struck me most while learning about the card counting community and the available resources is that the biggest voices for card counting don’t seem to actually do it very much.
The typical progression is that someone discovers card counting, has a rough introductory period full of endearing anecdotes, then goes on a winning streak of 6-48 months (the length is immaterial). After that, they start Youtube channels, record podcasts, write books, and launch websites to sell card counting content and merchandise.
This is the same progression we see in travel hacking. Someone discovers travel hacking, has a few big scores, gets involved in the community, then they launch a blog, a podcast, a Youtube channel, and an affiliate relationship with the credit card companies.
There are two major reasons for this. First, the money is better, certainly on an hourly basis. Most travel hacking techniques require at least some time and attention to implement on an ongoing basis. Even simple online techniques require you to sit down at your computer and actually click the necessary buttons to trigger your payout each time. Writing a blog post full of credit card affiliate links, on the other hand, creates a kind of passive, semi-permanent money-generating asset as new readers discover the post and click through to your payday.
The second reason is that most people, even skilled, experienced people, don’t seem to enjoy it very much. For a lot of card counters and travel hackers, actually putting their knowledge to work seems like an unfortunate chore at worst or a dead-end job at best. “Running a business” packaging bite-sized tips on Tik Tok while burnishing your reputation as a Respected Elder must seem like bliss by comparison.
WHY DO CARD COUNTERS SLEEP IN THEIR CARS?
One of the questions posed in the original “Freakonomics” book was “Why do drug dealers still live with their mothers?” The answer they arrive at is that despite handling enormous amounts of money, most individual drug dealers make poverty wages, so they live with their mothers, like many people who don’t make any money and are on speaking terms with their parents do.
What you realize listening to professional card counters is that they live in a kind of self-inflicted misery, driven in large part by the fear of “giving away their edge.” This often takes the ironic form of ascetisism. A common boast is that during a gambling trip a player will play for 20 hours straight every day. When they travel in teams, advantage players will bunk up in a single hotel room like a high school marching band to save on rooms. One player described sleeping in his (heated and air -conditioned) Tesla over the summer as he drove from casino to casino counting cards.
Importantly, this behavior is not driven by anything inherent to the principles of blackjack advantage play. In blackjack (if the dealer is using a “shoe,” or box of cards that are shuffled only once and then dealt out in order), each shoe is a new randomly ordered sample of cards, so the player’s result from the current shoe cannot have any effect on the probability of winning the next one. That means the player’s advantage, if any, is the same regardless of the number of shoes played. In other words, the player can stop at any time without affecting in any way the expected value of the hours they do play.
And yet, people who claim they have an expected advantage over the house of $100 per hour are willing to work for 20 hours in a row before falling asleep in their cars, all in order to save a few hundred dollars on a hotel room.
If your brain is like mine, a hotel is just an expensive way to get a shower and medium quality breakfast.
Quote: calwatchA veteran travel hacker and otherwise differently employed person (he does DoorDash and Uber Eats on a subsidized scooter, and maximizes the benefits of being low income) decides to try his hand at advantage play and gives his thoughts. The conclusion is that it's more lucrative to sell a system or teach people than it is to actually do it as a source of income.
/blog/2024/1/17/why-do-card-counters-sleep-in-their-cars
SUCCESSFUL CARD COUNTERS AND TRAVEL HACKERS DON’T LAST LONG
What struck me most while learning about the card counting community and the available resources is that the biggest voices for card counting don’t seem to actually do it very much.
The typical progression is that someone discovers card counting, has a rough introductory period full of endearing anecdotes, then goes on a winning streak of 6-48 months (the length is immaterial). After that, they start Youtube channels, record podcasts, write books, and launch websites to sell card counting content and merchandise.
This is the same progression we see in travel hacking. Someone discovers travel hacking, has a few big scores, gets involved in the community, then they launch a blog, a podcast, a Youtube channel, and an affiliate relationship with the credit card companies.
There are two major reasons for this. First, the money is better, certainly on an hourly basis. Most travel hacking techniques require at least some time and attention to implement on an ongoing basis. Even simple online techniques require you to sit down at your computer and actually click the necessary buttons to trigger your payout each time. Writing a blog post full of credit card affiliate links, on the other hand, creates a kind of passive, semi-permanent money-generating asset as new readers discover the post and click through to your payday.
The second reason is that most people, even skilled, experienced people, don’t seem to enjoy it very much. For a lot of card counters and travel hackers, actually putting their knowledge to work seems like an unfortunate chore at worst or a dead-end job at best. “Running a business” packaging bite-sized tips on Tik Tok while burnishing your reputation as a Respected Elder must seem like bliss by comparison.
WHY DO CARD COUNTERS SLEEP IN THEIR CARS?
One of the questions posed in the original “Freakonomics” book was “Why do drug dealers still live with their mothers?” The answer they arrive at is that despite handling enormous amounts of money, most individual drug dealers make poverty wages, so they live with their mothers, like many people who don’t make any money and are on speaking terms with their parents do.
What you realize listening to professional card counters is that they live in a kind of self-inflicted misery, driven in large part by the fear of “giving away their edge.” This often takes the ironic form of ascetisism. A common boast is that during a gambling trip a player will play for 20 hours straight every day. When they travel in teams, advantage players will bunk up in a single hotel room like a high school marching band to save on rooms. One player described sleeping in his (heated and air -conditioned) Tesla over the summer as he drove from casino to casino counting cards.
Importantly, this behavior is not driven by anything inherent to the principles of blackjack advantage play. In blackjack (if the dealer is using a “shoe,” or box of cards that are shuffled only once and then dealt out in order), each shoe is a new randomly ordered sample of cards, so the player’s result from the current shoe cannot have any effect on the probability of winning the next one. That means the player’s advantage, if any, is the same regardless of the number of shoes played. In other words, the player can stop at any time without affecting in any way the expected value of the hours they do play.
And yet, people who claim they have an expected advantage over the house of $100 per hour are willing to work for 20 hours in a row before falling asleep in their cars, all in order to save a few hundred dollars on a hotel room.
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Who was this guy shadowing? Homeless, hobo, drug addicted AP’s?
Also noting that 48 months of being profitable is nothing to sneeze at. That’s 4 years. I’m guessing the person who wrote this article just sucks at being an AP, and is jealous of those who do it successfully.
PS: None of the people I know who do AP successfully live in their cars.
Quote: DieterThere is a small chance that the people drawn to card counting are also uncomfortable in hotel rooms. I know I usually get better quality sleep laid back in a car seat with a rolled up sweatshirt for a pillow than in whatever high thread count faux-luxury weave sheets they want to rent me for the night.
If your brain is like mine, a hotel is just an expensive way to get a shower and medium quality breakfast.
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I think the bloggers line "the biggest VOICES" for card counting..." are the ones who don't do it may be accurate and correct but the blogger doesn't understand AP well
Card counting requires stealth. Any AP that gets one kicked out of a casino will cause the REALLY SUCCESSFUL to keep a secretive low profile.
The ones who may even be good at counting but lousy at camouflage will make a living selling videos(I assume they really are good at physical counting to sell lessons).
Hence the blogger is only SEEING what card counters WANT him and ergo casinos to see.
Any hugely successful card counter IS NOT announcing who they are and what they look like by teaching classes.
The blogger is unable to get the nuance of the situation. I suppose the same is true of security professionals. Those who are successful CIA operatives DON'T allow people to even know they exist. Those who aren't successful CIA agents teach online courses about security and stealth operations.
Quote: darkoz
Any hugely successful card counter IS NOT announcing who they are and what they look like by teaching classes.
The blogger is unable to get the nuance of the situation. I suppose the same is true of security professionals. Those who are successful CIA operatives DON'T allow people to even know they exist. Those who aren't successful CIA agents teach online courses about security and stealth operations.
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Very true.
Being "Ramen Profitable" may not be Huge Success, but it is success. Barely.
The "retirees" seem to be the ones getting paid to teach.
Quote: calwatchA veteran travel hacker and otherwise differently employed person (he does DoorDash and Uber Eats on a subsidized scooter, and maximizes the benefits of being low income) decides to try his hand at advantage play and gives his thoughts. The conclusion is that it's more lucrative to sell a system or teach people than it is to actually do it as a source of income.
https://freequentflyerbook.com/blog/2024/1/17/why-do-card-counters-sleep-in-their-cars
SUCCESSFUL CARD COUNTERS AND TRAVEL HACKERS DON’T LAST LONG
What struck me most while learning about the card counting community and the available resources is that the biggest voices for card counting don’t seem to actually do it very much.
The typical progression is that someone discovers card counting, has a rough introductory period full of endearing anecdotes, then goes on a winning streak of 6-48 months (the length is immaterial). After that, they start Youtube channels, record podcasts, write books, and launch websites to sell card counting content and merchandise.
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What a shoddy, ill researched article. It's obvious that the author has done zero research on card counting. He has not realised that a card counter NEEDS a big bankroll with which to apply his tiny percentage and implies that any hobo can come to do it. And what's that cr4p about "typical progression is that someone discovers card counting, has a rough introductory period full of endearing anecdotes, then goes on a winning streak". Real card counting does not yield results like that, or if they do, the counter recognises it as variance.
At one point, the author switches from 'card counter' to 'Advantage player'. He could just as easily have switched to 'system player'
Quote: DieterThere is a small chance that the people drawn to card counting are also uncomfortable in hotel rooms. I know I usually get better quality sleep laid back in a car seat with a rolled up sweatshirt for a pillow than in whatever high thread count faux-luxury weave sheets they want to rent me for the night.
If your brain is like mine, a hotel is just an expensive way to get a shower and medium quality breakfast.
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My brain is not like yours! Any bed in any hotel room is better than sleeping in any car! (Queue someone showing a picture of some multi-million dollar ‘car’). I don’t think there are many who would turn down the comped room to sleep in their car.
As far as the article, I basically agree with what OnceDear posted. I don’t see Axel or Mental or Wizard or PokerGrinder sleeping in a car on their AP forays. (Maybe PokerGrinder?)
The writer is saying that the set of people who sleep in their cars includes the set of people who count cards at blackjack professionally.
There are billions of people. There is an incredibly wide range of personalities. Within that range there are people who will count cards and sleep in their cars, and do it for the reasons outlined in the article. But is that overlap substantial enough to assert it in an article?
I think not. Because there are billions of people. There is an incredibly wide range of personalities. There are people who have money and live frugally, there are people who have no money and live expansively, there are people who are solitary who count cards, there are people who are gregarious who count cards, there are people who join teams to count cards and people who go it alone to count cards. My dad went to the casino once a week with a goal to bring home $100. More often than not, he did. (My dad was a Gold Life Master contract bridge player. He didn’t sleep in his car; he lived with my wife and I, off Social Security and pension and mandatory withdrawals. In exchange he paid our utility bills.)
Point being, by selectively choosing your data you could write an article that says whatever you want it to. You could write about card counters teaming up and breaking the bank (oh wait, someone did that). You could make a movie about the true story of someone embezzling from work and almost bankrupting a casino playing baccarat, then losing everything… oh, wait. Or about hustling slots for comps… oh, geez, someone did that, too.
Nobody asked me, but: what I think is easy is work to you. What you think is easy is work to me. HOW YOU GO ABOUT IT, and why you do it, depends on who you are, not what it is that you do. If you were the type of person who would sleep in your car while counting/APing, you would still be that type of person otherwise; not meaning that you would sleep in your car, but you might live alone in a small apartment with no pictures on the wall. (You have to move around to count, you have to stay in one place to work at a job.) Had I counted cards successfully, or had I gone into sales like I did, I would pretty much be at the same place in my life no matter what, because this is what is comfortable for me. You choose what you do toward that end, and if living in your car suits you during your pursuit, then that what you do. But to extrapolate it to ALL counters, or even a substantial subset of card counters? That is ridiculous on its face.
How do you get a subsidized scooter?Quote: calwatchA veteran travel hacker and otherwise differently employed person (he does DoorDash and Uber Eats on a subsidized scooter,
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Quote: 100xOddsHow do you get a subsidized scooter?Quote: calwatchA veteran travel hacker and otherwise differently employed person (he does DoorDash and Uber Eats on a subsidized scooter,
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Medical reasons?
Quote: SOOPOOQuote: DieterThere is a small chance that the people drawn to card counting are also uncomfortable in hotel rooms. I know I usually get better quality sleep laid back in a car seat with a rolled up sweatshirt for a pillow than in whatever high thread count faux-luxury weave sheets they want to rent me for the night.
If your brain is like mine, a hotel is just an expensive way to get a shower and medium quality breakfast.
link to original post
My brain is not like yours! Any bed in any hotel room is better than sleeping in any car! (Queue someone showing a picture of some multi-million dollar ‘car’). I don’t think there are many who would turn down the comped room to sleep in their car.
As far as the article, I basically agree with what OnceDear posted. I don’t see Axel or Mental or Wizard or PokerGrinder sleeping in a car on their AP forays. (Maybe PokerGrinder?)
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Does Wizard count cards at Blackjack? Let himself say about this. I need to read more to know other professionals here.
But not everyday :)Quote: darkozPersonally I choose to sleep on the bus!
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Yes, i remember him saying he does and at least once got backed off.Quote: acesideDoes Wizard count cards at Blackjack? Let himself say about this. I need to read more to know other professionals here.
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but allowed to play other games in that casino
Quote: 100xOddsHow do you get a subsidized scooter?Quote: calwatchA veteran travel hacker and otherwise differently employed person (he does DoorDash and Uber Eats on a subsidized scooter,
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https://saverocity.com/independentlyfinanced/free-and-discounted-micromobility-services/
Quote: 100xOddsYes, i remember him saying he does and at least once got backed off.Quote: acesideDoes Wizard count cards at Blackjack? Let himself say about this. I need to read more to know other professionals here.
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but allowed to play other games in that casino
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He counted Pai Gow.
Quote: SOOPOOQuote: DieterThere is a small chance that the people drawn to card counting are also uncomfortable in hotel rooms. I know I usually get better quality sleep laid back in a car seat with a rolled up sweatshirt for a pillow than in whatever high thread count faux-luxury weave sheets they want to rent me for the night.
If your brain is like mine, a hotel is just an expensive way to get a shower and medium quality breakfast.
link to original post
My brain is not like yours! Any bed in any hotel room is better than sleeping in any car! (Queue someone showing a picture of some multi-million dollar ‘car’). I don’t think there are many who would turn down the comped room to sleep in their car.
As far as the article, I basically agree with what OnceDear posted. I don’t see Axel or Mental or Wizard or PokerGrinder sleeping in a car on their AP forays. (Maybe PokerGrinder?)
link to original post
Yeah, I don't know what's wrong with me either.
I can sleep on the floor no problem, but hotel beds... I dunno.
I think the last time I was solo in a hotel, I ended up just laying the recliner all the way back.
It was darned hard to sleep in the hospital bed, too. After a few days, exhaustion kicked in, and I could get an hour of shuteye here and there.
It doesn't bother me; I've got a solution, and it usually works out.
Well said.Quote: MoscaGood grief.
The writer is saying that the set of people who sleep in their cars includes the set of people who count cards at blackjack professionally.
There are billions of people. There is an incredibly wide range of personalities. Within that range there are people who will count cards and sleep in their cars, and do it for the reasons outlined in the article. But is that overlap substantial enough to assert it in an article?
I think not. Because there are billions of people. There is an incredibly wide range of personalities. There are people who have money and live frugally, there are people who have no money and live expansively, there are people who are solitary who count cards, there are people who are gregarious who count cards, there are people who join teams to count cards and people who go it alone to count cards. My dad went to the casino once a week with a goal to bring home $100. More often than not, he did. (My dad was a Gold Life Master contract bridge player. He didn’t sleep in his car; he lived with my wife and I, off Social Security and pension and mandatory withdrawals. In exchange he paid our utility bills.)
Point being, by selectively choosing your data you could write an article that says whatever you want it to. You could write about card counters teaming up and breaking the bank (oh wait, someone did that). You could make a movie about the true story of someone embezzling from work and almost bankrupting a casino playing baccarat, then losing everything… oh, wait. Or about hustling slots for comps… oh, geez, someone did that, too.
Nobody asked me, but: what I think is easy is work to you. What you think is easy is work to me. HOW YOU GO ABOUT IT, and why you do it, depends on who you are, not what it is that you do. If you were the type of person who would sleep in your car while counting/APing, you would still be that type of person otherwise; not meaning that you would sleep in your car, but you might live alone in a small apartment with no pictures on the wall. (You have to move around to count, you have to stay in one place to work at a job.) Had I counted cards successfully, or had I gone into sales like I did, I would pretty much be at the same place in my life no matter what, because this is what is comfortable for me. You choose what you do toward that end, and if living in your car suits you during your pursuit, then that what you do. But to extrapolate it to ALL counters, or even a substantial subset of card counters? That is ridiculous on its face.
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For some reason, people like to pigeonhole Advantage Players.
I have known many different types of people and personalities with all kinds of different backgrounds who are Advantage Players, it's kinda of crazy when I think about it.
I have known Doctors, lawyers, and even a judge who put in many hours of advantage play. I have known underage Advantage Players and 70-year-old grandmothers.
There are bat-S&%t crazy advantage players, and ones that are very meek.
Obviously, Advantage Play is more attractive to certain types of people, and it is male-dominated.
Quote: ChumpChangeMy latest home game play money sessions over the last 3 days went like this. I had a $10K session, lost it, bought in for another $10K, won back the $10K I lost plus another $10K so I'm $10K ahead after 1,200 hands. Next day, I lost $10K twice over 1,200 hands. Third day, I won $100K in about 200 hands. So my bankroll has gone from $180K to $280K, and I might consider $20K buy-ins next time as long as I'm over $200K.
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Off topic !?!
I'd have to go far out of town (3 hour drive) to find a $5,000 table limit so I'd have to check into a hotel. If I space out my visits maybe I can get hotel comps via mailer. Make the first visit near the end of one month, get the mailer the next month or the month after, then return for subsequent trips with my hotel offers at the casino. I have no idea what action would prompt a casino to offer rooms to players. But playing at a $300 minimum level for 4 hours should do something.
A couple years ago I paid for a hotel that started with a 1 for the first time cause it was convenient and only for one night. You can usually get a room in most areas for $70. I've never gotten a room that was dirty or otherwise not acceptable. Obviously paying that for a week or month can add up and not be doable for some people. For one night I find it worth it.
