[Nick Rivers]

You should look for techniques to give you a bigger edge than just card counting. Hole-carding, steering, sequencing, the turn, and many other techniques are viable ways of legally winning money in the casinos these days. They all take some real effort to learn and a lot of experience to master, but they can all get you an edge much, much larger than counting cards. You can check out "Beyond Counting" (Grosjean), "Casino Game Protection" (Forte), and "Blackjack Ace Prediction" (McDowell) for more information on these techniques.

If you want to count cards, my advice is to go for huge spreads on shoe games. If you play in the major Las Vegas houses on the weekends (Bellagio, MGM, Mandalay Bay, Venetian, Rio, Caesars, Wynn), you can get away with murderous spreads on their shoes, because there is so much other, larger action around that you don't stick out or draw a lot of notice. Try to play quick sessions with hyper-aggressive spreads (1- 2 x 20+) and slip out before you get noticed. The most successful counters I know play like this. They also make heavy use of fake IDs to get players cards, and to get new players cards when those are burned out. Whether you want to get involved in all of that is up to you. Some do, some don't. If you get backed off, stay out of that casino on that shift for a few weeks and just be on the lookout for the boss(es) who gave you heat or backed you off. Don't play in front of them again for a while.

On days you don't feel like playing blackjack, you can go into any of the major poker rooms and find a 10-20 or bigger NL game that's easier to beat than the 3-6 games online.