Colin Jones (S2 E1): Pushback – Gambling With An Edge

If you have ever kicked the top rated off an ant mound to cause and reveal an alarming frenzy of exercise that is in the long run meaningless, then you know what it is like to make an online post defending Colin Jones. The lurkers come out in entire hater mode, trying to sting and bite every thing in sight. A meta-assessment of the many web sites now places Colin Jones in a statistical tie with Jake “The Snake” Roberts, measured in conditions of Villain Electric power Rating. FiveThirtyEight tasks CJ’s VPR to surpass Marlo Stanfield by the end of 2021.

There genuinely weren’t any new criticisms. There are however a few key groups: CJ markets easy dollars from counting like a snake-oil salesman I figured out on my individual CJ is killing the video games.

What about this easy income? Is CJ an optimist?—sure. Is he favorably biased because of to his have practical experience, which might have been blessed (I signify “above EV”)?—perhaps. But here’s a direct quotation from his reserve, The 21^st-Century Card Counter (p. 74): “It could possibly be simpler to come to be a card counter than a marine biologist, but it is no wander in the park.  If you think it is, it is the very first sign you possibly won’t make it. There is certainly no disgrace in getting that you really don’t have what it can take to are living the everyday living of a card counter.” Hallelujah! I am healed!

Then, if you think he’s likely for the upsell to the bootcamp, there’s this (p. 77): “Am I saying you have to show up at a Blackjack Bootcamp to make it as a card counter?  No.  But if you want to be profitable, you do need to invest the time, vitality, and possibly even some money in developing your abilities and awareness foundation to make confident you’re enjoying like a professional and not just gambling with your bankroll.”

Where’s the upsell? Exactly where are the untrue guarantees? Wherever is the bait-and-change? Wherever is the mail fraud? Wherever is the Ponzi scheme? Inform me about Burisma! I’m not viewing it.

Then there’s the “I-learned-on-my-own” university of criticism. And your position is? And you are below about … ? What does that have to do with CJ’s training empire? The BJA empire consists of a e book (superior way to master), computer software (really superior way to master), on the net videos (uncomplicated way to learn), a film (great way to get encouraged), and bootcamps (a further very very good way to understand and get impressed).

How is the I-found-X-on-my-have assertion even pertinent if we’re speaking about the merits of CJ’s enterprise? It is not. It’s just a boast, and an vacant a person at that. Even if a male discovered HC on his very own, or practiced counting on his very own, so what? Did he compute BS on his own, way too? I’ve read the identical boasts from readers of Exhibit CAA, from “I didn’t understand just about anything from it” to “I could have composed that” to the biggest boast of all time (the “G-BOAT”): “James may perhaps have wrote The Ebook, but I am The Ebook.” On that past just one, envision it with a Middle Jap accent dripping with biblical melodrama, like when an individual declares the founding of a caliphate, with lots of references to swords, blood, and infidels. Or when Qaddafi’s son boasts about defending the regime “to the last man, the past female, the very last bullet.” Quick there, significant boy.

Discovering on one’s very own may possibly be gratifying to some, or extraordinary to other folks, but it’s commonly very inefficient. Obtaining the steerage of a proficient mentor is vastly much more productive. Even if you could invent the wheel, why would you want to? You can purchase a person for a incredibly fair selling price. I discovered BS for a pretty affordable value (pre-Net) from the guide Profitable On line casino Blackjack for the Non-Counter, by Avery Cardoza, and I under no circumstances would have used decades managing figures if I could have just bought a ebook of charts for $250, or $5000.

A twist on the I-uncovered-on-my-have was I-learned-by-networking-on-my-very own. The main argument there is that personal networking keeps stuff proprietary. Truthful plenty of, but CJ just isn’t providing out any proprietary facts. His college students might speak way too considerably and absence discretion, but that is truly frequent amongst all rookies, no matter if they be BJA rookies or not. So the actual “problem” with BJA, so significantly as I can see, is not any flaw in the pedagogical system, or even the quality of the learners, but the sheer number of them. The challenge is that CJ is as well productive! I’m reminded of the seniors on the Notre Dame soccer staff who complained that Rudy’s get the job done hard work was making them glance undesirable.

Some posts reported that CJ is performing some thing that no a single has finished. GWAE co-host Richard Munchkin properly pointed out that card-counting educational institutions or educating plans have been finished. They just weren’t as profitable as BJA. Johnny Chang, Mike Aponte, and Semyon Dukach have all tried to prepare persons or distribute academic materials. They just didn’t have CJ’s accomplishment at scaling. Revisionist record would say Aponte was seeking to recruit BPs (that is truly just the evolution of the business enterprise prepare right after scaling card-counting instruction to the masses proved way too tough), and that Dukach “moved on” (that can be the end result of achievement, but is often the outcome of failure). All those men all experienced the MIT legend to create on, with a Hollywood A-Lister (Kevin Spacey!) cast as Johnny Chang, and now it appears to be like CJ’s BJA is the past school standing. CJ may be the real grand grasp of Wing Chun.

BJA’s achievements is creating a swell on the predator aspect of the predator-prey cycle, but that is not sustainable. If the wave of counters definitely does get rid of game titles, then the predators will get started to starve or move on to new foodstuff provides.

Are the game titles acquiring killed by CJ and BJA? That is the significant query, but the improper a person. The critical issue is: Are online games obtaining squandered?  Having individually witnessed a video game getting squandered by amateurish execution (multiple counters on the exact table, yucking it up in front of the On line casino Manager), I’m cozy declaring that some video games will be wasted. But I do not imagine that the total sum of cash sucked out of casinos will be lessened, which is what some have claimed. On the net, it’s really hard to get through the bitter-grapes whining, and the fox-and-grapes dismissals of CJ’s company.

I even saw the assert that the dimensions of the card-counting pie will be exponentially reduced as the variety of counters increases. There is no theoretical foundation for that assert. What if casinos just again off players they capture, and the online games themselves stay mainly unaffected? It is an empirical problem how a great deal the pie is impacted, but I see no indicator that there is any exponential minimize. That’s just a bunch of pseudo-mathematical gobbledygook. (Pro Idea for on-line trolls: Attempt to insert “logarithmic” or “ergodic” or “heteroskedastic” into your upcoming baseless assert. Those are definitely good buzzwords. And you simply cannot go wrong with “machine learning”!)

My working experience with BC video games has been that most or at the very least several targets die a purely natural loss of life. The game finishes owing to some exogenous cause that has very little to do with the AP’s play (for occasion, a pandemic). A further typical end result is that the AP gets backed off, but the goal video games remain out there. And there are a lot of, several game titles out there—right now as you examine this—that aren’t having performed to their fullest, if at all. In the final several a long time, I’ve found 4 distinctive video games that were drastically constructive with fundamental tactic. How several APs did we operate into on those people four games put together? One particular. And he was below h2o on the activity.

Some counters are blaming CJ for the proliferation of CSMs, but that is a trend that has been occurring for many years in any case. The CSM is an effective device. If all the Mericans visited casinos abroad, they’d see that CSMs have been the norm during Europe and Asia, because in advance of CJ ever discovered the Glorious True 1. If you know a bunch of BC procedures, you’ve recognized that casinos have adopted many new strategies and gadgets in new years that make AP tougher, but card counters recognize only what pertains to them, and feel that each individual on line casino alter is due to them—or Colin Jones.