In general you shouldn’t count cards. Nothing very meaningful will come of it. If you want to try learning, Snyder’s board is recommended; any post by Arnold Snyder himself you can trust. Wong also has good info on some basic points. With both of their message boards, the quality of posts and of posters varies enormously. There are people who may speak with great intelligence and use lots of math in their posts, but who haven’t played in a serious way, or who have only ever lost money. Most of the content on message boards is worth ignoring. Some of it will mislead you.

The matter of heat is important. Serious players and reputable authors disagree about how heat-averse you should be. It is true that active card counters receiving heat in casinos will lose playing options over time, and eventually find themselves listed in books or databases accessible by many casinos where they haven’t even set foot. Therefore—goes the argument—you must avoid heat at all costs.

This is wrong, in my opinion. The present value of your future clean face is hard to analyse. Most people reading these words will never do anything with card counting at all—their cleanliness, even now, is worthless. Immediate EV, on the other hand, has a value you can quantify. I’m pro-heat, and with a few exceptions, I’m immediately skeptical of the accomplishments of any card counter not listed in Griffin. Fewer than one percent of all the counters I’ve met were both clean and successful. Most winning players are extemely hot, but find a way to play anyhow. Bear in mind that there are serious, thoughtful people who disagree vehemently with this position. It’s also possible that discrete geniuses are out there doing things I can’t imagine, heat-free, and turning into millionaires.

Because most card counters are amateurs looking for a thrill, and because getting turfed from some shithole is about the cheapest thrill that you can find in a casino, I recommend people learn counting by seeing how fast they can get heated up. Heat, unlike winnings which can come about randomly due to variance, is a meaningful sign that you’ve done something right. If you get some, send me a story about it.