So, the casinos didn’t know what a card counter looked like, even though we’re sitting there being as obvious as possible. So, we were able to play thousands and thousands of hours and get really good at it. Most people, when they get into card counting, travel to Vegas a few times a year and they just don’t have the opportunity to practise like we did. It would be like someone playing a low limit game, playing thousands of hands, and getting really good at poker. So, we got really good at blackjack but we just got tired of playing all the time. Some friends from our churches started asking us if we could teach them to play and the light bulb went on, that we didn’t have to be the ones going into the casinos everyday. You know, we could actually be the people running the business and that sounded like a great new venture. We almost fell into it by accident. I was a substitute teacher making $90 or $100 a day but I was only getting called in a couple times a week. I didn’t want to go to work in restaurants so I thought that I could supplement my substitute teaching, you know maybe make $100 a day. Within a few months, I wasn’t answering the phone when the school called because we were generating several hundred dollars a day. Within six months we were generating a couple hundred dollars an hour. It ended up being something much larger than we ever imagined it to be.

Q: I read somewhere that this operation got huge. You guys took millions off casinos worldwide in the span of four years?

As a passing comment fellow camp volunteer, Colin Jones, Crawford shared his intentions to try beating the local Seattle casinos at blackjack. Jones had just graduated college with a BA in Mathematics, so the idea of using math to beat casinos at. As a passing comment fellow camp volunteer, Colin Jones, Crawford shared his intentions to try beating the local Seattle casinos at blackjack. Jones had just graduated college with a BA in Mathematics, so the idea of using math to beat casinos at blackjack sounded too fascinating to pass up. Though they both spent the next year training.

CJ: Yes, when you add in the other different teams. Ours was the ‘Church’ team, that was the name given to us by a friend. He said, ‘What is this the friggin’ church team?’ Everybody was joining from our churches, but yes, all together with the other teams, about $4 million dollars.

Q: Did you get to the point where you were wearing disguises?

CJ: No, not really. You can see in the documentary (Holy Rollers) us dressing up but that was really just training. We would train all of our players, an in-casino ‘test out,’ every three to six months to make sure everybody’s play was good. Our goal was to look so different that the players on our own team wouldn’t recognize us. We were doing that more to make us laugh than anything else.

Q: Is it tough to deal with casino security, the eye in the sky?

CJ: That part is always tough. You know, you have to find new places to play. We had members on our team that were experts in finding these places that were in the middle of nowhere. We would take the risk of flying into a state, then driving three hours to one casino, which might be an absolute bust or we might end staying there five days in a row, playing 12 hours a day, and it’s totally worth it. Other players go to the hot spots like Vegas and every trip it gets tougher and tougher, year after year. You just have to deal with it.

Q: Christian card counters? How do faith and gambling relate?

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CJ: I don’t think too many of us thought the ends justify the means. You know, we’re taking money out of casinos so it’s 'okay.' We didn’t think about it that way. The first thing is you have to define gambling. I think most people have a problem with gambling because they think it’s a game of chance, the odds are stacked against you, it’s just foolish, it’s addictive, things like that, but when you’e counting cards you know exactly what your edge is. I don’t know a professional card counter, I mean sure there are amateurs who gamble, but I mean someone who does it for a job doesn't gamble, it’s just so calculated. It takes all the thrill out of it. Gambler’s get a high off both winning and losing. Card counters are only a little frustrated when they lose and not that excited when they win because they expect to win. So, it didn’t feel like gambling to us. It just felt like any other job, that’s how we treated it.

Q: In variably, when you’re at a party and the topic of blackjack comes up and someone claims to be a card counter. How tough is it to be successful at keeping a count?

CJ: The easy question to ask someone if they say they’re a card counter is, ‘What do you do with a soft 18?’ The foundation of card counting is basic strategy. Everyone says they know basic strategy but few of them really do. So, the easy to way to find out if someone knows what they’re talking about. How hard is it? At least a few hundred hours of training. It sounds like a lot but it’s not. It’s the same for poker. If someone says, ‘I play poker every Saturday night at the casino. I’m a professional.’ No you’re not. It’s going to take you hundreds of hours of training, both understanding the odds, pot odds, what hands you’re going to play and not play, and also actually playing in a live casino to get that experience.

Q: What do you do on a soft 18?

CJ: You double two, three, six, you stay against 7 and 8 and you hit against nine, ten or Ace.

Q: You don’t see too many one deck shoes at the blackjack table anymore. How do eight and 10 deck shoes affect card counting?

CJ: Well, if every thing else is the same, the fewer the decks the better but what the casinos generally do is make the rules worse in single or double deck games. We do what’s called a ‘true’ count. What you do is divide your running count by how many decks remain to be dealt and that gives you the count per deck. That’s the way our team, the MIT team, and all the major teams, have been able to exploit the six and eight deck games as well.

Q: What about cost. If you want to be a professional card counter what’s it going to cost you?

CJ: I tell people there are two things you need, your brain and your bankroll. A lot of people just want to know about the what bankroll they’ll need but, honestly, you could have a million dollar bankroll and if you don’t play perfect you’re just going to slowly lose it all. If you are perfect, to really start to generate some money, $10,000 is a good bankroll to begin with. If you want to be pro, I think building it up to fifty-grand would be better. The awesome thing about card counting is it’s so scaleable. I started with $2,000 and within a year built it up to $50,000. My wife quit her job and we have lived off it ever since. I haven’t had a job since. So, it’s nice that it’s scaleable if you can continue to reinvest your money into your bankroll.

Q: Another good thing is you can pick and choose where and when you play?

CJ: That’s the nice thing about it. I don’t want to paint it as easy, there are challenges, you see that in the documentary. There’s travel and the losing streaks are brutal. I’m sure poker players can relate. But, once we got a taste of being free from the nine-to-five we were addicted. We couldn’t go back.

Q: Did you like the movie ’21?’ And, have you ever said, ‘Winner, winner, chicken dinner,’ at the table?

CJ: I’ve probably said it tongue in cheek a few times since the movie came out but that movie was terrible. We took our entire team to see it on opening night and it was painful and hard to make it throuhgt the whole movie. We took notes and actually have a youtube video, we’ve got several million hits on it now, called, ‘The Top Ten Mistakes in 21, the Movie!’ You know, getting pistol whipped in a back room, that’s never happened to me. The guy loses his cool and that’s the only time they lose? I’m sure a poker player can relate. They don’t win every night. It’s not like you lose you’re cool this one time and that’s why you lose. Some nights the cards aren’t falling and you suck it up. You win 60% of the time and you lose 40% of the time. That you have to have this photographic memory, or be brilliant to do it, is another misnomer. We've had electricians and housewives and we were able to train them to count cards. So yes, many of those things were painful to watch.

Colin Jones Thank-you!

Jul 24, 2014

Jones and Crawford have one of the best blackjack stories ever told. After five years of running a million-dollar blackjack team according to Christian principles, they’ve turned to teaching the game full-time.

Blackjack is the world’s most popular casino game for several reasons. Basic strategy is relatively simple, meaning that someone can pick it up and start playing without tons of practice. It’s also a great social game, and is offered at land-based and online casinos worldwide at different betting minimums.

But the best thing about blackjack is almost what makes playing it difficult. Using smart strategies like advantage play and card counting allows the player to gain a house edge over the casino, thus consistently winning money over time. Any professional blackjack player sticks closely to these strategies.

However, they aren’t easy to perfect. Mastering advantage play or card counting systems requires endless time and dedication. Once a player becomes good enough to take their game to a casino, they then have to contend with intimidating pit bosses, endless distractions and the stress of playing every hand perfectly throughout an entire evening.

Colin Jones and Ben Crawford to the rescue

Given the complexity of advanced strategy and card counting systems, there is a large market for expert advice and training tools. In the internet age we are drowning with blackjack information and analysis. While that should be a good thing, it’s difficult to dig through all of the useless crap in order to find something that is actually helpful.

That’s where Colin Jones and Ben Crawford of Blackjackapprenticeship can help. From 2006 to 2011 the dynamic duo ran one of the most successful professional blackjack teams in the US, taking close to $4 million off of casinos in the US.

They called themselves Advantage Play LLC, but are better known by the nickname of “Holy Rollers,” the title of a documentary made about them in 2011. While their blackjack games were impeccable, what made them famous was that they applied Christian principles to blackjack.

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Jones, Crawford and most of the team members were devout Christians who viewed gambling and the casino industry negatively but saw card counting as something completely different, at least “morally neutral.” Gambling means relying on luck in seeking a quick, easy payday; card counting means training yourself to gain an inherent advantage over the casino. In effect, counting is genuine labor whereas gambling isn’t.

The team was disbanded in 2011, but Jones and Crawford retained their passion for blackjack. These days the two run a Blackjackapprenticeship, a training site which offers both free and paid services, including tips and advice, a social community where players can share insights and experiences, and useful training programs backed by top-notch software.

The interview

Given the impressive success of Blackjackapprenticeship we were delighted when Jones contacted us to express interest in doing an interview. The two of us sat down and he shared thoughts and experiences on a variety of topics concerning his inspiration to become a pro blackjack player, the most memorable experiences he had playing, how faith and blackjack came together in his life, and the advice which he would give to aspiring card counters.

Here are some memorable sound bites from the interview:

Me: How do family members and other members of your church community feel about your involvement with blackjack and card counting?

Jones: My family initially freaked out. It was pretty brutal. But as I continued to engage in the conversation and they saw that I hadn’t gotten into anything that was hurting myself or my family, they came around. As far as church community, it’s a pretty wide range of responses. Some people are really uncomfortable with it, but most people see card counting as morally neutral.

Colin Jones Nfl

Me: How do things like gambling and card counting relate to Christian ideology?

Jones: My opinion is that gambling is an attempt to shortcut creating value (what we’d call “doing good work”). And it doesn’t work, is unsustainable, and a poor use of time or money. Card counting, on the other hand, is sustainable, does work, and takes money out of casinos. It’s debatable how “noble” that is, but we felt a sense of reward to take nearly $4M out of casinos.

Me: Can you share a story about a memorable experience getting the brush-off at a casino?

Jones: I had a casino manager tell me I needed to follow him into a backroom (which I politely turned down), then tell me I needed to give them their money back, (which I politely turned down), then tell me he needed me to sign papers (which I politely turned down). He had no leverage because I have rights as a citizen, I hadn’t done anything unlawful, and I stayed in public view of other patrons, so he couldn’t “strong-arm” me. He eventually realized he had no leverage so he had me cash out and leave.

Series Synopsis

Using Jones’ responses to our questions we’ve put together a small series on topics related to the Holy Rollers, Christianity and card counting, and what Blackjackapprentice brings to the blackjack training industry. We hope you find the articles both helpful and entertaining, and remember that special thanks goes to Colin Jones for contributing:

Colin Jones, Ben Crawford and the Holy Rollers, the Most Unforgettable Card Counting Team in Blackjack History

Card counting teams have come and gone since Al Francesco and Ken Uston pioneered the concept during the 1970s. The MIT card counting team is the best known, chronicled by best sellers and Hollywood blockbusters.

But Advantage Play LLC, better known as the “Holy Rollers,” has a better story than any of the others. For five years these blackjack wizards won millions of dollars applying a Christian, faith-based approach to card counting.

Blackjackapprenticeship and the Christian Approach to How to Become an Expert at Card Counting

There are too many blackjack forums and training sites to count, most of which aren’t worth the time of day. But after disbanding Advantage Play LLC Jones and Crawford founded Blackjackapprenticeship, a state-of-the-art training program which also incorporates their trademark Christian values.

I asked Jones what makes his site different; why someone should go to them over the too-many-to-count alternatives available. His answers were clear, confident and convincing.

Simple Tips for Perfecting the Art of Professional Card Counting from Blackjack Expert Colin Jones

Colin Jones first learned the art of blackjack in 2003. Since then he has spent six years as a professional card counter and three years teaching the game full-time, something that has improved his knowledge immensely, “when you train someone else to play, you will get way better.”

There few people out there with the depth of knowledge and experience that Jones has. He shared some of it with me, with advice on how to get started as a blackjack player, how to respond when faced with the dreaded back-off, and why prospective pros need to be fully informed about what they are getting themselves into.

Tags: Advantage Play LLC, Ben Crawford, Blackjackapprenticeship, Card-counting systems, Colin Jones, Holy Rollers, smart strategies

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