Saturday, April 11, 2009

Some see it as a choice between excitement and monotony. It's not! It's between losing and winning.

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The average gambler's fondness for thrills and excitement (the fun of making badly-timed bets and losing yet again!) is the reason why target betting will never be a major threat to the casino industry.

Most people can't be bothered to "play smart." They would much rather go with the flow, even if it drowns them. To them, logic and practicality are anathema...they have no place at a gambling table, they believe.

I sympathize, I really do. Casinos are designed to exude the allure of temptation and guilty pleasure as effectively as a seductress wafts pheromones at her hapless mate. And money is meant to become almost meaningless, except as a measure of fun.

Some people can spend their whole lives gambling without discovering that winning is actually more pleasurable than losing. They win from time to time, for sure, but they see getting ahead of the game as a signal to take even more chances, having even more fun, until eventually they are back in the hole. Where they want to be.

When players like that come up against a prolonged negative trend (a hot dealer, or a cold table) they see it as a challenge, and keep piling on the bets in the belief that if they keep plenty of chips in motion, their luck will change. Sometimes it does..."and that's why they call it gambling."

The way I see it, dodging what often seems like certain destruction and making a little money against all odds is a whole lot more entertaining than following the script that the gambling industry has written for me.

But that does not mean that I think target betting is invincible. It is not. It needs my help to succeed. And that means knowing when to push, and when to pull back.

Table limits are theoretically a hindrance to target betting, but in practice they provide us with triggers and signposts that help us because we cannot ignore them without attracting unwanted attention. And attracting the attention of people who can interfere with our game plan is something we do not want to do!

I have talked before about rendering house spread limits harmless by imposing spread limits of your own, and the lesson is worth repeating.

Given a $5 opening bet, a spread of 1-20 to a maximum loss of $100 is probably fine, especially in a busy casino where a $100 bet is considered to be chump change.

Walking away from a low-limit table after every failed $100 bet wastes time and opportunity, so it makes more sense to make a mental note of each incomplete series, fall back to a minimum bet, and keep playing until there are enough saved targets to make stepping up a level worthwhile.

Above the bottom rung, a 1-5 spread is about as wide as you should go, following the same procedure as before. And you can keep on "stepping up" until you hit either your own maximum or the house limit.

You will always lose more EOS bets than you win. That is a fact of life, just as it is inevitable that over time, you will lose more bets of any kind than you win. What matters is timing, and target betting enables you to have the right amount of money on the table at that moment when you beat negative odds and win for a change.

Here's the latest BST set:-


This time I suffered brief brain fade and omitted comparisons between $5-$1,000 spread limit results and the outcome for target betting unchained, so here they are...

bst090410a HA/AV -1 = -0.43%, target betting wins $7,408 = +8.14% of $90,987 action, 253 rounds net, avg bet $406, bets of $1,000+ = 17

BST spread limit result loss of ($248) = -0.26% of $93,603 action, avg bet $418, bets of $1,000+ = 66

bst090410b HA/AV 22 = +9.57%, TB +$8,525, +1.92% of $443,235 action, 248 bets net, avg bet $1,979, bets of $1,000+ = 32

BST spread limit wins $8,678 = +13.94% of $62,258 action, avg bet $278, bets of $1,000+ = 40

bst090410c HA/AV = -25.5 = -14.66%, TB +$3,193 = 14.83% of $21,523, 177 bets, avg bet $96, bets of $1,000+ = 30

BST spread limit wins $453 = 1.99%/$22,743, avg bet $102, bets of $1,000+ = 39

This session was a rarity, one in which a tight spread involved less risk than target betting and for once managed to deliver an overall win! Target betting did much better, of course (about $20,000 vs. $9,000) and we expected that...

An important reminder: The only person likely to make money out of this blog is you, Dear Reader. There's nothing to buy, ever, and your soul is safe (from me, at least). Test my ideas and use them or don't. It's up to you.
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