First, the latest from the ongoing BST blackjack trial...
Skeptics who don't question my honesty or the accuracy of my published results will sometimes suggest that target betting might work in theory, but cannot be successful under real-play conditions.
It is certainly true that a prolonged negative trend (defined for target betting as clumps of losing rounds separated by isolated wins) will drive bet values very high very fast, making it impossible for a strategy player to remain in one location.
In my experience, table-hopping in one casino or moving from one casino to another as the win-loss pattern demands makes good sense for all sorts of reasons, not the least of them being that it helps a target player to avoid attracting attention.
As always, it is all about common sense. If you are in a near-empty casino at 3:00am, then jumping in and out of games with a wide range of bets is going to set off alarms left and right.
The same is not true mid-evening on a Friday, when all the games are in full swing, and finding a seat at layouts under $100 can require a whole lot of walking.
The mathematical question that comes up involves the effect constant mid-series motion is likely to have on long-term profitability, and the short answer is: None.
Anyone who has studied gambling games knows that negative expectation is a constant factor, like gravity, or the slow-moving DOWN escalator I described in an earlier post.
Supporters of card counting in blackjack insist that a rich deck value reduces or eliminates the house edge, but most players do not count cards and even those who do have often lost heavily in spite of conditions that seemed to favor them.
In a game with any house edge (and casinos do not offer games without one), the percentage of negative expectation applies equally to every bet, meaning that in a 2% game, the player's odds of winning the very next bet are 49-51 against him.
All of the target betting models track not just winning EOS bets but failed attempts too, and naturally more potential turnaround bets go south than succeed and save the day.
If that were not true, there would definitely be something wrong with my methodology.
So the only difference between theory and practice is a little thing called time.
In the models, as with all simulations, bets are placed without regard to table or house limits, and the only inhibiting factor is the standard target betting "bust" limit of $1,000,000 in funny-money.
In actual play, it is not smart to spread wider than 1-5 in any one location, although if the risk of attracting unwanted attention is low, there is some room for maneuver.
An exception is at the bottom level: $5 to $100 (1-20) is generally OK, but again, sometimes it is better to suspend a series sooner than that after assessing local conditions.
And suspending a series does not have to mean taking yet another walk, especially if you know it will be a while before you can find an empty slot.
It works just as well (and saves shoe-leather) if you cut a series off in mid-recovery, remember or jot down the LTD/NB numbers, and begin another series with a minimum bet.
When you have several targets stored in your sharply-honed, always reliable grey cells, you can move on ready to recover them one by one elsewhere.
All simulations, including mine, eliminate the human factor, which happens to be at the top of the list of factors that determine long-term success at gambling games.
When the human factor (hn in those terrific TV commercials!) is reintroduced to the formula, everything changes for the better except if the human being involved is one of those who thinks that losing is fun.
When spread limits are applied, series that begin with a $5 bet and end with a $25,000 win simply cannot happen - but that in no way alters the fact that a threat to the bankroll can be turned around 99.99% of the time (or better) with target betting.
It just takes a while longer in real play.
There is, I can reassure you, no contradiction between my assessment of your prospects when you bail out to comply with spread limits and your chances if you back out of a game to duck a particularly deadly downturn.
Whatever your reason for moving, the numbers are the same: a quick 2-win turnaround is a 10-1 probability, with the odds in your favor.
So staying put through a negative trend that threatens your bankroll makes no sense at all, and trusting your gut is the right thing to do.
Gamblers only get into trouble when their "gut" is allowed to set bet values, and target betting does not permit that. The strategy wins because there is a rule for every eventuality.
Occasional threats are inevitable, but you can take comfort in the fact that in order for a maximum bet to be required, the house edge will have had to balloon to 30% or more, a far cry from the 1-5% that usually applies.
If you had to rely on a 100% correction of an egregious swing in the house's favor, you would probably be out of luck.
But with target betting, just a short offset against the trend that got you into trouble is all it takes to rocket you out of the hole and back into profit.
A glance at any of the thousands of AV charts that track negative expectation in my models confirms that substantive offsets in the player's favor are a reliable feature of the WLP after (and often during) a downturn.
Without a bankroll big enough to keep you afloat through rough waters, you and your money will be out of the game before one of those offsets can happen.
And that is why a wide spread and fat wad, the same weapons that the house wields against you, are essential to long-term success.
You have to be able to think like a casino operator and have full confidence that "the arithmetic" will take good care of you, no matter what.
In theory, a 1.5% house edge means that the house can be sure of keeping $15,000 for every million bucks that goes back and forth in a given game.
In fact, the gambling industry does much better than that.
Casinos win more money and more often than negative expectation says they should because the only house advantage that really matters is that the house has a bigger bankroll than the players do. All of them put together, that is.
If you check the Nevada casino win numbers, dwindling as they may be in a down economy, you will not find a game where the reported win percentage matches standard expectation.
Blackjack, for example, has a house edge of 1-2%, depending on the level of a player's compliance with basic playing strategy.
The win for all of Nevada's blackjack layouts in February 2009 was 11.65% (10.4% for baccarat and 26% for 3-card poker!).
In March of '09, the matching numbers were 11.69%, 10.3% and 26%.
Who says gambling games are "unpredictable"?
And that is really what it all comes down to, isn't it?
I say, and can prove, that win-loss patterns for games of chance are broadly predictable and so can be exploited with the right math-based approach.
My critics argue that casino games are unique in all the universe, able to generate WLPs that, like quicksilver or Tinkerbell, cannot be second-guessed, and woe betide the heretic who tries.
I am going to wrap this up with a spread pattern breakdown of a random sample of series.
It is possible to produce an almost infinite number of these things, but I think just one tells the story well enough.
In actual play, the majority of recovery series turn around rapidly and without incident, paying a modest profit even though most of them have a zero or negative actual value.
When a move is called for (shaded light blue above), the chances of a turnaround remain the same: about 90%.
Once in a while, spread limits will require a series to be suspended a second or third time, or as often as it takes before two consecutive wins deliver EOS.
Overall, the average length of a recovery series is less than six bets.
You know you are going to lose more bets than you win, over time, and that reality must always translate to more money lost than won unless you can win more when you win than you lose when you lose.
Target betting delivers on that promise for tens, even hundreds of thousands of rounds in succession, although sometimes, a sizable chunk of your bankroll will have to be put into play before it can be bolstered by yet another big win.
There is no winning alternative to progressive betting, and as far as I know, target betting is the best method of money management available anywhere.
Steve Wynn, credited as the creator of the modern Las Vegas, said on "60 Minutes" the other night that the only way to beat the house is to be the house, and he needs you to believe that.
Even though he knows better...
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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