(For current information about Target's ongoing sports betting experiment, please go to the Sethbets website)
Before I launch with gusto into today's topic, a few added words about the inherent dishonesty and dubious accuracy of some sims, specifically those that claim to emulate blackjack and baccarat.
I mentioned Daniel Rainsong, whose blackjack betting strategy was torpedoed by Mike Shackleford, aka the Wizard of Odds, with some fanfare several years ago.
Mr. Rainsong seems resigned to his fate at the hands of Mr. Shackleford, and certainly, it is not for me to fight his battles for him.
All I can say is that I unreservedly reject any blackjack or baccarat data that have not come from, at the very least, a source that used actual cards to determine hand values and individual outcomes.
Ken Smith's nifty little app has never come close to defeating Target, and the same can be said for the Apple game devised for iPhones and iPods, so it's not surprising that I am particularly fond of those.
I have lost in real play against real blackjack in real casinos many times over the years, but my setbacks have so far (in more than 20 years!) only proved temporary, and happened because I was foolish enough to play without an adequate bankroll.
My downfall is that every so often, I can't resist the urge to spend some time in a casino - I count a few dealers as well as other regular players among my friends, and betting at a blackjack layout is the only sure way to enjoy their company!
It's against my rules, I know, but I'm just a regular guy, and I refuse to beat myself up for being human.
Target has frequently done me proud against craps and roulette, and because those games are purely numbers-driven, I have no problem with "sims" that use RNGs and interpret each new number appropriately.
I have my own sims that provide me with round numbers between 1 and 38 for roulette (37 is 0, 38 is 00 and you can guess the rest!) and between 2 and 12 for craps.
I enjoy roulette, in spite of the onerous 5.26% house edge for a double-zero game, but I'll never venture beyond the even-money options, and flee to the nearest blackjack or baccarat layout when bets start to climb.
Craps is a problem for me because common sense tells me to bet the DON'T and that's not the best way to make friends, or even stay friends with those you already have!
I long ago gave up reassuring my dice-rolling pals that I'm not betting against them, I'm betting against the house, so usually I stick to FIELD numbers, applying the same caution there as I do at roulette (like most people, I like to be liked).
I can produce examples of thousands upon thousands of simulated craps and roulette outcomes against which Target has profitably prevailed, but the response from skeptics is always that next time (or the time after that), the strategy is certain to crash and burn.
There's no answer to that.
Some people prefer to go along with the conventional wisdom that casino table games can't ever be beaten in the long run, and that faith is as strong and immovable as any you'll find among the Sunday bible crowd.
My position, as regular readers will long since have figured out, is that losing is not inevitable - unless you insist upon it.
Tackling a $10 minimum layout with less than $5,000 to weather what one blackjack addict I know constantly refers to as standard deviation is very unwise, to put it mildly, and it's the reason 99 players in ninety-nine and a half will leave their bankroll in the dealer's tray.
As I have said ad nauseam (even I'm nauseammed!), big money alone is far from a guarantee of success at any gambling proposition - but big money plus a consistent, disciplined plan stands a chance that's far better than even money.
Spread, spread, spread is as important in betting as location, location, location is in real estate, and anyone who does not recognize and act upon that simple truth will eventually fail, I can guarantee.
The hardest part about the method that I have been promulgating for free for decades is that it demands an attitude that is the antithesis of the average gambler's mindset.
Unless, of course, you happen to believe as I do that winning is a whole lot more fun than losing, and worth a little extra effort.
So, about acceptable risk...
The ongoing Target sports-betting RTRM (real time, real money) trial has now been under way for almost 14 months, betting almost every day, with selections posted as soon as I can manage it ahead of game times.
We started out with a $25,000 bankroll which has to date been exposed less than $2,000 and after yesterday's turnarounds, we now stand at a profit of $159,600 - or about $400 a day since July 24, 2010.
Sounds great, but at one point, when the BR stood at at $139,000 in profits, we hit a slump that dragged on for two and a half months and sucked up over $100,000 before sanity got the upper hand again and we climbed out of that very deep, deep hole.
Now, you can argue that $100,000 is far too great a risk even when you are almost $140,000 ahead and further argue that the current profit figure of almost $160,000 is not enough of a return on that terrible risk.
If that's the way you feel, I know that nothing I can say will dissuade you.
You might also look at the baccarat win I posted recently and say that a session profit of $80,000 does not justify a risk, at one point of $18,000.
Target's blackjack win of almost $170,000 is more impressive - but at one point, when the BR was fat with profits, $95,000 had to be put back into play to save it.
Opponents of progressive betting (many of them eager boosters of the casino line that losing is fun so suck it up!!!) have a habit of sneering at, say, a $500 bet that might recover losses of $495 plus an overall profit of $5 and say, Who'd be dumb enough to risk five hundred bucks for a one percent return?
Easy answer: a winner would be dumb enough. And so would a casino operator or a bookie.
Gamblers as a breed expect big returns for small risks. They don't often get 'em, but they keep on trying - the definition of insanity, according to some experts.
The way casinos and bookies look at the world is not through rose-tinted specs, but with confidence that when "the numbers" run against them, it will always be temporary, and the money they've lost will return to Papa soon enough.
That's exactly the way a Target player has to think.
To a strategic bettor, money lost is money temporarily loaned.
The only way Target can be forced to give up large amounts of ammo for a while is when the house edge goes crazy for limited number of successive bets.
And because we, too, have faith in the law of large numbers, which guarantees that neither slumps nor spikes can last forever, we are willing to put our money were our mouth is.
Assuming we have money in the first place, that is.
I promised a web page explaining recently-posted Target numbers, and here it is. I hope it serves to explain all the versions of the strategy I have recently talked about.
If not, I'll make an exception just this once and respond to e-mail queries!
You will see from the data - two remarkably similar stories from thousands of blackjack and baccarat outcomes analyzed separately - that the NF (no frills!) version of Target demands far less risk while, reasonably, returning far less profit.
A win progression boosts the strategy's earning rate, as do loss progressions of varying aggressiveness.
Whatever flavor of Target you may choose, they all have one thing in common: You have to stick with the rules, come hell or high water.
To do that, you need confidence in the strategy that matches a casino's faith that almost every customer will have "made a contribution" before the dealing's done.
You, of course, will be a worthy exception to that rule!
I don't expect anyone to simply take my word for Target's efficacy as an antidote to losing - I'd say anyone who does that is as foolish as a gambler who challenges a casino table game without a plan.
What I'm saying in this blog day after day, year after year, is that casino games of chance have such a minuscule house edge that a player willing to risk a little more and work a little harder can beat them consistently and reliably.
My local friend with a $300 stop-loss and a daily blackjack habit claims to break even or lose less than $2,000 a year at worst, and I have to say that based on all I have learned about the mathematics of table games, he's fooling himself.
He's not lying - or at least, he's lying to himself and other people are just collateral damage!
It simply isn't possible to win the way he plays. He knows all about Target and is impressed by its results, but he says it's simply "too risky" for his taste.
In other words, he'd rather lose than win.
And he's not alone in that. My neighborhood casino has a clique of a few dozen players who seem to have the means to lose regularly, and write those losses off as the cost of entertainment.
That gob-smacks me, but I respect their right to do what they want with their money!
Trying Target is an eye-opener, I can promise you that.
Give it a shot with the Ken Smith blackjack app, or whatever else you can find out there.
Play the rules carefully and accurately, "buy in" again whenever you go broke (as you must with tight table limits) but log your every bet, not with dollar amounts, but as a win or a loss, a double-down or a split, a push or a tie.
It will begin to dawn on you how often paired (or twinned) wins come along - and each time that happens, you know that but for those table limits, you would have been home and dry.
Even the unluckiest son of a gun can expect to make a little money if he wins more bets than he loses.
But that doesn't happen often (casinos frown on it!) so we all need to bet in such a way that can get ahead even when we lose more bets than we win.
Remember the Target mantra: "You have to win more when you win than you lose when you lose so that losing more bets than you win won't hurt you."
Amen to that.
For the record, the same session got better...
...and better (although with a house edge that's currently at 8.45%, I don't think anyone could say BST is going easy on me!).
And here's where the session ended up:
It's not a "real" game, I know - but it's a lot more real than the sims casino shills like the Wizard of Odds use to squash challengers.
For one thing, BST deals from 52 cards (I opted to drop down to a single-deck game just because it was available with 3-2 paybacks for naturals, and that's a rarity in Nevada these days) and there are no repeats until the "deck" is audibly and visually "shuffled."
For another, Mike Shackleford and his cohorts are paid to protect the interests of the gambling industry, so why would we expect their methods to be honest?
Their masters sure aren't!
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. One more piece of friendly advice: If you are inclined to use target betting with real money against online "casinos" such as Bodog, spend a few minutes and save a lot of money by reading this._
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