The YCW (you can't win) Brigade will tell you that if you can't be sure of winning, you should never attempt a betting strategy...

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...but if you don't have a plan, you are much more likely to lose.

It is plain to see who benefits most from the gambling attitude promoted by mythematicians, who go on to say: "You should think of gambling as entertainment, nothing more, and only bet what you can afford to lose."

My advice is fundamentally different: "Play to win, but don't play at all if you can't afford to win."

In other words, if a penny-ante bankroll is all you can muster (and there's no shame in that!) then you will probably be better off to trust to blind luck and hope that at worst, you break even.

Beating negative odds requires a bankroll large enough to keep you in the game through the inevitable rough spots when the house edge is temporarily far greater than standard negative expectation.

The latest batch of BST figures is not much different from its predecessors. It shows "the house" getting way ahead in terms of player losses vs. player wins, and as long as the 1-200 spread limit is applied, the result is another loss for the good guys (who don't work for the casino, let's be clear about that!).

Set target betting loose with an appropriate bankroll, and as before, we end up with an overall win with the total action (sessions A and B combined) greatly reduced. Also per prior experience, we see far more "big ticket" bets when the BST table limit is applied than without it.

So much for "conservative" play!

The BST results have been truly demoralizing lately, without target betting giving up a thin dime.

Here are the current "Batch #s 1-15 to date" numbers:-

Win Rate TD 100.0000%

ALL ahead +$1,715,420 = +5.17% of
$33,161,885 action
$25,000 max
$444 avg bet
$2,299 per hour
5.2 x avg bet


RISK (181,475) = 18.14% of bankroll
return 945%

EOS x 13,403 in 74,620 rounds
Avg EOS 5.6 rounds

AV/HA -5.28% (3,938) -5.28%
Expected ($1,750,087) per gross AV or (597) per net AV of -0.80%
TA/T 2.0 x expected result


+ MAX 12
- MIN -16
ABV $444
$1,000+ 3,536 4.74% of all bets

+ series 4,286 32%
0 series 4,153 31%
- series 4,964 37%
1-win EOS 8,737 65%

Most of the data are self-explanatory. Note that betting my way, big-ticket wagers were less than 5% of the total, and that the win to date represents better than a 5.0% "hold" of total action, against an overall house edge of between 0.8% and 5.28%, depending on the method of measurement.

Sometime soon, I will post average bet and $1,000+ data for a 1-200 spread for all 15 BST models, but it is safe to predict that action will be way up, the result will be an overall loss in line with negative expectation, and max bets will be in the majority, not a rare event at 1 in 20 or less.

I use a "net" number for the house edge (HA) or actual value (AV) which factors in doubles, splits and 3-2 payoffs for naturals. The old-fashioned way is to count hands as either won or lost: do that, and you end up with an HA that's more than SIX TIMES greater than my more inclusive approach.

As you can see, winning series (hey, they were ALL winning series) with more bets lost than won greatly outnumbered series with more wins than losses. Series that were negative or neutral still account for 68% of the total, so "expectation" demanded either a break-even or a loss in all those instances. Sorry, expectation.

The trial opened with a $1,000,000 bankroll almost 75,000 blackjack hands ago, and that has long since been covered by winnings, plus a 70% return on the investment which does not include $1,000,000 in profits left in the bankroll to take us through future downturns.

Maximum exposure for the initial bankroll was $181,475, or a little more than 18%.

I do not expect target betting to keep winning forever.

At some point, a win-loss pattern will be encountered that first pushes the strategy to its maximum bet, leaving it at the mercy of an ongoing negative surge that exceeds expectation for the game.

Then, the strategy will cease to be a strategy at all...it will have to wait out the surge and hope that sanity returns before the balance of the bankroll is swallowed up.

In the 300,000+ baccarat outcomes discussed in earlier blog posts, there was just one "crash and burn" and target betting came out way, way ahead in spite of it (see the archives or do a baccarat search).

The certainty is that winning sessions will always hugely outnumber losing sessions if you follow my rules.

The experts warn that the million-dollar bust could happen today or tomorrow, long before you have built up enough profits to avoid actual loss of your original buy-in.

But my way, probability is overwhelmingly on your side. Their way, it's against you every time you belly up to a blackjack table. The choice, of course, is yours!

The (nearly) 75,000 BST outcomes break down as follows:

(Click on the image to enlarge it)

Just for the fun of it, each of the target betting models also tracks results for two versions of the widely derided Martingale, the old-fashioned x2 kind (-5, -10, -20 etc.) and a more aggressive update which brings in more dough with a modified progression: -5, -10, -25, -50, -100, -250 etc.).

The YCW preachers scorn double-up as suicide, warning that "you will hit the table limit, and then what?"

"What," my friends (all of a sudden I'm John McCain?) is a move to a new location where the required NB is permitted. And if at some point you hit a house- or self-imposed green ceiling that can't be defied, then you keep on betting the max. The odds are very much in your favor that the WLP will stabilize and you will recover prior losses and then some.

Once again, I will say that I don't recommend double-up, not because it's a losing method, but because it is too easily spotted and casino pit staff will invariably interfere with its use.

I don't have double-up numbers for all 15 BST sessions yet, but here are the data for the current batch (#15). Notice that target betting is a more effective alternative.

(Click on the image to enlarge it)
Here are the newest BST numbers. I have to stop doing this. But maybe not quite yet?

(Click on the image to enlarge it)

The BST "table-limit" bets enormously outnumber max bets with target betting rules because in the current batch, a tight-spread punter would have been at the limit for the last 1,200 rounds. And since he's in the hole by more than $65,000, he is going to be betting the max until the cows come home.

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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