The way the "gambling experience" is packaged in America's casinos today, the image is that betting (and losing) is a fun form of recreation made even more pleasurable by luxury suites, five-star restaurants, and non-gambling activities suitable for all the family.
It's not to be taken seriously, for sure. Lose only what you can afford, play and bet the way the casino expects you to, and you will be treated as a responsible adult who is in control of all that happens on an exciting, rejuvenating getaway to (wherever).
Of course, you are not really in control at all. Step out of line by just an inch or two, and you are on your way to becoming an entry in the industry's famous Black Book as a player who has the gall, the unbridled temerity, to try to win.
I am not talking about the Nevada Black Book, which like the black box always sought after a plane crash, is not black at all (see the link above) but the database each casino maintains and fills with personal information and facial recognition parameters about people who are bad for business.
Most of them are cheats and swindlers, but many are card counters and other players who are honest sticklers for good conduct and fair play but have learned enough about table games to be able to beat the odds time and time again.
The disinformation campaign sponsored by the casino business maintains that the house advantage is as powerful as the law of gravity, exerting a gentle but firm pull on all the chips in play until eventually they come home to the dealer's tray.
The message is that you can't beat house games in the end, but trying is so much fun and perhaps once in a great while you will get lucky, take home more money than you started with, then bring it back to lose it the way the natural order of things has ordained.
Mythematicians will tell you that of all the silly methods devised to upset gambling's laws, progressive betting is the silliest.
What is truly silly is that most people believe it to be true.
In fact, progressive betting is the only way to win consistently, and the casinos have known that since the dawn of betting.
"Consistently" is the key word here. It is possible to win, and it happens to thousands of people every day. But you have to get lucky to do it, assuming you don't have a plan. And as everyone knows, luck never lasts.
Mythemaniacs reserve their most acid scorn for a method known as double-up or the Small Martingale: double your bet after every loss until a win recovers all prior losses plus one unit, then start over.
The method works most of the time, thriving on the simple fact that losing is a progressive process, and so doubling after a loss keeps precise pace with it until a single win interrupts the losing streak.
This blog contains charts and screen shots relating to hundreds of thousands of real-play outcomes along with confirmation that target betting beats them all.
Ironically, so does double-up!
But the big problem with the Martingale is not that it does not work, or that it demands bets that are too high. The problem is that casinos won't let anyone play it.
If you doubt it, try it.
You will win a few series, and then the house's Martingale Machine will move into action.
While drunks and other fools lose money all around you without a comforting word from anyone on the casino's pit roster, you will be singled out for especially solicitous attention.
You will be politely advised that doubling up is a really bad idea, sure to eventually rob you of your bankroll.
Do you seriously imagine that the casino staff is concerned for the safety of your bankroll? It's the house's they are worried about!
Other players are quite likely to reinforce the message. After all, how smart can it be to bet hundreds or thousands of dollars just to win $5, or the value of your opening bet?
Actually, when you place a big fat bet several rounds into a losing streak, you are not aiming to win $5. Your objective is to recover all the bets you lost, plus a profit.
The size of the surplus doesn't matter. What counts is that in a single bet, you are "out of the hole" and ready for another contest against the seemingly all-powerful but actually very vulnerable house edge.
Ah, say the experts, you will be in big trouble soon enough because eventually you will lose so many bets in a row that you will bump up against the table limit. After that, a win will not cover all your past losses and you, silly fool, will be stuck in the hole forever...and it serves you right.
As it happens, x2 bettors are at work in busy casinos all the time. They avoid attention by betting, at most, three losing wagers at any one layout before moving on in search of that inevitable single win.
And if they do fall foul of any one table's bet limit, no problem - they take their money to a layout where their next wager is allowed, knowing that moving can have no negative impact on their chances of eventual success.
They especially like blackjack and field bets at craps, because there's an outside chance that the win they need will turn out to be a natural, or a multiple pay-off for dice roll of 2 or 12. That's when the gravy really flows!
More and more, casinos are combating Martingalers by barring entry to blackjack tables between shuffles: a nuisance, but not a fatal blow.
The campaign to keep as many punters as possible in ignorance of the true math of gambling is critical to the casino industry's bottom line.
The house makes a lot less money (usually none at all) from players who know the numbers and play them with precision. Those people are a threat to the whole house of cards, and should be thought of as cheats.
In Nevada, a casino can "86" a player for any reason it sees fit. In New Jersey, winning is not an allowable reason for revoking betting privileges. In the hundreds of casinos in between, there is little or no regulation, but you can be sure that if you make a habit of winning "too often" you will feel some serious heat wherever you are.
That's why it is important for a strategy player to maintain a low profile, be at all times courteous and friendly to pit personnel and other punters, and learn how to camouflage what he is doing.
Here's a summary of target betting's performance against 201,000 baccarat outcomes.
It mirrors its wins against tens of thousands of rounds played against Ken Smith's BST blackjack application.
More detail will follow, but you should know that I did not generate these outcomes or have any control over them. The data set was provided by Lee Jones, a baccarat systems promoter who assured me they were extracted from two bet-by-bet books of "real shoes" compiled by Zumma Publishing.
All that matters is that I did not alter or massage the data in any way.
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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