Surprise, surprise! Gambling's biggest big lie, the "5%" commission, will make losers out of winners in the long run.

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I said last time that I would at some point process a notional 5% commission on Banker wins throughout the 300,000-plus baccarat outcomes provides by Messrs. Rodriguez and Jones, and as I typed those words, I knew curiosity would make me run the query sooner rather than later.

Curiosity is really what got me into this in the first place: I couldn't believe that something protected by mathematics (the house advantage at games of chance) could not be as easily defeated by mathematics once the key was found.

Spreadsheet archives of large data sets make it relatively easy to revisit the past and apply a "what if?" scenario to potentially point the way to a better future.

My critics say that constantly reworking old data is a sure sign that I am massaging and distorting the numbers to prop up my deranged dream of beating something that is unbeatable.

The truth is that the spreadsheet platform makes it virtually impossible to cheat, especially given that all along I have offered to make my work available for microscopic analysis by the experts who keep telling me that they are far smarter than I am.

The "five percent" question has over the years made me wary of baccarat, because when I looked into the game, I quickly determined that the French derniere avant method of bet selection (backing Player or Banker according to which option won the round before last) had real merit but was sunk by the commission on Banker wins.

I call the method the Wobble, for WBL or win before last, and I am happy to report that a faster computer and enhanced methodology have made it much easier for me to get the information I needed than it was the last time I tried it.

There was just one piece of good news to emerge when all was done and dusted: target betting won handily against what was essentially a whole new set of 315,000 rounds of baccarat, giving it added vindication.

Backing Player throughout resulted in a +1.53% overall win against a house edge that, for the entire 315,000 outcomes, came out at -1.35% (pretty much on the money for baccarat, expectation-wise).

WBL won a lot more bets than Player did, and that, of course, is why those French joueurs love it so. The method catches streaks either way, which would be a handy dodge but for that so-called 5 percent gouge, which of course is why the vignes exists at all. The overall AV for the data set was trimmed from -1.35% to -0.31%.

Backing Player all the way resulted in just one failed recovery in more than 55,000 successes. WBL turned up a second "bust" along the way, but that would not have been fatal without the commission factor, which turned an overall win of $1.17 million into a LOSS of $269,000.

Here's the summary chart...

(Click on the image to enlarge it)
I am tempted now to restart the what-if process to discover how target betting would have fared backing Banker only instead of Player only, although obviously the final win that I am sure would result would be turned blood red by commission deductions.

The big news is that target betting has now been shown to be successful against 630,000 rounds of baccarat and will almost certainly prove effective against an additional 315,000 bets.

The explanation for all this is unchanged from the earliest days of target betting's evolution: Outcomes in games of chance are individually unpredictable, but when grouped together develop patterns that are reliably repeated and can be consistently and very effectively exploited.

The "grouping together" does not imply selection but describes the natural chronological process that occurs as one bet follows another. It is meaningless to players who bet randomly, and is everything to the disciplined strategist who knows that if he follows his plan, time will hand him a win even after he has lost more often than he won.

The original Jones+Rodriguez data set is a representative sample in any terms, since it is equivalent to at least three years of play by a full-time gambler.

The guardians of the status quo are inclined to argue that any sample of outcomes that depicts an overall player win in spite of a clear house advantage must be dismissed as anecdotal and irrelevant. But they have an agenda that does not stand up to serious scrutiny.

I still play baccarat from time to time, and can never shake off the recollection that it was a game invented by a doting Queen to amuse her inbred, bovine son, who was befuddled by the rules of every other card game that then existed.

I like blackjack best of all, partly because of the double-downs, splits and naturals that can boost a turnaround bet into a special payday, but also because each hand has to be played as well as bet upon.

However moronic and monotonous baccarat might sometimes seem to me, I need to get over it and accept that it has grown into the biggest of the big-money games, attracting more high roller dough than even poker (which, in any case, is not a house game).

Naturally (no pun intended) I stand by my recommendation that ideally, bets on Banker should never be placed, or should be limited to, say, $1,000. The real damage is done when critical EOS bets win just 95% of their face value.

It would not be hard to switch gears in mid-series and back Player only until EOS is achieved.

I once spent an enjoyable few weeks playing baccarat with a target betting convert who suggested that the "five percent solution" was to follow up a successful EOS wager with a bet calibrated to recover the combined cost of commission throughout the series that just ended.

So instead of following a $10,000 win on Banker with a reversion to the minimum and the start of a whole new series, there would be a supplementary bet of, say, $3,000 to offset the gouge.

I did not much cotton to the idea because it required a longer EOS winning sequence every time, and I mention it here only because it might appeal to some baccarat aficionados who can't live without bets on Banker.

I want to say again that results like those you see here could only be achieved two ways: By cheating, or because the invincible house advantage in all games of chance is not invincible at all.

It is safe to say that when you cheat, you don't win. And when you fail to follow a disciplined betting strategy that consistently delivers a profit from more lost bets than winning ones, you are in the same losers' boat. Sinking fast.

It is every weekend punter's dream to find a way to win time and again with little or no risk. It is also a hopeless fantasy.

Past posts to this blog offer a wealth of data supporting the plain truth that spreading wide is the key to vanquishing the house advantage, so long as it is paired with a viable betting strategy with a rule for every eventuality.

We have learned that a 1-1,000 spread is about as "tight" as we can go without feeling constant pressure from the house edge. Wider is better, and that takes money, sometimes a lot of it.

The good news is confirmed once again in the baccarat summary above. Target betting loses very rarely indeed, and as time goes by, the bankroll that backs it grows ever stronger.

You can see from the summary that backing Player only, target betting never had more than a fraction of its original bankroll on the line. There was just ONE "bust" spread across two data sets, and while that wiped out most of the method's prior winnings, the boat was not seriously rocked again, and the final win exceeded $2 million.

WBL and target betting together were 65% exposed at one point, but by the time the second "bust" came along, there was enough money in the bank to withstand it. Or would have been, but for the "5%" commission.

That tells us that target betting is viable. It may not be perfect and could be improved. But it WORKS.

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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