Just as I'm closing in on $700,000 my 1T21 bankroll takes a hit. Twice! Aug 31 is no longer a viable target, but we'll get to $1m eventually!

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I know pretty much where I went wrong, but excuses won't save the day...only getting back on track and playing on will do that!

I let myself get caught in two traps that I have been warning students of target betting about for years: greed and complacency.

I guess I could blame the double-whammy losses on the forced narrowing in the spread from 1 to 5,000 to 1 to 1,000 but in all fairness I don't think that was the problem here.

As if a win equal to about $10,000 an hour was not enough, I decided to experiment to see if I could goose the win rate still further.

That's a definite no-no, and I promise to behave in future...

Here's what happened.

Pushes at blackjack and ties at baccarat are a time-wasting pain in the ass, and I have always responded to them by doubling NB to a maximum added value of $100, meaning that a $100 bet becomes $200 after a push, and a $200 bet bumps up to $300.

It is an arbitrary or random way to boost profits without significantly adding to exposure, and I have been happy with it for as long as I can remember.

Lately, I have been fooling around with variable responses to pushes, redoubling NB or adding an extra $100 if the pushed hand was worth 19 or better.

I have also been doubling PB if the hand total was 21, even if the increase in the bet value was considerably more than $100.

Worse, I experimented with PBx2 in response to a dealer natural, with no limit on the increase.

An embarrassing downside of blogging is that posts go up in real time, more or less, and while it is possible to delete old articles to save face, doing so defeats the whole purpose of a project like this.

It's like cheating at golf: No one wins.

I talked myself into this departure from long-established target betting rules because my models do not factor in hand values, and for years I have wondered about the potential effect of more aggressive push/tie tactics.

I made the assumption that if a cautious push response benefits the bottom line (and believe me, it does), then a more assertive approach would likely do better still.

Bad idea!

With 1T21, I have also departed from standard TB rules by abandoning a losing series whenever the loss-to-win tally hit -20, a modification that has never been tested against the complete data set.

The holy grail of any betting strategy is to find a firm footing on the tightrope between maximizing wins and minimizing exposure.

The math demonstrates over and over again that if you cap losses, you will almost certainly trim profits so drastically that negative expectation for the game will prevail.

And that's not good!

I can, and have, applied the -20 "Uncle!" concept to my growing real-time blackjack data set, and can tell you that while the overall win value was cut in half, so was total action, meaning that the effect on the final AV was negligible.

Meanwhile, exposure was reduced by more than 90%.

Trouble is, the total blackjack data set consists of fewer than 90,000 rounds.

That's a lifetime of play for most punters, but not a large enough sample to prove anything other than potential.

When I can, I'll add the Uncle rule to my much larger baccarat sample.

But for now, my top priority is getting 1T21 back on the yellow-brick road to a million bucks!

In the first brief session after the second abandoned series, I scored almost $7,000 in a half hour's play.

Encouraging but, as always, proof of nothing...

Update at 1:10pm Wednesday:

It took me just over 11 minutes to add another $5,000 to the fantasy BR, and scaling back the rules to match tactics that have been in place forever dramatically reduced exposure.

The freebie 1T21 app no longer permits hits to split aces, but a two-card 21 is still indicated on screen as Blackjack and I have not yet been quick enough with pencil and paper to see if the bet pays 3:2 instead of even money.

The house edge at MobilityWare's single-deck game has held fairly steady at around 3.0% and that indicates additional problems with the application. After more than 15,000 rounds, we should be seeing something much closer to 1.0% since I have always been a stickler for basic strategy play.

Pushes remain at 8%, which is low (9% would match expectation) and time is wasted by the fact that the largest chip in play is $100. Given a table limit of $5,000, big fat $500 and $1,000 chips are called for!

The 1T21 game does not permit re-splits, but the effect of that is negligible.

The penetration level of just 75% is probably a more significant factor, but would not account for a house edge that is three times standard expectation for a single-deck game with Las Vegas rules applied.

One day, I might go wild and upgrade to the paid (gasp!) version of the app.

Meanwhile, I am quite enjoying the ads, which don't slow down the rate of play enough to be a nuisance and are far less intrusive when WiFi is out of range!

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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My right thumb taps past $625,000 at 1T21, and I get a refresher course in the wisdom of people who are too young to gamble!

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I'm not planning to put up any more screen shots of my efforts against the iPod blackjack freebie until I either hit $750,000 or go bust.

Pretty much everyone who doesn't know much about gambling assumes I'm on a crazy winning streak and will crash and burn any minute.

The assumption that no one can win, however smart they think they are, was bolstered with last week's revelation that the MIT team of card counters who famously beat Las Vegas out of $800,000 and was lionized in the Kevin Spacey movie "21" did not get to keep their winnings.

Every cent and then some was lost when the tables inevitably turned on the irreverent upstarts.

The Spacey movie, and the book upon which it was based, failed to mention that.

Personally, I don't know what to believe. I abandoned card counting years ago and have considered it over-rated ever since.

It can do very well in the short term, but must ultimately be undone by the fact that a deck that is "rich" in high-value cards is as helpful to the house as it is to the player.

I am hoping I can wean myself away from 1T21 when my BR hits $1,000,000, which should happen before the end of the month.

In the meantime, I have been enjoying the challenge of explaining my betting strategy to two inquisitive teenagers who both rate regular A's in their math classes and do not hesitate to ask questions when they do not understand a concept or detect even the faintest whiff of BS.

The boys have seen me fine-tuning target betting for years but have only recently started taking a real interest.

I am not about to run the risk of corrupting minors, so this summer I reinforced the most important message of all, which is that gambling is for suckers, but that done right, betting can reward a smart player's time and trouble very well.

The lads quickly cottoned on to the idea that it is in the best interests of the gambling industry to warn that casino house games cannot be beaten in the long run, while spending millions to convince losers that today's their day to be a winner for once.

Promoting gambling as a wise investment requires doublespeak that rivals the worst that the tobacco companies could muster back in the days when cigarette ads were unrestricted and butane-lit coffin nails were widely seen as cool accessories.

Reiterating "Target Betting 101" for Chris and his brother Tim was a reminder that the worst thing you can do to kids is to talk to them as if they are...kids.

Chris suspected that blind luck was the secret of my success until he downloaded MobilityWare's ad-sponsored blackjack app to his iPod and lost his opening bankroll in short order.

(I have no connection with MW, I should perhaps add at this point, beyond nagging them to fix the split-aces glitch that made it possible to draw two naturals in a single hand!)

I'm repeating myself, but for those of you new to this blog, here's what I told the lads:

Whatever the negative expectation for a game might be, it applies equally to every hand or round.

That means that if you bet the same amount every time, or if you vary bet values randomly, you must eventually lose a percentage of your overall action (the value of all bets, wins and losses, combined) that pretty much matches the known house edge for the game.
So if your action or churn against a game with a 2.0% negative expectation is $1 million, you will probably (but not certainly) lose around two percent of a million bucks ($20,000)...or your entire BR if it is less than twenty grand.
Experts in the field of gambling like to talk about the "laws" of mathematics that are relevant to it, chiefly the law of independence of trials and the law of large numbers.
Independence of trials covers the first item in our list (the notion that negative expectation applies equally to every bet, and that the outcome of any bet is unaffected by outcomes that preceded it).
The law of large numbers essentially says that the more bets there are, the more likely it is that their collective result will match negative expectation.
Most gamblers have been brainwashed to think in "small picture" terms, treating each bet in isolation except for occasional bet-the-farm moments when they try to recover all their prior losses in a single mad wager. (A BTF wager is in essence random because it cannot be repeated if it loses, and we have already established that random or fixed-sum bets cannot prevail in the long run).
A "big picture" approach to betting that connects rounds or wagers into series in which the value of each is determined by what preceded it poses a serious threat to the validity or relevance of negative expectation.
A Martingale, for example, makes the value of a bet double that of a losing wager that preceded it (NB=PBx2), permitting a player to profit from a series in which he lost the great majority of his wagers.
No betting strategy can overcome the absolute certainties that in a table game with a house advantage (and there is no other kind!), even the cleverest or luckiest player will lose more bets than he wins, and that the outcome of any bet cannot be known ahead of time.
It therefore follows that the ONLY way to win consistently is to bet in such a way that the average value of a lesser number of winning bets exceeds the average value of a greater number of losing bets by a percentage that is substantially higher than the percentage value of negative expectation.
For example, if the average value of 1,000 bets is $10 and 2% more bets are lost than won, then the sum of losing bets (510 x $10) vs. the sum of winning bets (490 x $10) will result in a loss (-$200) that is 2% of the total action of $10,000. However, if the value of the average winning bet (AWB = $11) were to exceed the value of the average losing bet (ALB) by 10% (ALB = $10), the final outcome would be $5,390 WON minus $5,100 LOST = +$290/$10,490 = +2.76% in spite of expectation of -2.0%.
A Martingale or double-up strategy depends on the observable truth that while the odds of the player winning any given bet in a -2.0% game are (at 49-51) less than 50-50, the odds of the house winning two consecutive bets are (at 74-26) in effect more favorable to the player, enabling linked or targeted bets to repeatedly overcome negative expectation.
The primary problems with a Martingale are, first, that bets will often increase in value very rapidly indeed, and, second, that the 2x pattern of betting is almost immediately obvious to the house, potentially singling out the player for obstructive or defensive measures. (Table limits are not a problem, assuming a viable BR, because a blocked wager can be moved to another layout or a different casino whenever necessary, until the house limit is reached).
Target betting usually freezes the bet after a mid-series loss, requiring a very large increase in the NB value only in response to a mid-recovery win and thus making it much less easy to spot and obstruct than a Martingale, but generally no less effective.
Chris's assumption that a casino could easily block target betting is, I am happy to report, unfounded. Independence of trials means that if a bet is ever potentially problematic because it would mean "breaking cover" (or because the house has refused it!), suspending a series will not adversely affect the very high probability of an ultimate win. (Likewise, if one player is barred from a casino before he can win his turnaround or EOS bet, he can hand the bet off to another player without a negative impact on "The Math").
One important caveat: Target betting may not deliver consistent profits if the payout on any win is less than 100%, as in baccarat, where winning bets on Banker are subject to a 5% "commission." The baccarat solution: only bet on Player. Otherwise, stay clear of pai-gow poker, and don't risk big money on roulette, field bets at craps or 3-card poker, all of which can be profitable for a while but have a house edge that is three to ten times greater than that for single-deck blackjack. The rule: When in doubt, play the safest bet in the house (blackjack with a 3 to 2 payout on naturals).

This week I heard from a regular reader (and frequent critic!) in China who plays the Macau casinos and also bets big on foreign exchange and other ventures that are completely beyond my ken.

He had an idea for target betting that I will not divulge here, but it reminded me that when wins consistently outnumber losses or when the return on a bet is less than even money, a betting strategy can actually be a liability.

Over the years, I have tested my strategy against such sports-book staples as horse racing and college/pro games, and every time, I have retreated to the blackjack tables.

For a while, I had a great time applying the principles of target betting to wagers on horses paying 6-5 or better, but was often tripped up by the fact that odds will sometimes shorten substantially after a bet has been placed.

Paired and longer winning streaks are also much harder to achieve betting the nags than at any casino table game.

As for pro and college games, my downfall was lack of expertise in the field and an inability to grasp why anyone would bet $100 to win, say, $110 without an absolute cast-iron guarantee that their pick was going to come out on top (and for some reason, bookies never go for that idea!).

According to many of my critics, I'm a simpleton.

As such, I am happiest sticking with what I know.

What I know is that if you can win more when you win than you lose when you lose, then losing more often than you win won't hurt you.

Have I said that before?

No graphics, but here's where I stood with 1T21 earlier today...

6317 wins, 6704 losses, 1135 pushes, HA 2.73% to 2.97% including pushes.
Win to date $645,420 against negative expectation that indicates a LOSS of +/- $382,500 (precise overall action not known).

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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A milestone for one-thumb 21: A "win" of half a million bucks in 11,400 rounds...but the experts say it don't mean a thing.

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The only thing I can say for certain after more than 11,000 rounds against the iPod blackjack app is that my right thumb is stronger than it has ever been!

I would feel guilty about spending that much time (around 24 hours of play is my best guess) on an endeavor that offered zero financial reward, but the great thing about the iPod's portability is that I can play a few rounds whenever and wherever I feel like it.

I didn't keep a log of all those rounds, since a notebook and pencil would have been bigger and more cumbersome than the iPod itself, but the stats provided by the app tell most of the story.

Target betting routinely delivers an overall win equal to 10.0% of total action, but I created a couple of Excel files to augment the analysis of what has happened against 1-thumb 21 so far...


Absent a precise log, I cannot know for sure what the overall action added up to, but we can at least deduce that the average win per round was more than $40, and that if the win was 5.0% of the "churn" the average bet value was more than $850.

Way too much money, you might say, but bets of $1,000 or more usually occur only once in every 20 rounds, and the $5,000 "house limit" imposed by the blackjack app would have reduced that frequency.

Spread, as we all know by now, is the critical factor in achieving consistent wins against casino table games, and 1 in 1,000 ($5 to $5,000 per 1T21) is the tightest spread I would recommend.

Given that most gamblers limit themselves to 1 in 5, it's no surprise that most gamblers are losers!



It is misleading to exclude pushes from an assessment of the actual value of the house edge in a given sample of outcomes, but so many people do it that I have provided two numbers for the AV in the summary above.

Note that the expected overall result, assuming the overall action shown here, was a very substantial loss.

Skeptics always assume that any result that defies negative expectation as they interpret it must be fraudulent, and all I can say in response is that I have better things to do with my time than cheat.

On the other hand, it would be naive to imagine that the result you see here is "proof" that target betting can win with a bankroll far smaller than the $1 million provided for in all of my research.

It is absolutely possible to win $500,000 with less than $100,000 exposed, just as it is possible to hit a hole in one or grab the PGA title when Tiger Woods chokes.

It is not, however, probable, and all of my efforts over the past 30-plus years have been directed at developing a betting method that will probably win rather than a strategy that will possibly get lucky once in a while!

When I am using all of my fingers and thumbs to play blackjack for real money in a real casino, I do not carry a million bucks in my back pocket or expect to risk even 1% of that seven-figure sum.

But I also know that without an appropriate BR, my chances of winning are dramatically reduced.

Analysis of the 1T21 results shows a brief hiccup when I accepted a loss of around $40,000 rather than pressing on with $5,000 bets not because I lost confidence in my ability to recover the LTD but because I felt like breaking the mold for once.

It was a mistake, but I do not regret it. For one thing, nobody's perfect, and every target player should be ready for an occasional error!

And I have to confess that without an optimal BR, I wing it more often than I would like when I am playing in the casinos in my Nevada neighborhood.

I never expect to get away with it.

But far more often than not, I do.

I would NOT expect the loose, casual approach I sometimes adopt in my own back yard to prevail against a sample as large as the 11,437 rounds summarized here.

As innumerate as I may appear to be to some critics of target betting (many of them members of what I affectionately refer to as the YCW Brigade), I am not that much of an optimist.

Cut your bet spread below 1 to 1,000 and you will sometimes win, but mostly not.

Play with a BR that is less than 40x your maximum bet, and you will sometimes win, but mostly not.

If you are absolutely bound and determined to lose, as most gamblers are, then you should bet randomly or wager the same amount on every round.

The casinos will love you for it, because that is precisely how they expect you to play, and their business is all about expectation.

I received yet another e-mail this week claiming that the gambling industry welcomes winners, and I wonder if it came from a casino insider!

Sure, winners are essential to the gambling process, because losers need a carrot to dull the pain of repeated whacks with the losing stick.

Ho hum, I suppose I have to repeat the qualification: Occasional winners are good for the bottom line because they delude losers into thinking that they can be winners too; Consistent winners are the enemy, to be discouraged by whatever means might be available at the time, the assumption being that in order to beat negative odds, they must be cheating.

"Comps" are an overhead, and like any other cost of business, they must pay for themselves or be discontinued.

The moment a player becomes "too hard to beat" he or she will see comps vanish like a desert mirage.

The results so far achieved against 1T21 are not definitive, obviously, but with "the house" enjoying an edge of between 2.96% and 3.21% (without or with pushes factored in) the outcome "should have been" overwhelmingly negative.

It wasn't, as you can see.

And with target betting properly applied, it probably never will be.

Tuesday, August 18:

OK, so even I am surprised by the relentless rate at which target betting is scoring funny-munny wins against 1T21, and it has crossed my mind that there may be a flaw in the way the app adds and subtracts bets.

Then again, the game stats confirm a very clear house edge that is at least three times standard negative expectation for single-deck blackjack.

And the results are not that different from those obtained throughout the countless hours that I played against Ken Smith's Blackjack Strategy Trainer and kicked serious butt.

I am not impressed by the argument that the strategy is unworkable in "real play" - even when it is voiced by a skeptical teenager I have known and loved since the day he was born!

There is no doubt that a casino confronted by a consistent winner will take defensive measures to protect its bottom line.

But history shows that tightening the rules to thwart a tiny minority of players is a cure that kills the game.

In theory, a Martingale player who doubles his bet after every loss will be eventually brought down by an extended negative trend that requires him to bet more than the table limit permits.

In reality, such players camouflage their tactics by limiting the number of re-doubled bets in any one location, and staying on the move until the inevitable turnaround win occurs.

Target betting is far less obvious, thanks to the rule that freezes the bet in response to any mid-series loss.

And when the strategy calls for a huge jump in the bet value that would either conflict with the table limit or alert pit personnel, backing off and resuming play elsewhere will not affect the math that makes target betting a consistent winner.

As I have said before, the "enemy" (I am actually unfailingly friendly to casino employees and treat them with respect, but my interests conflict diametrically with theirs!) can be further confused by handing off ballooning bets from one player to another.

The strategy can be hindered by a casino's defensive measures.

But it cannot be beaten by them.

Being barred from play in one store is a road bump, not a road block, because there is always another casino and another game not far away.

The gambling industry pretends it welcomes winners, and there are some players nutty enough to believe that.

In truth, casinos are suspicious of consistent winners because they know better than anyone (me included) how frail their edge really is.

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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There's no conflict between discipline and flexibility if you always have a plan, and stick to it like black on the Ace of Clubs!

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Being accused of self-contradiction is an inevitable hazard for anyone trying to help others to win at table games, because sometimes you cannot control how readers will interpret your advice.

For example, if I say a million-dollar bankroll is pretty much bullet-proof, but that it is "possible" to win with less money behind you, someone out there will accuse me of double-talk.

And the same thing can happen when I say that strict observance of target betting's rules is essential, but that they can be modified to fit a player's goals and resources.

The lesson I am trying, but apparently sometimes failing, to get across is that any modification to the strategy's optimum rules may reduce its chances of winning, but the favorable odds are so high that a few nips and tucks need not prove fatal.

What matters is that if you choose to tailor the rules to fit your special circumstances, you will stick with your "custom" version come what may, and not constantly back-pedal and lose confidence.

Scared money never wins, remember.

But to use another venerable cliche, sometimes you have to cut your coat according to the available cloth.

The on-going target betting "win" against one-thumb blackjack on an iPod touch is a case in point.


I am now well over $340,000 "ahead" with an opening BR of $5,000 and a string of (paid!) markers adding up to $30,000 or less.

But as always the rules of math dictate that no one should interpret that apparent success as proof that target betting works.

I generally recommend a spread of 1 to 5,000 given a $5 minimum and a $25,000 house limit, but the MobilityWare blackjack app for the iPod touch and the iPhone will not allow a maximum bet above $5,000.

Being deprived of the recommended spread does not mean certain failure, as these numbers show.

It simply means the danger zone when wiggle room evaporates, and the BR is at the mercy of the win-loss pattern will be encountered more often, generating more frequent "brown-trouser moments."

An academic mathematician will tell you that a WLP that puts the house ahead, say, 20 bets in 100 (indicating a 20% HA) does not mean there will be more player wins than losses in the foreseeable future.

Theoretically true.

In reality, not so much...

Every so often on my way to a "win" that amounts to an average of more than $40 for every hand played, I have had to suffer a succession of losses that put a temporary dent of $50,000 or more in the bankroll.

My critics scoff at my contention that I would rather risk "house money" than my own, but it is a fact that serious threats are so rare that there is really nothing surprising about the win you see above.

Theorists argue that a potentially calamitous swing in the house's favor need never be offset, offering "proof" that might go something like this:

Let's say the house gets 20 bets ahead in the first 100 rounds, indicating an edge of 20.0%, and then for the next 900 bets, the HA reverts to an overall HA of 2.0%, with 459 house wins vs. 441 player wins. In big picture terms, the HA for the entire 1,000 bets is 519/481 or 3.8%, which is a statistically acceptable departure from negative expectation, especially since in the next 1,000 bets, the HA will probably be less than NE, bringing the HA for 2,000 rounds closer to 2.0%.

All this twaddle makes for great probability theory, maybe, but it is almost impossible to come up with a genuine sample of outcomes with a WLP anything like what's described here.

In reality, wild swings that are far from the norm are at least partially offset relatively rapidly.

And since target betting does not usually require more than two or three successive player wins to recover prior losses in a recovery series, a partial offset is just dandy, thank you very much.

The truth is that as long as a player is able to win more money when he wins than he loses when he loses, then losing more often than he wins will not hurt his bottom line. Quite the opposite, in fact.

It is also true that prolonged negative trends that push bet values higher and higher are better for the player's bottom line than an endless pattern of rapid recoveries.

That is because in blackjack, naturals and successful doubles or splits will obviously pay higher "bonuses" when the original bet value is greater than it would have been in a series that had quickly turned around.

It's also the reason why target players should steer clear of blackjack layouts paying 6:5 for a natural rather than the 3:2 that still applies in most multi-deck games.

That sneaky bit of revisionary sleight-of-hand amounts to a 20% pay cut and cannot be justified on any level.

It is amazing to me that the regulatory authorities that claim to be watching out for the interests of players routinely allow casinos to boost an already significant house edge by making existing rules tougher, or introducing "new features" that are highway robbery in a thin disguise.

But then I remember that state boards like the one that "regulates" games in Nevada exist to protect the state's interests and no one else's.

And higher casino profits from games that are harder to beat mean more revenue for the State of Nevada.

Unless, of course, a change in the rules drives players away from the game...

Tuesday, August 11:

My eldest grandson, Chris (16 this summer) has his own iPod touch with the blackjack app downloaded, and he is struggling to hang on to his initial virtual buy-in.

He took one look at my current BR, and said, "Yeah, but there's no way real-life casinos would let you play that way!"

He's right, and the rapid rate at which my non-cashable iPod stash ($370,000 as I type this) is expanding makes the target betting process look way too easy.

In fact, there would be frequent interruptions in the money-making process, either to switch to a higher-rent layout or to find a casino where bigger bets will not raise a ruckus.

And it is entirely possible that a target bettor with a string of big-money wins to his name would not be permitted to play at all.

In Nevada, for example, you don't need to be a cheat to be banned. Winning "too much" is treated as a crime, too.

The solution to that problem is for multiple players to be simultaneously backed with the same bankroll, and for each of them to work within a limited betting range that varies according to his or her hierarchical "rank" in the team.

But for obvious reasons, that is not a topic for detailed discussion here!

I put Chris straight, and he understands the challenges much better now.

Maybe in a few years, when he has mastered target betting and broken the losing habit, I'll recruit him...

Wednesday, August 12:



A skeptic will always look at a winning situation and predict with absolute confidence that "you're sure to lose in the end" - presumably unaware that negative expectation is only a serious threat to players who bet fixed amounts or randomly.

We all know that the house is sure to win more bets than we do in the long run.

And since we can have only a marginal effect on each individual outcome at blackjack and none whatsoever at any other table game, the only way we can exercise any control on the final result is by setting bet values cleverly.

Target betting will routinely deliver an average winning bet value that exceeds the average losing bet value by 20% or better, which even the most complex arithmetic tells us is sure to blow a 2% HA to bits.

Blackjack played by the basic strategy book has a house edge of 1.0% or less, which makes the "one-thumb 21" HA of more than 3.0% after almost 10,000 single-deck rounds a probable sign of a defect in the app.

But who cares when target betting is so far ahead?

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.
_

The good news: A fix is coming for 1-thumb 21's split aces glitch. The bad news: I'm stuck with another bad habit I can't break!

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Yesterday I heard from Scott at MobilityWare that the next upgrade of the iPod blackjack app will fix the split naturals problem and bring the game more in line with casino reality.

Great!

Per the caption above, what's not so wonderful is that I have now played more than 5,000 rounds and should have been logging them, primarily to see if a Martingale would have matched the "winnings" achieved with target betting.

Already, the bankroll above is around $50,000 behind the times (this morning, while waiting for my 6:30am coffee to brew, I blasted past the $200,000 barrier).

Guess I'm just lucky...

Regular readers will know that I have never advocated the Martingale as a means to overcome the house edge at casino table games, but it makes a handy benchmark, and while almost unplayable in the real world, is widely misunderstood.

For example, most of its opponents cite the relative frequency of prolonged losing streaks that can take the required bet from $10 to an amount far in excess of the table limit at a low-stakes game.

In fact, the only limit that matters is the house limit, and even then, the assumption that the moment the "green ceiling" is reached it's game over is naive.

Martingale players usually don't bet more than three losers at any one layout, and will simply repeat a wager on those rare occasions when they are prevented from going higher.

Sunday, August 2:

The total 1T21 jackpot is now up to $210,585 with the AV edging up again to -2.87% and the indicated loss (AV x est. action) at close to -$121,000.

As always, no proof implied, just one more illustration of what target betting can do against persistent negative expectation.

The knee-jerk academic mathematician's response to these numbers would go something like this:

You got lucky.
Negative expectation cannot be overcome in the long run.
A sample of 5,477 bets is not representative and results achieved against such a small sample are anecdotal and irrelevant.
In due time (sooner rather than later) a prolonged negative trend will occur that will wipe out your imagined "profit" and replace it with a loss that is in compliance with negative expectation.
The most likely explanation for your apparent success is that you cheated.
Either way, you are an idiot.

Luck is certainly helpful when the goal is to make money at casino games of chance with an inherent house bias.

However, it can never be relied upon.

A sample of less than a trillion outcomes will never be accepted as "representative" and if a sample that large were to show a positive result for the player (a very old person, exhausted after playing non-stop for several million years!) it would be dismissed as anecdotal and irrelevant.

Target betting succeeds because of the cumulative effect of consistent profits from small series of rounds in which more wagers were lost than won.

The primary consequence of all those small victories is that overall, the player wins more when he wins than he loses when he loses.

A prolonged negative trend that brings ruin is certainly possible, but grows increasingly improbable as the bankroll strengthens.

At this point, for example, given a maximum bet of $5,000, the "house" would have to get at least 42 bets ahead of the player to grab back $210,000 in funny money. It could happen. But it probably won't.

Watch this space!

I'm looking forward to seeing the improved version of 1-thumb BJ when the update to the app pops up on my iPod.

I have a couple of other minor quibbles with the game and have suggested the addition of a deck value counter. But all in all, the arrival of an honest game simulation that can be played anywhere from a toilet seat to a mountaintop has to be a leap forward for humankind.

Thanks, MobilityWare, with whom I have no connection beyond a sense of some gratitude!

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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