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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