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.
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