Target Betting's second most important function (winning is Job #1) is to tell you when to throttle back and start over.

_
(For updated information about Target's ongoing sports betting experiment, please go to the Sethbets website, or click here for an introduction to progressive betting, and here [20] and here [5] for current picks)

Knowing when to quit is the toughest decision any gambler has to make.

And it's not necessarily easier to make the right call at the right time when you are well ahead of the game and it seems you can do no wrong.

Target Betting never set out to be "Gambling for Dummies" but because it has a comprehensive set of rules that cover every possible eventuality, sometimes it seems that way.

No decisions are necessary, once you have opted to put your betting future in Target's hands.

A player is at his or her most vulnerable when things are going well.

What's the smartest move - quitting while you're in the chips, or playing on to make even more?

A wise man I once knew defined enough as "Just a little more than you have right now," and that's probably the way most gamblers feel.

But Target Betting is about long-term profits, not short-term thrills, which is why some people believe it takes a lot of the "fun" out of gambling.

Casinos are full of people who were nicely ahead at one point, but are now sliding back towards the awful moment when they'll once again be playing with their own money.

Target's primary function is to respond to a bad situation in such a way that it can be turned around as quickly as possible.

It does well in the long term because it recognizes that in games of chance, trends either way are short term.

And "riding" a winning streak by keeping bets high until it ends is exactly what casinos expect us to do.

Target tells you when the winning's done: It's the moment when you recover all your prior losses plus a small profit, and drop back to a minimum bet.

The strategy doesn't meet most people's idea of excitement because it has modest expectations.

And to some, settling for less is the antithesis of courage and daring.

More than once, I have had other players almost berate me for abandoning a winning streak.

They feel that after a couple of big wins, the right thing to do is to "make the most" of a good thing and keep up the pressure.

But the only sure way to know a winning streak is "over" is when all your money's gone.

And when it comes to casino betting, I'm not a big fan of roller-coasters.

It might seem tame and timid to keep dropping down to little bets after winning big ones, and table limits (minimums as well as maximums) can make it tough on shoe-leather.

But in the long run, it's the only way to win.

And it's also the reason why again and again, the Target method wins while requiring less risk and smaller average bets than betting strategies that seem on the face of it to be more conservative.

It all comes down to the arithmetic, nothing more and nothing less.

To the You Can't Win chorus, the arithmetic says that if the house advantage is, say, 1.5% then in the long run you will lose 1.5% of the combined value of all your bets.

That's true. But only as long as you bet as if you want to lose.

Once you break out of the straitjacket that the casinos and their tame mythematicians have tailored just for you, the picture changes very dramatically.

For example:


I don't make up these numbers. I just report on them.

The source for the baccarat data, regular readers will recall, was Bodog's online "practice" game - and I have a pile of pencil logs available to anyone who asks politely for them.

The mathematical explanation for the numbers you see above is pure logic.

If you bet a "tight" spread, then you will hit your maximum (your own, or the house's table limit) much sooner, and will "bet the max" for longer.

But if you are free to bet as much as necessary but do it only when necessary, you will routinely blow the house edge to smithereens and replace it with a player edge.

And very often, you will also WIN with less risk than seemingly more conservative strategies that consistently LOSE.

Here are the numbers from the full current set of blackjack outcomes, drawn from Bodog logs and from recent sessions with Ken Smith's Blackjack Strategy Trainer.


This was a "player friendly" data set overall, so the picture is just a little different.

The number for "house advantage" is green and positive (a house DISadvantage, for once), as it is when the BST outcomes are pulled out to stand alone:


The "max" spread (1-5,000) didn't come out on top this time, but the message remains loud and clear.

Table limits will kill you.

I'm well aware that sundry "experts" dismiss any data set, however large, as anecdotal, irrelevant and unique.

And of course, they're full of it.

If every data sample from every game of chance was unlike any other, casinos would be as vulnerable as players are.

As it is, the house always knows what to expect from a given game - and we do too.

There will always be short-term fluctuations and anomalies, courtesy of so-alled standard deviation.

But they're just meaningless blips in the big picture.

Right now I'm working on a web page that pulls together more than 75,000 baccarat outcomes over which (as with all the others!) I had no control.

I like this lot because they were published about 20 years ago in a couple of Zumma Publishing tomes that claimed to record actual baccarat shoes from casinos around the world.

My thanks to a strategy developer named Lee Jones for keying all those numbers into spreadsheets and making them available to me.

The books can still be found in most gambling bookstores, and from Zumma online.

I'm going to all this bother to further expose the fundamental lie that is the foundation for the casino-sponsored "conventional wisdom" that bamboozles millions of punters into believing that only blind luck can make them winners.

You read it here first: The myth of the unbeatable house advantage deserves a special place in history as the second most successful con of all time.

It works this way:

The house bias in any game has to be small - usually a lot less than 5.0% - so that it's possible for players to win once in a while, because without winners, there'd be no punters, and without punters, there'd be no casinos. And no billion-dollar bottom lines.

Because the house edge must be slight, it is necessary to persuade players that the bias is ultimately invincible, and to encourage them to bet in such a way that they "learn" to believe the con.

Table limits are one way to corral the herd and to influence player betting.

Another successful ploy is to pounce on anyone who demonstrates the slightest tendency toward progressive betting, and to persuade them that what they are doing is suicide.

Another is to manipulate data - and its interpretation - by ignoring the mathematical, logical truth that only progressive betting can win in the long run.

Clever stuff!

If you want to make consistent long-term headway against games with a negative expectation, you must be willing to give up what the casinos call "fun" (the right word is losing), and be ready to work a little harder.

And Target is only as complicated as you choose to make it.

The current win value for my strategy against the BST blackjack outcomes is +$108,560 with action of $980,325 indicating a 11.1% "hold" of action vs. a house disadvantage of 0.56% and an indicated win (AV x Action) of $5,490.

My way, there were 33 bets of $5,000 or more, 177 bets of $500 or more, 991 bets between $50 and $500, and 3,610 bets below $50.

The equivalent numbers for a "bare bones" approach would be +$11,530 with action of $192,000 indicating a 6.0% "hold" of action vs. a house disadvantage of 0.56% and an indicated win (AV x Action) of $1,075.

Playing it very safe, there woulda been just five bets of $5,000 or more, 58 bets of $500 or more, 251 bets between $50 and $500, and 4,497 bets below $50.

It's your call!

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. One more piece of friendly advice: If you are inclined to use target betting with real money against online "casinos" such as Bodog, spend a few minutes and save a lot of money by reading this._

BST just delivered its first killer session, giving me the perfect chance to prove that casino table limits are meant to thwart progressive betting.

_

(For updated information about Target's ongoing sports betting experiment, please go to the Sethbets website, or click here for an introduction to progressive betting, and here [20] and here [5] for current picks)

The latest BST screen shot looks good - $10,000-plus against a 13.6% house edge? Awesome!

But it hides the fact that I had to pull out my virtual wallet 42 times during the 90-minute session, meaning that if this had been real money, I would have LOST more than $30,000.

That would have put a very large dent in my winnings from the previous 11 BST blackjack sessions, no doubt prompting a chorus of toldyous from the army of doom-sayers who insist that casino games can't be beaten in the long run.

In fact, what the latest session proves is that like all casino table limits, BST's $1,000 betting cap paints a fatal bulls-eye on the back of anyone who dares to try using progressive betting to beat the house.

The house edge took off for the moon less than a dozen bets into this new session, and was for most of the time even higher than the big fat red number (13.6%) that it stood at when I finally got tired of losing.

I was deliberately playing a very aggressive version of Target, piling on the bucks to reach the table cap far quicker than I would have otherwise.

I was betting $1,000 every time after 15 rounds, and a lot more when double-downs and splits were called for!

You will find a full summary of the session in the latest BST log, and the first thing to notice is that after two failed turnaround attempts, the all-important "twins" (two wins in succession) showed up - and in real play, that would have been the end of the first deadly slump.

After that, there were thirty-five sets of twins, many of them with "siblings" attached, versus thirty-three failed turnaround tries.

The failures would, of course, have kept pushing bet values higher.

But the grouped wins would have negated the runaway house advantage every time.

And this is really what the whole concept of twins and wasted wins is all about.

If you bet fixed or random amounts, you are certain in the long run to fall victim to the house advantage.

So the casino will do all it can to push you into a red corner, shrinking your wiggle room and encouraging you to keep on betting a tight spread until you run out of money.

Then, hopefully, you'll take your plastic over to the cashier's window and use an ATM to draw some good money to throw after the bad.

You think ATMs are there for your convenience? Sure they are, the way non-slip floors and stun guns in a slaughterhouse are meant to keep the cattle happy!

An analysis of all 12 of the 2011 BST sessions provides a perfect lesson for anyone who's tired of trying to beat the odds at casino table games.

One obvious option for the frustrated loser is to go home and give up gambling forever.

An alternative is to get serious, and learn why the house advantage can be consistently exploited to generate profits that will never find their way back to the dealer's tray.

Let's first of all take a look at a breakdown of the BST sessions as a whole, starting with a summary of how a fairly conservative modification of Target would have performed:


The first thing to notice is that Mr. Smith's BST game (the most honest simulation I have ever found) hewed pretty closely to the expectation for perfect blackjack play.

Yes, it was an overall "player edge," but plus or minus 1.0% for 4,400 rounds is in the ballpark (or in the pit, if you'd rather use a casino cliche).

If you regularly read this blog, you will know that in any event, the final AV - actual value of the overall lost bets to number of bets percentage - matters a whole lot less than what happened when the house edge spiked and dipped along the way.

Most players are wiped out by short-lived swings against them because they bet the wrong amounts at the right time or vice versa!

Next, compare expectation with what actually happened - or would have happened if all of the BST hands had been dealt in the exact order in a casino that didn't impose a 1-200 bet spread limit.

Target's job is to maximize wins and minimize losses while delivering average wins that are bigger than average losses to make up for the fact that usually (although not in this example!) there are more losses than wins.

The average win value here was $190 and the average loss was $138.

The 37% difference will come as a surprise to all those experts who have said over the years, "Yeah, we get it, you bet more when you know you're going to win than when you know you're going to lose."

Target Betting gets the job done, folks.

The summary above includes a breakdown of the number of successful turnarounds and the average number of bets required for each recovery - 5.2, reduced to less than 5 when pushes are excluded.

Here's the next "shocker" from the BST sample (no surprise to me after all these years, but no doubt the numbers will prompt the usual claims from the usual shills that I must have cooked the books!).


The charts are revealing, but what counts the most are the win and action totals along the top of the summary.

You will see that betting a tight spread - and 1 to 10 is actually on the adventurous side for most players - does not even match the +0.89% expectation for the game, delivering a feeble +0.3% which as it happens was only marginally improved upon when the spread was pushed to 1-200.

The big surprise for most of you will be the action value when the spread is widened all the way to 1-5,000: $620,000 (average bet $140) versus $876,000 ($197) for spreading $5 to $500.

It is a myth enthusiastically bolstered by the casinos and their tame mythematicians that the wider your spread, the greater your risk and (by far) the bigger your loss at game over.

What crap! Freedom to make the right bet at the right time reduces your long-term exposure and increases your profit at the end of the day.

Never mind that "most people" can't afford the huge bets Target sometimes calls for.

This is not a feel-good blog offering penny-ante players a magic trick to help them get rich for little outlay.

It's about sound mathematics and truth, neither of which matters a damn to your average "recreational gambler."

Now let's drill down to the last of the 12 BST sessions, a horror story that handed the house an edge of almost 14 percent!

Nothing on earth could beat a house advantage that huge, right?


Well...once again, we see a huge difference between the overall action (a very telling yardstick for risk) when the betting spread is kept in check by tight table limits, and...when it isn't.

BST's table limit - generous, according to most blackjack players - required an overall average bet of $1,076.

Placing much bigger bets only when absolutely necessary instead of being forced by a low table limit to play a (doomed) game of constant catch-up, cut Target's average bet by almost 80 percent to a much more affordable $127.

What's very dramatically and convincingly demonstrated here is the sheer futility - the insanity! - of betting the way the casinos want you to, and their "expert" shills tell you to.

The old shills' chorus - Any amount bet against a negative expectation must always have a negative result - is only true if you let it be.

Bet as wide as you can and you will beat the house every time.

Bet any other way, and you'll go home with a lighter wallet.

It really is that simple.

I have used more underlines and italics and flashy colors in this entry than I usually do as a reminder that I'm not here to preach to the converted.

It's just as well, because there are precious few of those around the world!

I keep plugging away in an attempt to turn as many gamblers as I can away from betting practices that were, in effect, invented BY casinos FOR casinos.

And you should all know this: When a pit boss sidles up to you and tells you that if you keep on doing what you're doing, you are sure to lose, you're definitely betting right.

Progressive betting attracts unwanted attention, and that's why Target has so many rules, most of which are camouflage.

Some of them boost overall profits, too - but can be dispensed with as long as the core LTD+ rule isn't messed with.

As for giant house advantages, please jump back to the top of the page and check on the current numbers for Target's real-time, real money sports book trial.

To date, we have faced a "bookies' edge" that has not wavered much from 10.0%, or about ten times the expected HA for a straight game of blackjack.

With each day's selections always posted online ahead of game times, we're now ahead almost $160,000.

Bookies' edge: 10.1% Target's edge: 7.4%.

(Sometimes, only colors will do...)

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. One more piece of friendly advice: If you are inclined to use target betting with real money against online "casinos" such as Bodog, spend a few minutes and save a lot of money by reading this._

For many people, gambling is a guilty pleasure, and they think of losing as inevitable retribution. But here's a thought: You deserve to win!

_


(For updated information about Target's ongoing sports betting experiment, please go to the Sethbets website, or click here for an introduction to progressive betting, and here [20] and here [5] for current picks)

Guilt-ridden gamblers who don't refer to Las Vegas as "Sin City" sometimes call it "Lost Wages" - a tortured pun which confirms the way a lot of people feel about betting.

Me, I've never understood why if gambling is a sin punishable by losses, building casinos and luring sinners in isn't an even bigger crime against all that's good and righteous.

But instead, the facilitators of bad behavior on the part of the weak and the greedy (their view of themselves, not mine!) bank billions and strut around like honest, upright citizens worthy of our respect and gratitude.

I don't count gambling as a sin except when a self-destructive urge hurts other people too, but I do think of losing as a shame because it's avoidable.

The latest BST screen capture above is not as impressive as the last, and the accompanying log shows why: a total of 12 $1,000 buy-ins, including the first, were needed and the final profit was hard won because of the tight table limit.

I can't over-stress how dangerous a narrow betting spread will always turn out to be in the end, or how foolish it is to risk money on a low-limit game.

Wiggle room is the key to exploiting the win-loss patterns that exist in every game of chance, because without it, long-term profit depends on luck, and luck is nobody's ally for long.

Even the house has to be ready for temporarily painful downturns, relying on the certainty that the lucky stiff who just took it for millions will lose it all back soon enough.

The big plus for the house, of course, is that most of the time, it's "playing" with our money.

We used our hard-earned cash to buy a pile of chips, and the house doesn't have to give it back until the dealing's done.

And while the house doesn't determine bet values round by round, it counts on us to mess up that all-important task, setting limits that are designed to make failure that much easier for us.

It makes no sense to complain that progressive betting is "too risky" and keep going back to the tables hoping that this time the story will have a happy ending.

Casino operators and bookies know full well that very often, money has to go out before it can come back in with more behind it, and the same truth applies to pretty much every commercial venture.

And that's what Target Betting is, when you get right down to it: a business venture as dedicated to sound money management and the pursuit of profit as any other.

Sometimes, making a buck can be hard work, but as my dad used to say before he took another swig of beer and went back to his nap, hard work never hurt anybody. Else.

As in the new BST example, it's best to expect that you will lose more bets than you win, and this time the house edge was -27/398 = 6.8%, or about seven times negative expectation for single-deck blackjack.

Total action was about $70,000 so the final win of $2,650 represented a decent but not spectacular "hold" of all the money in play back and forth.

That, of course, is impossible according to Prof. Expert, Ph.D., but that just reminds me of a sign I once saw in a design center: "The difficult, we do immediately - the impossible takes a little longer." Amen!

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. One more piece of friendly advice: If you are inclined to use target betting with real money against online "casinos" such as Bodog, spend a few minutes and save a lot of money by reading this._

To make the Big Leap to Target (aka the BLT) you just have to forget everything you think you know, and start believing in two simple little truths.

_

(For updated information about Target's ongoing sports betting experiment, please go to the Sethbets website, or click here for an introduction to progressive betting, and here [20] and here [5] for current picks)


I could go on posting examples like the one at the top of this entry until I'm blue in the face, and readers who subscribe to the conventional wisdom about casino games of chance would keep on saying the big wins are either a fiddle or a fluke.

I can deal with the fraud charge by linking each new funny-munny success to a web page that expands the example into screen shots saved every 30 bets or so from the beginning to the end of the session. Plus a scan of the log from the same session, highlighting all the paired wins that made it possible - unavoidable! - to beat the odds.

But changing negative attitudes is a much bigger challenge.

Let's start with the law of large numbers above.

It's not wrong, obviously - it's just irrelevant when progressive betting is applied to smooth out the ups and downs of standard deviation, and exploit patterns or trends that can be relied upon no matter how ginormous a data set may be.

Progressive betting is widely derided by everyone from casino personnel, who have an obvious interest in promoting the notion that their games are ultimately unbeatable, to mathematicians, whose agenda is less clear.

The logical alternatives to progressive betting are fixed (flat) or random betting, which arithmetic confirms cannot prevail against a negative game, and regressive betting, which reduces wagers in a downturn and so is obviously even worse than the other two methods.

Most people reject progressive betting because they are brain-washed into believing that it cannot win in the long run.

A small minority accepts that progressive betting can be effective, but thinks of it as too risky or too scary to use in a situation where the objective is to have fun and hopefully make a little money before going home.

I applaud everyone who gambles for fun, and thank them for contributions without which there would be no casinos.

But Target is about winning.

And however small the minority I'm in may be, I insist on believing that winning is much more fun than losing.

It can be risky, certainly, and hard work at times.

But it is far from mathematically impossible.

Progressive betting makes us think of a bazillion bets as just a long string of "series" or sequences of bets, each of which begins with one or more losses and ends with the recovery of money lost in that series, plus a small profit.

A series can begin with one or more winning bets, but does not technically qualify for Target's definition of a series until one or more losses lead to a recovery, or turnaround.

Breaking up what would otherwise be an infinite string of ups and downs makes long-term winning not only easier, but inevitable.

But the You Can't Win!!! mentality is an accurate prophecy for the vast majority of casino gamblers, all of whom go into games with too little money and without a long-term plan.

All I wanted to know when I started my insane quest for the impossible, as it has been characterized by the YCW brigade, was whether or not the house edge could be beaten in the long run.

If the Martingale or double-up method is given unlimited funds and free access to casino games - neither of which is true in the real world - then it can be claimed to be the easiest antidote to the house advantage.

But in reality, it has to deal with table limits that for practical purposes top out at around $25,000 in my neighborhood, as well as vigilant casino personnel who treat "Martingalers" as if they have come to rob the joint at gunpoint.

Table limits are far tighter outside of Nevada and New Jersey because a casino's interests are best served by squeezing progressive bettors into as small a box as the local market will allow.

The only large number that a Target player is concerned with is the spread between the minimum and maximum bets permitted at a given location.

The smaller the spread, the tougher the challenge.

The two truths that I refer to in today's heading are progressive betting's proven status as the only way to win in the long run, and the existence of patterns of wins and losses that can be consistently exploited for profit.

The patterns I'm talking about only relate to bet values when progressive betting is applied to them.

So -1,-1,-1,+1,+1 is a losing sequence until Target bets are applied (-1,-1,-1,+1,+3) or double-up determines bet amounts (-1,-2,-4,+8,+1).

In the Target example above, the series took five bets to resolve, falling back to a minimum wager ready for the next series, and double-up needed four bets.

Random betting may or may not have recovered lost chips from three bets in the two winners that came after them.

The fixed or flat bettor was, of course, out of luck.

In both blackjack and baccarat, which have a house advantage of less than 1.5% in the long run, you can count on 60% of all recovery series to turn around in FOUR bets or fewer.

Assuming that you are using progressive betting to delineate series in the first place, that is.

It then stands to sense that if the money won in all those short series does not exceed the combined value of chips lost when series run five bets or more, you might as well write the casino a check and stay at home.

But longer series don't lose. They just don't win as quickly.

My aim in all my recent posts has been to challenge readers to pull up Ken Smith's BST game or any alternative that they are comfortable with, and play first the way they always have, then with Target.

The existence of the rhythm or pattern of wins and losses that I keep going on about then becomes blindingly obvious.

Baccarat is a much harder slog than blackjack, because it lacks splits and double-downs and bonus-paid naturals, so while the overall rhythm is much the same as for the more popular (better) game, it takes longer to pay off.

Given the four-bets-or-less statistic I quoted earlier, it's worth the time to tackle a fair (but free) table game simulation that limits double-up to, say, four losses before a series is abandoned.

So -5,-10,-20,+40 pays a profit of 5 (+6.7%), and -5,-10,-20,-40 ends with a LOSS of 75 (-100%!).

Is it possible to win enough "plus fives" to cover the cost of a lesser number of "minus seventy-fives"?

In blackjack, your long-term prospects are pretty good and certainly better than betting without smart and consistent money management.

Give it a go: You'll have fun, even against a funny-munny game.

In baccarat, you'll likely lose a little - especially if you ignore the numbers and put (fake) money on Banker!

I mention the experiment simply to illustrate the difference between the two casino card games with the lowest house advantage.

Now, what if you were to apply the same four losers limit but make NB=PBx3 or x4 or x5 instead of x2?

Now you're talking!

Try it for a while, if only to convince yourself of the power of progressive betting.

Then you can learn all the Target rules and variations, and start making real money.

I began this blog early in 2009 hoping to convince as many people as possible that losing money in a casino is not as inevitable as death and taxes.

I get enough positive feedback from around the world (including Russia and China!) to keep me going.

And the more Target costs casinos and bookies everywhere, the happier I will be.

It's an uphill battle, of course. But they make for the most satisfying wins...just like Target.

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. One more piece of friendly advice: If you are inclined to use target betting with real money against online "casinos" such as Bodog, spend a few minutes and save a lot of money by reading this._

In a spirit of openness and transparency, from today on, Target's daily sports book bets will be posted right here for all to see!

_

(For current information about Target's ongoing sports betting experiment, please go to the Sethbets website, or click here for an introduction to progressive betting)

I have posted a few of these BST winning screen shots lately, proud that even in its simplest, least aggressive form, Target can still thrash a fair game of blackjack and offer proof besides.

After all, I said, there's no way I can interfere with an online game over which I have no control (other than beating the bleep out of it!).

Then it was pointed out to me that there are in fact all sorts of ways I could be cooking the books - throwing away low-value bets to increase the indicated house edge, for example...or not disclosing how many times I had to "buy in" over and over again before hitting a winning streak long enough to make Target seem unbeatable.

Darn! Honesty and integrity don't count for much these days, it seems.

Then again, when it comes to gambling, it may not be smart to trust anyone, however above board they might appear to be.

And since I have been blasting online "casinos" for games that are clearly set up to react defensively to progressive betting, I don't have much choice but to go an extra mile or so to reinforce my own credentials.

My advice to readers has always been to stay well away from online betting services when it comes to their versions of casino table games, but to enjoy the convenience they offer to sports bettors.

The Sethbets website has provided daily updates on Target's sports betting ups and downs for a very long time now, but I have not disclosed daily selections ahead of game times because I figured readers should be required to do at least a little work for themselves.

So...I guess I could be cooking the books, at least in the minds of those who are rightly suspicious of any betting method that claims to defy Newton's Law (the one that says that what goes up must eventually come down).

Participants in the long-running real time, real money Target betting trial have been getting selections ahead of time every betting day since July 24, 2010.

So they, at least, know that everything's kosher and the strategy has in truth been earning more than $10,000 a month since then.

For them, my decision to post daily picks and finals online won't change anything beyond stripping them of their "membership" in an exclusive club - and they have already learned all they need to know.

Truth is that sports betting does not require any special skills or inside knowledge.

As with casino games of chance, winning is not about how you play, but how you bet.

When I began the very first real time trial, in the summer of 2009, the idea was that selections should be randomly picked, relying on two factors that were outside of Target's control: odds values, and bet IDs.

Just to be clear, bookmakers determine odds (of course!) and the regulating authority for each sport assigns a numerical ID to each team and each game to simplify record-keeping.

I have a couple of rules I follow consistently: I can pick up to 20 propositions a day, and their assignment to lines 1 through 20 is in numerical order (bet #901 before #902, and so on, and on multi-sport days, #606 will precede #901); I only bet underdogs, and for most of the time since the current trial began, I have ignored odds above +140.

For a few months this past summer, I out-smarted myself by breaking the numerical order rule and assigning picks with the shortest odds to bets with the highest values.

And boy did I ever live to regret it.

Now, we're back to accepting bets in the order they come down the pike - a return to serendipity which got us out of deep doo-doo in July and has been taking good care of us ever since.

On July 14, I opened an "Online Only" trial which limits selections to just FIVE picks a day, again determined by the +100 to +140 range, and official numerical order.

What I'm trying to get across here is that anyone can do this!

It doesn't take specialized knowledge to pull up a daily schedule (this one, for example) and extract qualifying bets.

For sure, no one needs the services of the professional handicappers ("cappers") who charge big bucks for "expert" selections that are almost invariably favorites and then claim win rates that reflect the fact that they avoid risk-taking like the galloping clap!

The lesson from sports betting echoes the one from casino table games: It takes money to make money.

There simply is not - cannot be - a consistent, reliably-profitable method that does not from time to time demand risk.

Luck is helpful, now and then. But anyone who counts on luck will go broke sooner than later.

Certainly, after more than 4,000 bets, Target's current sports betting win of $160,000 can't be put down to blind luck.

The "bookies" edge since July 24, 2010, currently stands at a tidy 10.0% (for my 4,048 selections) and exactly matches the value I expected - and predicted - when I started all this.

I began with a $25,000 bankroll which was exposed less than $2,000 but which would have been wiped out more than four times over by the $102,000 slump that resulted soon after I dispensed with the numerical order rule.

All I can say to that is that when I changed the selection assignment method (same picks, but shuffled!) I was well over $100,000 ahead and felt I could do better.

I guess I just got greedy - and greed is always a gambler's worst enemy, more deadly by far than the crappiest bad luck!

My objective, way back when, was to demonstrate that emotionless objectivity was the key to long-term winning.

It worked brilliantly for close to a year. And then I went and fixed what wasn't busted.

The good news is that the slump emphasized that the more you think you know, the less likely you are to win in the long run.

Not good news for the guys who spend hours every day squinting at stats and sticking wet fingers in the air to find out which way the wind's blowing.

I guess the KISS rule is not so stupid after all!

Please visit the Sethbets website for directions to the FIVE and TWENTY pages that from now on will show daily selections ahead of game times, followed by finals when I have them.

As always, there's no charge for the information I provide, and I make no pretense to special expertise.

One last thing to note from the on-going TWENTY trial: losses outnumbered wins by 10% (2,227 to 1,821), but the average win value of $655 exceeded the average loss value of $464 by 41 percent.

As I have been saying since Day One, you know you're going to lose more bets than you win, over time, so you have to make sure you win more when you win than you lose when you lose.

Loosely translating Pythagoras: "Duhhhhhhh...!"

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. One more piece of friendly advice: If you are inclined to use target betting with real money against online "casinos" such as Bodog, spend a few minutes and save a lot of money by reading this._

They say if I keep winning, I must be cheating. I just wish I knew how to do that (and get away with it!).

_
(For current information about Target's ongoing sports betting experiment, please go to the Sethbets website, or click here for an introduction to progressive betting)


Maybe one way for me to encourage people out there to learn how to quit losing is to keep posting my own results.

There's a world of difference between playing for real money in an actual casino and betting against a "virtual" game - but when it comes down to the math, funny-munny sims like this really do have something to teach us.

The house edge for the hour or so's worth of play above is close to 9.0%, which is far beyond the less than 1.0% negative expectation for a single-deck game of blackjack played heads-up.

I haven't crunched the numbers yet, but I'd guess that the "win" you see here exceeds 10% of total action.

That's pretty standard for Target.

I'd love to be able to post actual wins from Nevada casino play, but for some reason the gambling industry is paranoid about note-taking at blackjack layouts, so it's safe to assume that whipping out a digital camera to immortalize a growing pile of chips is a serious no-no.

Am I manipulating Ken Smith's BST app? Nope, for one because I don't know how, for another because, er, what would be the point...?

I should confess that the big fat bankroll number above is not quite as impressive as it looks.

Because of the 1 to 200 "house limit" imposed by the Smith sim, I busted out a few times and had to buy back in each time.

But the truth is that in real play, I would by now be much further ahead.

Winning streaks started coming thick and fast right after the last buy-in (3 in a row, twins, 5 plus a double-down and another 3-peat within 30 hands of the low point).

That's not luck, that's just routine rhythm for blackjack: the house gets way ahead, then the pendulum starts to swing back.

If Target needed the same number of wins as losses to recover from a serious slump, it would never get the job done.

But it doesn't. Two wins, one after the other, is all it takes 99 percent of the time. Otherwise, three wins in succession will do the trick.

Another BST session this morning, short and sweet...


And another before lunch...


The session snapped immediately above provided a typical lesson on the hazards of so-called standard deviation.

Before recovery came along courtesy of FIVE consecutive wins, the last of them a successful double-down, the "house" had shot 13 bets ahead without a single win.

Without the table limit, the three-streak that followed that nightmarish opening (at -13!) would have saved the day, but I had to slog on for 51 more bets before climbing out of the hole.

This is why I keep saying that table limits exist for no other reason that to interfere with progressive betting strategies, including those that are artfully camouflaged with the term money management.

Anyone who backs off in a downturn (and it's a common response) is doing just what the house expects of them while destroying any prospect of recovering prior losses in fewer bets than it took to get into trouble.

You have to bet in such a way that turnaround can be achieved far more rapidly than temporary penury, keeping in mind that without the BST house limit, I would have reaped a profit while still being 11 bets behind.

Yesterday's question of the day was, What's your definition of acceptable risk? and the smaller the number in your answer, the more likely it is that you are already a long-term loser.

Here's the final summary from the latest BST session:


Unique, anecdotal, irrelevant, blah blah blah.

But the fact is that every session of blackjack or baccarat or roulette or craps or whatever is pretty much the same as any other from the same game and there was really nothing special about this one.

I erred a while back when I estimated the "player edge" at 10.0% but it turned out to be an educated prophecy - total action was close to $115,000, so the win percentage was in the ballpark.

There were some hairy moments, as there usually are, but the test of a good betting strategy has less to do with the trouble it can get into than with the trouble it can get out of.

Conservative play won't win back lost chips unless wins outnumber losses down the line, and that's a fantasy most of the time. Undisciplined aggression is similarly doomed by the fact that even after a slump (or a spike in the house edge), bad timing can do a whole lot more damage.

Target, on the other hand, did a pretty good job. Again!

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. One more piece of friendly advice: If you are inclined to use target betting with real money against online "casinos" such as Bodog, spend a few minutes and save a lot of money by reading this._

If you want to decide what flavor of Target is best for you, you should first figure out your personal definition of acceptable risk.

_

(For current information about Target's ongoing sports betting experiment, please go to the Sethbets website)

Before I launch with gusto into today's topic, a few added words about the inherent dishonesty and dubious accuracy of some sims, specifically those that claim to emulate blackjack and baccarat.

I mentioned Daniel Rainsong, whose blackjack betting strategy was torpedoed by Mike Shackleford, aka the Wizard of Odds, with some fanfare several years ago.

Mr. Rainsong seems resigned to his fate at the hands of Mr. Shackleford, and certainly, it is not for me to fight his battles for him.

All I can say is that I unreservedly reject any blackjack or baccarat data that have not come from, at the very least, a source that used actual cards to determine hand values and individual outcomes.

Ken Smith's nifty little app has never come close to defeating Target, and the same can be said for the Apple game devised for iPhones and iPods, so it's not surprising that I am particularly fond of those.

I have lost in real play against real blackjack in real casinos many times over the years, but my setbacks have so far (in more than 20 years!) only proved temporary, and happened because I was foolish enough to play without an adequate bankroll.

My downfall is that every so often, I can't resist the urge to spend some time in a casino - I count a few dealers as well as other regular players among my friends, and betting at a blackjack layout is the only sure way to enjoy their company!

It's against my rules, I know, but I'm just a regular guy, and I refuse to beat myself up for being human.

Target has frequently done me proud against craps and roulette, and because those games are purely numbers-driven, I have no problem with "sims" that use RNGs and interpret each new number appropriately.

I have my own sims that provide me with round numbers between 1 and 38 for roulette (37 is 0, 38 is 00 and you can guess the rest!) and between 2 and 12 for craps.

I enjoy roulette, in spite of the onerous 5.26% house edge for a double-zero game, but I'll never venture beyond the even-money options, and flee to the nearest blackjack or baccarat layout when bets start to climb.

Craps is a problem for me because common sense tells me to bet the DON'T and that's not the best way to make friends, or even stay friends with those you already have!

I long ago gave up reassuring my dice-rolling pals that I'm not betting against them, I'm betting against the house, so usually I stick to FIELD numbers, applying the same caution there as I do at roulette (like most people, I like to be liked).

I can produce examples of thousands upon thousands of simulated craps and roulette outcomes against which Target has profitably prevailed, but the response from skeptics is always that next time (or the time after that), the strategy is certain to crash and burn.

There's no answer to that.

Some people prefer to go along with the conventional wisdom that casino table games can't ever be beaten in the long run, and that faith is as strong and immovable as any you'll find among the Sunday bible crowd.

My position, as regular readers will long since have figured out, is that losing is not inevitable - unless you insist upon it.

Tackling a $10 minimum layout with less than $5,000 to weather what one blackjack addict I know constantly refers to as standard deviation is very unwise, to put it mildly, and it's the reason 99 players in ninety-nine and a half will leave their bankroll in the dealer's tray.

As I have said ad nauseam (even I'm nauseammed!), big money alone is far from a guarantee of success at any gambling proposition - but big money plus a consistent, disciplined plan stands a chance that's far better than even money.

Spread, spread, spread is as important in betting as location, location, location is in real estate, and anyone who does not recognize and act upon that simple truth will eventually fail, I can guarantee.

The hardest part about the method that I have been promulgating for free for decades is that it demands an attitude that is the antithesis of the average gambler's mindset.

Unless, of course, you happen to believe as I do that winning is a whole lot more fun than losing, and worth a little extra effort.

So, about acceptable risk...

The ongoing Target sports-betting RTRM (real time, real money) trial has now been under way for almost 14 months, betting almost every day, with selections posted as soon as I can manage it ahead of game times.

We started out with a $25,000 bankroll which has to date been exposed less than $2,000 and after yesterday's turnarounds, we now stand at a profit of $159,600 - or about $400 a day since July 24, 2010.

Sounds great, but at one point, when the BR stood at at $139,000 in profits, we hit a slump that dragged on for two and a half months and sucked up over $100,000 before sanity got the upper hand again and we climbed out of that very deep, deep hole.

Now, you can argue that $100,000 is far too great a risk even when you are almost $140,000 ahead and further argue that the current profit figure of almost $160,000 is not enough of a return on that terrible risk.

If that's the way you feel, I know that nothing I can say will dissuade you.

You might also look at the baccarat win I posted recently and say that a session profit of $80,000 does not justify a risk, at one point of $18,000.

Target's blackjack win of almost $170,000 is more impressive - but at one point, when the BR was fat with profits, $95,000 had to be put back into play to save it.

Opponents of progressive betting (many of them eager boosters of the casino line that losing is fun so suck it up!!!) have a habit of sneering at, say, a $500 bet that might recover losses of $495 plus an overall profit of $5 and say, Who'd be dumb enough to risk five hundred bucks for a one percent return?

Easy answer: a winner would be dumb enough. And so would a casino operator or a bookie.

Gamblers as a breed expect big returns for small risks. They don't often get 'em, but they keep on trying - the definition of insanity, according to some experts.

The way casinos and bookies look at the world is not through rose-tinted specs, but with confidence that when "the numbers" run against them, it will always be temporary, and the money they've lost will return to Papa soon enough.

That's exactly the way a Target player has to think.

To a strategic bettor, money lost is money temporarily loaned.

The only way Target can be forced to give up large amounts of ammo for a while is when the house edge goes crazy for limited number of successive bets.

And because we, too, have faith in the law of large numbers, which guarantees that neither slumps nor spikes can last forever, we are willing to put our money were our mouth is.

Assuming we have money in the first place, that is.

I promised a web page explaining recently-posted Target numbers, and here it is. I hope it serves to explain all the versions of the strategy I have recently talked about.

If not, I'll make an exception just this once and respond to e-mail queries!

You will see from the data - two remarkably similar stories from thousands of blackjack and baccarat outcomes analyzed separately - that the NF (no frills!) version of Target demands far less risk while, reasonably, returning far less profit.

A win progression boosts the strategy's earning rate, as do loss progressions of varying aggressiveness.

Whatever flavor of Target you may choose, they all have one thing in common: You have to stick with the rules, come hell or high water.

To do that, you need confidence in the strategy that matches a casino's faith that almost every customer will have "made a contribution" before the dealing's done.

You, of course, will be a worthy exception to that rule!

I don't expect anyone to simply take my word for Target's efficacy as an antidote to losing - I'd say anyone who does that is as foolish as a gambler who challenges a casino table game without a plan.



What I'm saying in this blog day after day, year after year, is that casino games of chance have such a minuscule house edge that a player willing to risk a little more and work a little harder can beat them consistently and reliably.

My local friend with a $300 stop-loss and a daily blackjack habit claims to break even or lose less than $2,000 a year at worst, and I have to say that based on all I have learned about the mathematics of table games, he's fooling himself.

He's not lying - or at least, he's lying to himself and other people are just collateral damage!

It simply isn't possible to win the way he plays. He knows all about Target and is impressed by its results, but he says it's simply "too risky" for his taste.

In other words, he'd rather lose than win.

And he's not alone in that. My neighborhood casino has a clique of a few dozen players who seem to have the means to lose regularly, and write those losses off as the cost of entertainment.

That gob-smacks me, but I respect their right to do what they want with their money!

Trying Target is an eye-opener, I can promise you that.

Give it a shot with the Ken Smith blackjack app, or whatever else you can find out there.

Play the rules carefully and accurately, "buy in" again whenever you go broke (as you must with tight table limits) but log your every bet, not with dollar amounts, but as a win or a loss, a double-down or a split, a push or a tie.

It will begin to dawn on you how often paired (or twinned) wins come along - and each time that happens, you know that but for those table limits, you would have been home and dry.


Even the unluckiest son of a gun can expect to make a little money if he wins more bets than he loses.

But that doesn't happen often (casinos frown on it!) so we all need to bet in such a way that can get ahead even when we lose more bets than we win.

Remember the Target mantra: "You have to win more when you win than you lose when you lose so that losing more bets than you win won't hurt you."

Amen to that.

For the record, the same session got better...



...and better (although with a house edge that's currently at 8.45%, I don't think anyone could say BST is going easy on me!).



And here's where the session ended up:


It's not a "real" game, I know - but it's a lot more real than the sims casino shills like the Wizard of Odds use to squash challengers.

For one thing, BST deals from 52 cards (I opted to drop down to a single-deck game just because it was available with 3-2 paybacks for naturals, and that's a rarity in Nevada these days) and there are no repeats until the "deck" is audibly and visually "shuffled."

For another, Mike Shackleford and his cohorts are paid to protect the interests of the gambling industry, so why would we expect their methods to be honest?

Their masters sure aren't!

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. One more piece of friendly advice: If you are inclined to use target betting with real money against online "casinos" such as Bodog, spend a few minutes and save a lot of money by reading this._

One question you have to decide is, Would you ever want to play against a random numbers generator pretending to be a real casino table game?

_
(For current information about Target's ongoing sports betting experiment, please go to the Sethbets website)

I just added more than 1,500 rounds to the current baccarat sample after digging back through the archives for sessions against another online pseudo-casino, BookMaker.

My experience with them early this summer reinforced my suspicion that unregulated online operations are scams - and, of course, there are not many regulated ones.

British based outfits such as William Hill and Ladbrokes claim they comply with the rules that apply to bricks-and-mortar casinos in the U.K., and there's a move in Australia to extend government oversight to Internet betting services.

I played baccarat against BookMaker for quite a while, and although I logged all my own bets, I backed up my data by requesting a full history of each session from customer service.

"Histories" look like this:


I was surprised how well I did.

Every time I had to place a real-money bet of $100 or more, I expected a departure from the to-and-fro pattern that characterizes baccarat, but I was a winner pretty much every time.

The "casino" help desk always responded reasonably promptly to my requests for history updates, and I began to think that maybe this was a straight game after all.

Then came a reality check - a session in which paired wins vanished from the face of the earth and my winnings almost entirely evaporated.

Not to worry, I thought, I can request the usual history and run a careful analysis to see if the losing session was as kosher as the others seemed to be.

I put in my standard request, and here's what I got in reply:


The issue, of course, was not resolved at that point - and never was.

I waited another month, and after sending several more requests for the missing data, I closed my BookMaker account.

Does all this seem suspicious to you? It did to me - but after my Bodog experience, I wasn't greatly surprised that one of their biggest competitors seemed just as crooked.

The big difference was that sports betting at BookMaker using the Target method had doubled my buy-in and I was happy to cash my payback check (after a 3-week wait!) and return the money to my bankroll.

The BookMaker baccarat data is tainted to some degree, whether or not the games are truly random and reputable, because online casinos protect themselves from card counters by, in effect, reshuffling the "shoe" after every round.

I don't have a problem with that, as long as the data is not being manipulated to boost the house edge.

After all, I am always advising students of Target to walk away from a layout where their next strategic bet would exceed the table limit, because logic dictates that their chances of winning the critical turnaround wager at a new "higher rent" location are no better or worse than if they had stayed put.

And that doesn't contradict my recommendation that a Target player should run for the hills - or at least pastures new - if things start going badly.

Baccarat and blackjack are both short-skirmish games most of the time, with recovery series being resolved in five bets or less more often than not.

When a series drags on way past the norm, there can be no way of knowing if recovery is just two or three bets away, or if a serious threat to the bankroll is looming.

Likewise, there's no guarantee that stepping back and resuming play elsewhere will have a beneficial effect.

But sitting still for a relentless pounding just doesn't make sense, and that's one of the many problems I have with billion-bet simulations like the ones that are routinely used to "disprove" the principle of progressive betting.

Setting a random number generator at a house edge of, say, 1.4% and then letting it rip is a neat way of avoiding all the time and effort involved in playing real games in real time for real money.

But pretending it's a fair test of anything is downright dishonest.

For example, blackjack and baccarat have about the same house edge (less than 1.5%) but the character and rhythms of the games - the patterns of wins and losses - while similar, are certainly far from the same.

Blackjack has several factors at work that make it more profitable than baccarat, not the least of them being a payback for player naturals that is better than even money.

Double-downs and splits offer an overall player advantage of around 20%, and their timing can often be critical, ending a drawn-out recovery series in a single win instead of the two consecutive wins that are often required.

I have yet to come across a high-speed sim that would permit the rules of Target to be applied to blackjack hands randomly-dealt from a source that imitates an actual deck or shoe.

So it is with baccarat, craps and roulette.

The most offensive aspect of "sims" as touted by the likes of the Wizard of Odds as a fair method of evaluating betting strategies is what I usually refer to as the inertia effect.

No one with blood in his veins is going to sit still for 23 consecutive losses (the number I once recorded at the Union Plaza in Las Vegas!) or even half that number, although I concede that the house has no option but to keep taking bets when a player manages 16 consecutive wins - my personal record.

But "sims" routinely dole out that kind of punishment.

For the record, in the current baccarat and blackjack sessions, the longest losing streak for either game is -10 (blackjack's is -9), and the longest winning streak was +10.

"The Wiz" makes much of his debunking of a method submitted by Daniel Rainsong, but from what I have seen, I feel it's safe to say that Mr. Rainsong was gypped.

Here are the updated rules variables numbers after the addition of the BookMaker data:


Setting up a web page that explains the meaning of each line is high on my To Do list and I'll post a link here when the job's done.

In the meantime, a few words about one of my personal betting quirks: doubling my wager in response to a push or a tie.

I do it just for fun, even though I'm always at pains to tell Target students that strategic betting is a serious and disciplined business...with the emphasis on business.

Let's face it, pushes are a waste of time - but does it make sense to respond to random prompts to increase bet values without reference to Target's mid-recovery win rule?

It does, and the new data confirms it.

The center block of numbers in the summary above is self-explanatory, I think, but the page I have promised will make it even clearer.

One big plus from "push pumping" your bets is that a well-timed win will (as with blackjack's "bonus" paybacks) bring turnaround a little sooner than it might otherwise have occurred. And that's never a bad thing.

Some baccarat advice: Never, ever put money on Banker - and ignore the tie option unless you're keen on flushing good money down the toilet.

Balking at Banker bets often gets me into trouble with baccarat enthusiasts, but the commission penalty adds up to way too much money over the long run to make sense to a player who's in it to win it.

Pushes, on the other hand, are pretty widely accepted to be a crappy bet.

Dealers often push ties as an attractive option, especially at "Mini-bacc" layouts, and I follow a simple rule: If a dealer tries the pitch twice, I put money on the tie and tell him or her, "This is for you" - adding that that's where all future tokes will go.

The effect is always the same! Suddenly, betting ties doesn't seem like such a good idea.

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. One more piece of friendly advice: If you are inclined to use target betting with real money against online "casinos" such as Bodog, spend a few minutes and save a lot of money by reading this._

Once you accept that progressive betting is your only winning option, you can modify the Target rules to suit your style...and your bankroll.

_
(For current information about Target's ongoing sports betting experiment, please go to the Sethbets website)

One of the most persistent myths about casino gambling is that there is something magical and unknowable about how the next few hands, rolls or spins will play out.

Most people understand that "the math" rules all table games, and that in the long run they are sure to lose more bets than they win.

But they assume that "the math" is a law of large numbers only - numbers with an excess of commas and zeroes - and that there's a good chance it will somehow give them a break for the next hour or so.

In fact, when outcomes (defined as wins or losses with no dollar values attached) are studied in relatively small groups or samples, patterns can be discerned that are repeated again and again.

Casino operators know that, and stake their huge start-up costs not just on the reliability of game stats both long and short-term, but on "the math" of player behavior.

They depend on their customers to either defy or be blissfully unaware of true odds, to react emotionally and irrationally to short-term trends both for and against them, and to accept that they will eventually lose.

Most people don't look for patterns, so the only ones they notice are the screamingly obvious streaks that either put them briefly ahead or wipe them out.

And most people would never think of linking their bet values to any agenda other than staying in the game for as long as their (usually meager) funds will allow and having as much fun as possible before their money runs out.

Not that there is anything wrong with fun.

Hell, without the happy hordes who revel in "free" booze and excitement, there would be no casinos, and nowhere for a cautious, conservative player who sees table games as an investment to make a modest profit!

I go back to risk-free games like those offered online by countless unregulated pseudo casinos because they offer the best way to collect the statistics - the numbers - that support the Target concept.

Real casinos don't permit any record-keeping at blackjack tables (other than their own), and while baccarat and roulette players are allowed to scribble notes on fancy cards provided for the purpose, it's a slow, drawn-out process.

I don't learn anything new when I set aside a few hours for yet more analysis, but it gives me something to write about here, and keeps me out of more serious mischief.

The only time I ever play for real money is when I have a lot of it to put in play - it really does take money to make money - and I admit I don't enjoy casinos as much as I used to.

The most critical rule in Target Betting is that you must at any time know exactly how far behind you are, so that you can calibrate your bet values to win back that sum - your target - plus a fair payment for your time and toil.

The latest blackjack and baccarat samples confirm that "nothing changes under the sun" - quick turnarounds, or recovery of prior losses, can only be achieved by varying bet values.

Flat or random bets don't cut it...can't cut it.

Take the most common sequence in table games: Win one, lose one, aka lose one, win one.

Either way, after two bets of equal value, you're back where you started.

No great insight there. But in the current blackjack sample (6,150 hands or about 30 hours of play), the bare-bones version of Target, which increases the bet only in response to a mid-recovery win, flat-betting until that moment wins $16,000 overall for a "player edge" of 8.5%.

Not too shabby, but if all I do is double the bet once after an opening loss in a new series, the win jumps to $17,885 (+9.1%).

More important, there's a 10% jump in the total number of turnarounds, from 989 to 1,086 - and the quicker you can turn a temporary loss into a profit, the better off you are.

It's moronically simple: -1, +2 is infinitely more profitable than -1, +1!

Exactly the same applies to the baccarat sample (938 turnarounds in 6,320 rounds jumps to 1,109).

(There are fractionally fewer recoveries in baccarat because blackjack has double-downs, splits and bonus paybacks for naturals).

Another Target wrinkle involves an opening win in a new series, and the choice is between increasing the next bet (NB) or repeating the previous bet (PB).

My preferred rules bump the bet after an opening win by 50% (x1.5).

Do that with the baccarat sample, and the overall win goes from $8,345 (+7.1%) to $14,115 (7.0%) - a hefty increase in profits offset by a proportionately much smaller jump in overall action, aka risk.

In the blackjack set, same story: a $16,000 win (+8.5%) without the x1.5 win progression rule, +$31,000 (+8.3%) with it.

Reinstate the x2 after an opening loss rule in blackjack, and you get a win of $35,000 (+8.8%) and in baccarat the equivalent numbers are +$39,000 (+7.3%).

You can also see the effects of blackjack's greater volatility compared to baccarat's sedate and slow (read tedious if you like!) process.

This is why I have gone to enormous trouble and expense to create spreadsheets that can tell me in an instant what the effects will be of very minor changes in the Target strategy.

It is statistically valid to be confident that one large sample of outcomes from any game with a similar house edge will be pretty much the same as any other, however hard the gambling industry's brown-nosed mythematicians may try to argue against that simple truth.

If win-loss patterns in table games (or any gambling proposition) were as haywire and haphazard as many self-described experts would have you believe, casinos would have far more to worry about than they actually do.

As it is, games have to be beatable by a few so that the many will keep coming back to be beaten, and the patterns that make it possible for some people to win some of the time are what Target exists to exploit.

We don't want to win now and then. We want to win consistently. And we know just how to do it.

It is nonsense for anyone to suggest that there will be a vast difference in a statistical analysis of 10,000 rounds of baccarat dealt from Table #9 (or whatever) in the next few days, and 10,000 rounds dealt and recorded a week, a month or a year later.

We can see from the summary below that blackjack and baccarat yield very different results, and we'd expect that because of all the extra betting options that blackjack offers and baccarat doesn't because the royal idiot it was invented to amuse would have found them too confusing.

But what is eerily consistent is the effect on both games of seemingly minor tweaks in the Target strategy.

And let's not forget that history is all we have to guide how we conduct ourselves right now and in the future - it is, in other words, the foundation of all experience and wisdom.


(You don't have to be a French lamebrain to find the figures above mystifying, so anyone who would like a detailed explanation is invited to simply ask politely until I get a chance to post one on the website!)

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. One more piece of friendly advice: If you are inclined to use target betting with real money against online "casinos" such as Bodog, spend a few minutes and save a lot of money by reading this._

You'll almost always lose more bets than you win, and bigger bets won't put you ahead of the game. But smarter bets will make you a winner.

_
(For current information about Target's ongoing sports betting experiment, please go to the Sethbets website)


It's been quite a while since I last sat down for a Target session against Ken Smith's blackjack simulation, and I had almost forgotten how vastly superior it is to most of what's out there.

And I say that not just because the program permits me to run up "winnings" like those above - like any other game with long-term negative expectation, this version of blackjack (I always select an eight-deck shoe) can sometimes be pretty tough to beat.

The beauty of BST is not just that it "deals" from an actual deck or shoe, with dealt cards staying out of play until the next shuffle, but that it is fast, fair and accurate.

As always, the win shown here is not offered as proof of anything, just as an indication of what can be achieved when prejudices and preconceptions are set aside and a smart strategy is consistently applied.

Money alone will not beat casino table games - any number of "beached" whales who believed their big bucks could buy the pot can attest to that (whales being the term they use in Vegas to describe players with a lot more money than sense!).

It isn't how you play that makes you a winner, it's how you bet. And bigger is only better if the number you are talking about is the spread between your smallest and largest bet values.

Blackjack is the only table game in which a player's decisions can materially affect his or her outcome, and that's why it boasts more "experts" than all the alternatives.

But the truth is that knowing when to hit, split, double-down or stand pat is of infinitely less significance in the long run than knowing how much to bet and when.

Dumb moves - yours or someone else's - might hurt the hand you're playing right now, but as long as you bet correctly, you can easily offset short-term setbacks and come out a winner at the end of the day.

Basic strategy's most important advice covers splits and double-downs, because you can expect to win 60% of those.

But even that won't help you if the right bet isn't on the table at the right time.

You should start by assuming that you will win, not the opposite.

And you should also be fully aware that the smaller your bankroll and the tighter your betting spread, the more likely it is that you'll be a loser.

Casinos everywhere are built - literally - on shoestring bankrolls that could not survive relatively brief and always temporary losing trends.

Table limits exist partly to encourage narrow betting spreads, although since most gamblers think they are being very daring if they bet $100 at a $10 table, their purpose is primarily to thwart progressive bettors.

How-to books and websites that concern themselves with odds and stats don't matter a damn when it comes down to the bottom line.

Sure, you need to know which casino options are the least likely to empty your wallet, and understanding the rules of the available games doesn't hurt.

But all that counts for nothing if you don't have enough money on hand to bet as much as you need to bet when you need to bet it.

I keep singing the same old song, I know, but given all the disinformation out there, finding an audience to hum along with me can be hard sometimes!

Here's some good advice: If you can't afford to win, don't play.

I'll take that any day over Never lose more than you can afford.

I concern myself primarily with blackjack and baccarat when I make a trip to the bank (the word I prefer to use in place of casino!) because games with a house edge below 2.0% are usually easier to beat than the high-vig alternatives.

Both those card games have a rhythm or a pattern that Target very successfully exploits, which is why very often, a single win is all you need to recover prior losses and start over with a minimum bet.

For example, my Bodog and BST blackjack sessions have so far consisted of 1,060 series averaging five bets in length.

(If you have come late to the party, a series starts with a minimum bet and ends when prior losses have been recovered, plus a modest EOS or end-of-series profit).

It helps to know that more than two-thirds (68%) of those series wrapped at or below the average, 60% of them were in profit in four bets, and almost half (46%) came in at three or two bets (there is of course no such animal as a one-bet series!).

That tells us that doubling your bet after a loss is a pretty smart move, at least for a while.

But then there's the problem that dealers are constantly on the look-out for so-called Martingale bettors - and they don't like them one bit.

Target does just fine if the only rule you apply kicks in after a mid-series win with a bet equal to prior losses for the current series, plus a little bit.

No one data set can ever be exactly the same as any other, obviously, but for my latest blackjack sessions, dropping all the Target bells and whistles and sticking with the core rule woulda cut the number of completed series from 1,060 to 890 while reducing the overall win by more than half and total action by about 45%.

Any data set of reasonable size (500 rounds or so) will confirm that trend.

My new baccarat sample has about 1,000 more rounds and so more series completions: 1,265 with all the recommended Target rules in play.

The bear-bones modification has a similar effect: the EOS number drops to 982 (78%), and the final win and action numbers take about a 50% hit.

Don't let anyone convince you that casino games are random and unpredictable.

You can't know the outcome of the next bet, obviously, but very little changes from one data sample to the next in the long run

That, of course is what the house relies on.

All the different games are just different ways to set the hook, then reel in your dough.

Some fish like worms, others prefer flies, or eggs or power bait or spinners. You picks your poison, then you "make your contribution" - that's the way it is for most gamblers.

But why be a loser - a fish flapping on the riverbank - when you don't have to be?

Then again, a feeling of total invincibility would be as bad for you as greed is for the rest of the herd.

It's best to know and respect what you're up against and to let discipline and confident consistency guide your every move.

That's what Target is all about.

Luck cannot factor into your relationship with the house, because it will be with the bad guys just a little more often than it's with you.

Your concern is making sure that you never allow yourself to be in a situation where two (or, at worst, three) consecutive wins won't get you out of trouble.

It's not always easy to play with that kind of confidence, along with the money to back it up.

But as time goes by and as your bankroll grows, it gets easier.

Here's another screen shot from Ken Smith's BST app.


The story is even sadder than it looks: Against a relentless house edge that ended up at 11.3% overall, the $5 to $1,000 "house limit" required me to buy in to the tune of $40,000 before I finally threw in the towel.

Does that prove that Target is a failure?

Absolutely not, because in real play I would never fight on with a crippling 1 to 200 spread limit.

Know this: When the data set from this session (hand outcomes without bet values) were plugged into a spreadsheet that "played" real Nevada table limits, Target came out an 11% winner thanks to twinned wins that showed up 32 times between the point at which the bet cap was reached and the end of the session.

Any one of those win combos would have meant recovery if the table limit had been circumvented by simply moving to another layout or a different game with a higher cap.

Successful splits and double-downs, along with the usual 4% sprinkling of naturals, softened the final house edge from the number indicated by the Smith app's summary to 7.14% - still more than 7x negative expectation for the game.

In even the toughest casino game (roulette at -5.26% is a strong contender) paired wins are a frequent occurrence.

Trouble is, most players don't notice them.

And those that do have no idea how to make the most of them.

Almost everyone who gambles follows the behavior pattern that the casinos rely on: Limited resources, a tight betting spread, and a tendency to stay put and stick it out when things start to go badly.

If your next bet after a mid-series win will exceed the table limit, never be afraid to turn tail and run.

The usual rhythm of most games calls for short skirmishes and relatively quick turnarounds.

Damage control isn't cowardice, it's common sense.

The mythematicians out there who work so hard to bolster the casinos' message that winning is impossible in the long run so learn how to love losing always argue that any defensive response to a downturn must ultimately prove futile.

The only way to prove them wrong is to keep winning.

And if all you get out of early flight from a "cold" layout is a boost to your morale, that's good enough.

Any minute now, twinned wins will show up, and you'll be back in the chips. Count on it.

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. One more piece of friendly advice: If you are inclined to use target betting with real money against online "casinos" such as Bodog, spend a few minutes and save a lot of money by reading this._