What does gun control in America have to do with gambling? Every day that we allow psychos easy access to firearms and ammo, we're gambling with the lives of innocent people, that's what!

OK, so plenty of opportunists use the latest shooting outrage in the USA as an excuse to climb up on a soapbox, but what always amazes me is the number of times we're asked to swallow that twaddle that "Guns don't kill people, people kill people."

We have become a nation so brain-washed by the NRA's cynical misinterpretation of the spirit and intent of the hallowed Second Amendment that a majority of Americans actually believe that sensible controls on access to killing machines will do more harm than good.

It doesn't help that most politicians are even more cowardly about the gun control issue than they are about raising taxes on their uber-rich sponsors, or that the idea of government interference in any aspect of American life, even if it will prevent the slaughter of our children, is seen by many of us as the root of all evil.

Radio's right wing-nuts blow their hardest when guns are an issue, doing their damnedest (and they deserve to be damned!) to stir up fear and hatred, and win back votes for an ideology that was irrelevant to modern life long before Bush Jr. made America an international laughing stock.

Here's the truth about gun control:

• No one who is sane and responsible and law-abiding will lose the guns they already own because of any new laws that have been or ever will be proposed in the USA.
• The root of the gun problem is the ease with which deranged and unstable people with evil intent can buy or otherwise obtain guns and ammunition, and the willingness of greedy gun-makers and gun dealers to sell their wares to anyone as long as the price is right.
• Anyone who now owns any gun should be required to register it with the local police, to provide the authorities with the names of everyone who has access to that gun, and to agree to keep the weapon out of the reach of anyone who is not officially listed and approved as a potential user of the registered firearm.
• Private sales or transfers of ownership of controlled weapons will be banned unless the seller or prior owner of a gun has cleared the transfer by filling out the necessary paperwork and the intended new owner has been background-checked and approved.
• Full background checks of new owners will be required before any sale of a firearm, and every gun will be readily traceable from the manufacturer or importer through the dealer to the purchaser.  Gun-makers or dealers who fail to follow this strict protocol will be heavily penalized and may have their license to make or sell firearms suspended or permanently revoked if they break the law.
• No controlled weapons will be permitted to change hands at gun shows: purchasers will have to apply for registration ahead of possession and wait up to 90 days for delivery, and no money will be exchanged until the transaction has been officially sanctioned. 
• All gun owners will be required to attest under penalty of perjury that they have a safe place to keep every weapon in their possession, and to agree to on-site inspections at the discretion of the relevant authority. 
• The loss or theft of any firearm should be immediately reported to the gun control authority, with the law stipulating that the registered owner of any weapon used in the commission of a crime will be charged as an accessory to that crime, and if convicted will face punitive fines and a jail sentence, as well as potential civil liabilities.
• Taxpayers will not bear any of the cost of enforcing new gun control laws: Every aspect will be funded by fees payable by gun owners for each step in the process, including applications for registration, transfers and inspections.

The NRA and other loony gun-nut organizations love to hide their irresponsible, murderous ideology behind the Constitution, claiming that it gives every citizen the right to not just own but carry a gun, regardless of any potential danger to others.

The Second Amendment says no such thing, despite the Supreme Court's cowardly willingness to pander to the paranoia of sociopaths.

The Second Amendment acknowledges the need for security and the maintenance of law and order in our society, and the "militia" it refers to could be defined as the U.S. Military on the federal level or local police ands the National Guard at state level.

That's not to say that law-abiding citizens should not be allowed to own guns, and even use them as hunters or in other sports.

Where we have to draw the line is on the safe side of firearms that are in effect weapons of mass destruction.

That means no assault weapons, no military guns of any kind, no exploding bullets, no multi-bullet clips -- and above all, no right to own or sell a gun without full accountability at all times.

Guns don't kill people?

Could the deranged shooter at Newtown or Aurora or any one of countless other American scenes of carnage have claimed as many victims with hunting rifles rather than weapons callously designed to blow away as many "targets" as possible as quickly as possible?  Of course not.

Would so many people be killed in robberies every day in the USA if guns were not almost as easy to buy on our streets as a loaf of bread or a carton of milk.  No.

Why don't I stick to gambling and mind my own business?  Because that's what Americans have been doing for generations: minding their own business and pretending that gun laws that protect criminals and the criminally insane are not a threat to the rest of us every hour of every day.

And gun control is not about government interference in citizens' lives or the loss of privacy or "inalienable rights."  It's about common sense, along with acceptance that the government is us and not some enemy entity intent on enslaving us.

Too many of us think of the government as "them" because we refuse to play any role in the election (and rejection!) of the politicians who represent us or the officials who work for us.

We can keep government in check if we pay attention, instead of shrugging off our responsibilities by whining that our one little vote in 120 or so million doesn't count.

We all matter individually, and we matter even more as a community with common interests and a shared obligation to look out for each other -- and our children.

Tighter gun controls won't prevent every future murder, and as always in America, as fast as new laws are enacted, people with murder on their minds will find ways to get around them.

But at least we will at last have stopped treating guns as if they were toys, or symbols of freedom and independence and proof of manliness.

They are none of those things.

They are intended to kill.

And if we can recognize that ugly truth and act together like a nation of grown-ups, we will be giving the children whose lives we save good reason to look up to us.

It can happen.

Wanna bet...?

_ 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. _

When you choose, you lose! Greed and ignorance are a punter's worst enemies, we all know, but too many choices can be deadly, too.

(Click here for Wednesday-Sunday Target GG updates)

Let's face it, the more choices we have to make, the more likely we are to screw up, which is why I have long been an advocate of choosing from as few options as possible, and sticking with just one of two or more alternatives whenever practicable.

It's not a popular point of view.

And if I'm against hopping from Player to Banker at baccarat or from Red to Black at roulette or thinking too much at any casino table game, then my advice must rule out the pro-sports schedule, with dozens of games every day, and horse-racing, which can have up to 16 contenders in a single contest.  Right?

Not so.

The key to success in a casino is to back a single option, and then apply the Target Betting rules with unwavering confidence and consistency.

It's the same with sports betting and at the races, except that instead of following a single series from first loss to inevitable turnaround, you create multiple series or lines, and apply the Target algorithm separately to each one of them.

You can't bet every game or back every nag in a race, so you whittle down the field using filters or parameters that, like the Target rules themselves, never vary.

Forget past performance and weather conditions, players and jockeys and all of the factors that the experts claim can be predictive, and stick with plain and simple numbers.


When I started my (almost!) two-year transparent sports betting trial, some readers were insulted by the very idea that random bet selection could be far more effective in the long run than expert analysis of all the factors that can have bearing on the outcome of a game.

But my primary commitment will always be to the proven notion that when applied with discipline and consistency in accordance with the right rules set, progressive betting can overcome negative expectation.  Better yet, it will create a long-term player edge that is every bit as reliable as the house advantage in any game we care to tackle.

The conventional wisdom is that "the math" is against me.

But I have demonstrated over and over again that in fact the numbers are on my side, and anyone with an open mind and the means to apply fair and accurate tests to the Target concept will inevitably back me up on that.

I don't claim to have invented progressive betting (it has been around as long as gambling, probably) but my adaptation of it is entirely my own.

As many of you know, I started out analyzing blackjack, then created models that proved the power of progressive betting against baccarat, craps, roulette and any game that doesn't amount to suicidal nonsense (the wheel of fortune and keno, for example).

The bad news that emerged was that the Target method requires a very wide betting spread, and a bankroll that is beyond the reach of more than 99% of all the world's gamblers.

The good news is that most gamblers expect to lose and won't help themselves do otherwise, leaving the field wide open for a betting strategy that in the long run beats most other investment opportunities in terms of rate of return and reliability.

I have used Apple shares in the past as a benchmark for a comparison between Target betting on pro sports or horse-racing and a "non-gambler" investing in the stock market, and now is a good time to revisit the example.

In mid-September, Apple's shares reached a record high of $705 a pop; on Friday last (Dec 7) they dropped $14 to $533.

For the Vanguard Group, which is one of Apple's heftiest institutional investors with 41 million shares, the current slump amounts to a $7 billion -- yes, billion! -- hit.

Does that make Vanguard a foolish, irresponsible investor with a total disregard for the numbers?  Hell, no!  Apple is generally perceived to be a long-term sure thing, with a share price north of $750 probable once market volatility subsides and the world's coolest gadget maker launches its new take on TV technology in 2013.

It might seem facile to compare horse-race betting with stock market investment, but in the eight months since I first started a serious study of Target and the gee-gees, the betting strategy is ahead by a six-figure sum after at one point suffering a loss of...well, a helluvalot.

It would be infinitely more facile to suggest, as some do, that given a sufficiently enormous bankroll, any betting proposition with a negative expectation can eventually be made profitable for a well-heeled player.

The millionaires and billionaires who built Las Vegas, Macau and countless pale imitations include many who lost vast sums making the same dumb assumption that a losing streak can be turned around if you throw enough money at it.

Big money is essential to long-term success at gambling, just as it is in stock market investment.  But it guarantees a profit only when its muscle is allied with a disciplined, workable plan.

The enemy of success is, you could say, out-thinking the challenge.

A year or two back, the world's first publicly-traded sports investment fund was launched in Europe with great fanfare and around $5 million behind it, trumpeting the idea that sophisticated computer analysis of every available betting proposition would guarantee huge returns.

Well, pffffffffffffftttt...!  The fund went out of business, as did a US-based project called InvestaPick, which made one bet a day from each of three independent funds or bankrolls.

The European fiasco blamed "a long run of bad luck" and confirmed that all the expert analysis in the world won't help you if you keep on making the wrong choices.

Too much thinking wiped out both ventures, although InvestaPick kept reinventing itself by rewriting history, posting past results with new betting rules applied whenever the red ink got too deep for comfort.

In my transparent sports trial, I ended up almost $200,000 ahead by July, 2012, after posting my picks online ahead of game times every day, followed by results each night or the following morning.

In the summer of 2011, I dug myself into a six-figure hole by deciding that the biggest bets should be applied to games that offered each day's shortest odds.

In doing so, I broke my own rule that random selection is the safest way to go, better by far than human intellect.

And once I abandoned my foolish heresy (with every bet publicly posted ahead of the game, as usual) the numbers took over and Target climbed back into rich green returns.

Both sports and horse-race betting have an enormous advantage over casino table games in that game and race results are readily verifiable and no one can cheat...including me.

I have kept quiet about the progress of "Target GG" because I needed to build up a substantial results database tailored to my peculiar needs, and with just my fingers to do the typing, it has been a long and drawn-out process with a lot more time and toil in store.

The data have to be accurate, obviously, but far more important is that every relevant fragment of information must be entered into a succession of worksheets that are interactive, and able to provide instant answers to any what if? question that an inquiring mind might come up with.

It came as a big surprise to me that horse-racing databases that already exist are entirely focused on arcane details that are virtually meaningless to anyone but thoroughbred trainers, owners and riders, skipping the morning line and post-time odds, for example.

I really don't care that a given entry has won five of his last seven outings, for example, or that his times are improving and that he's at his most competitive in a field of seven or more.

What matters to me is the payback when my horse is first or second past the post, recognizing that unlike in sports betting, where the odds applicable when you bought your winning ticket are what you get when you cash it in, the numbers on the tote board often keep changing even after the gate goes up. 

As always, past results have to play second fiddle to present and future outcomes, because we all need confidence that a method that has been historically profitable won't suddenly crash and burn.

With that in mind, I intend to keep past results and the details of my methodology to myself, at least for the time being, and revive the concept of transparency on these pages.

Right now, I'm betting on at most three or four of the 20 or so tracks that are running races every day in the USA and Canada, backing up to five entries in every race.

Bet #1 is linked with bet #1 at the same track in the previous race, bet #2 with #2 and so on, but beyond that, there is no relationship between the five bets on any race.

My current open tracks are Aqueduct NY (AQU) and Gulfstream Park FL (GP), with Betfair Hollywood Park CA (BHP) tacked on to results from Santa Anita CA (SA) 30 miles or so across Los Angeles County.

Target GG struggled for the first couple of weeks after Aqueduct opened on November 2, but it's well ahead now, as it is at Gulfstream Park after a few rough days when the five-month winter meeting began on December 1.

Meanwhile, I'm in deep red ink at Hollywood Park, having wiped out the profits from 24 betting days at Santa Anita.

I am every bit as confident as Vanguard is in Apple that the current losing streak at BHP will come to an end long before all my profits to date are wiped out and I have to start raiding my initial bankroll all over again.

What I'm doing here is let the tote pick my horses for me, which is the equivalent of the "Ask the Audience" option in TV's "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?"  I do, I do, and since I know about as much about thoroughbreds as I do about pro sports teams, I am happy to be guided by the popular vote.

You will find regular Target GG updates on the Sethbets website, although given the relatively vast number of bets each day and the fact that odds keep changing up to and beyond post-time, I won't be able to put up my selections ahead of time as I did with the long transparent pro sports trial.

There's still no room for cheating, though: I bet the first, second and third favorites to win in every race, and when the field is large enough, additional money goes on the fourth and fifth favorites.

In the past few months, I have looked at a variety of exotic bets and rejected them all.  There's a reason bookies and the tote encourage them!  I am a plain and simple bettor, never venturing beyond place bets for relative outsiders, and win bets on the "top three" in any race.

The database I have put together so far endorses the experts' expectation that favorites will win a third of all races.

It also supports advice I was given by a top racing official more years ago than I care to count:  "Bet the second favorite to win, my boy, and you'll stay out of serious trouble."

The favorite noses past the #2 more often than not...but odds on the second favorite routinely make up the difference.  If all you take away from this blog is that ancient piece of advice, you will not have wasted your time here!

Each day's update will include a link to the official results page (thanks a million, Equibase!), which includes the odds that prevailed at the off.

Get ready to see some very large numbers, in both red and black ink.

The reality is that no one can hope to win against any betting proposition unless they have the resources to bet a very wide spread.  Mine is from $25 to $25,000 and will widen as time goes by.

Think of Billy Walters, the Las Vegas punter who's too big to be called a whale (which is in any case a term used to describe losers who blow hard and then go under, and Walters has been on top of the bookies for decades!).

Mr. Walters doesn't win all the time, any more than I do.  In a very flattering "60 Minutes" segment a while back, he conceded that he routinely has losing days, weeks and months, but so far has never suffered a losing year.

Winning is all about hanging in there, and sticking with the same strategy, no matter what.

The Target GG rules for horse-race betting provide for filters or parameters that disqualify some races because of ultra-low odds or too few entries, but for now I am betting far more often than I believe is optimum.

For a few more weeks, I'm willing to endure the extra stress and effort that comes from jumping into pretty much every race at the tracks I have selected.  As I said earlier, the fewer choices I have to make, the more successful I'm likely to be.

I'd say Wish me luck! but luck's not what I need.  The numbers have everything taken care of, and as always, I'm counting on them.


_ 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. _

Is cynical, self-serving disinformation ever acceptable...or is it only OK in an election year? Seems like telling the truth is the old-fashioned way to go these days!

_
I ask the question only because every once in a while, I get a reminder that the people who profit by defending the status quo in gambling will do pretty much anything to keep punters in the dark.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about, sent to me by a reader who wanted to know why I'd waste my time butting heads with the powers that be in the world of betting (by which I mean casinos, bookies, and the legions of shills who make a living preaching that it's fun to lose).

I have commented on this prime piece of house-sponsored hogwash before, but it's worth revisiting because new readers are discovering this blog around the clock, day after day, and many of them actually believe that casinos have no interest in controlling how players bet.

And that's really the point: On the face of it, casinos don't decide when or if we bet, or how much, and they don't tell us when to quit (unless, of course, we're winning too much).

But in reality, casino operators have a complete grasp of player psychology, making the most of it to herd us like sheep, not cats.

And while everyone running table games knows that they can be beaten by progressive betting, they also know that most players ruin their own chances of winning in the long run by getting into games with woefully inadequate bankrolls, and betting a suicidally tight spread.

It's behavior the house does its darnedest to encourage.

A dangerously tight spread, the math tells us, is anything less than 1 to 100, meaning that a player starting out with a $10 minimum bet will have enough fire power to bet as much as $1,000 when necessary.

Since even a doomed spread of 1:100 is beyond both the inclination and the means of more than 99% of casino gamblers, it's possible to conclude that the spread argument is pretty much irrelevant to anyone likely to read this blog.

The casinos know better.

So while they don't control individual players or their individual bets, they use psychology to corral their customers in ways that do, in fact, influence how and how much they bet.

Too many players whose bankroll is threatened by a prolonged losing streak tend to sit tight at the same table, hoping that their luck will change before their money runs out. And they will keep on betting at the top end of their range, ensuring that they will crash and burn sooner rather than later.

The myth the casinos work hard to perpetuate is that the wider your betting spread, the greater your risk.

It's dangerous nonsense.  I'll show you some compelling data on that in a moment.

And because most people never bother to look at the numbers or apply mathematics or logic to their play - gambling is supposed to be fun, right? - they simply don't get that as wide as possible a variation in bet values is the ONLY way to win in the long run.

A 1-10 betting spread is rare among weekend punters (1 to 5 is closer to the norm) so the 1: 100 spread I mentioned above happens about as often as hurricanes in Hampshire.

Table limits discourage wide spreads not for the protection or "security" of high rollers but to greatly reduce the likelihood that a well-funded player in trouble will be able to bet his way out of the hole without switching to a layout that takes bigger chips.

It's just plain common sense: The quicker you hit your maximum bet value, whether it's a voluntary cap or one imposed by the house, the more vulnerable you are to the hazards of negative expectation.

You can even lose money in spite of winning more often than you lost!

That's because most players respond cautiously to winning streaks and reserve their biggest bets for hard times, then can't decide whether to chase a winning streak with continued large bets or drop back to small amounts if they are lucky enough to get even again.

Any time a player has to make a snap decision, he's more likely to make a wrong one than a right one - and that's one of the many reasons why a disciplined betting strategy is the only smart option in a casino.

Target, for example, tells you when to press and when to fall back, and that alone will turn a long-time loser into a consistent winner.

Losing streaks won't scare you to death, once a few weeks of practice have given you the confidence you need - and better yet, you'll stop wasting winning streaks.

Winning streaks are, for a fact, less frequent than losing ones, and Target will show you how to win back your prior losses and make a modest profit time and time again by getting out of the hole in fewer bets than it took you to get into trouble in the first place.

You will consistently win more when you win than you lose when you lose, in other words.

Like a politician on the stump in an election year, the Buzzard of Bovada - author of the timeless twaddle excerpted above - makes sure that there's a kernel of truth in his nutty response about table limits.

It is demonstrably true that as long as a player bets randomly or wagers fixed amounts, then the individual and aggregate value of those bets has no long-term effect whatsoever on the house advantage.

So a "whale" who bets $250,000 a hand at blackjack at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas (see past references to the late Kerry Packer) is no more of a threat to casino profits than someone who bets $10 on every hand or spin of the wheel or whatever.

The big difference is that when the whale flounders, the house will make more money than it would on a thousand or so weekend punters, and that's why when wealthy winners win big, there's a flurry of publicity but when they lose, there is respectful (and grateful) silence.

The temporary wins amount to short-term loans to customers who don't need the money, but getting the word out will hopefully tempt a few more high-rollers away from the competition.

Most regular players long ago learned the value of what's widely known as money management, although many of them are amazingly unaware that "MM" is progressive betting wearing a very thin disguise.

Large casinos with the amenities and resources to attract whales do, as the Buzzard confirms, offer games with a bewildering range of table limits, from maybe $10 to $1,000 through $25 to $3,000 and $100 to $10,000 all the way up to hallowed layouts where bets up to $100,000 are accepted without a qualm and higher limits can be approved.

But if the Buzzard's claim that the house edge is unaffected by bet values were true, tin-pot truck-stop casinos in my home state of Nevada would happily allow their customers to bet whatever they wanted.

They don't because, just like the Buzzard, they know that progressive betting can cause them major headaches and even put them out of business.

So in my immediate neighborhood, $5 to $300 is about as rich as table games get, and $5 to $100 is more common.

Bigger casinos with much higher limits are 20 minutes to an hour away, so whenever I hit the green ceiling at one of my locals, all it takes to win back my losses is a set of wheels and some extra time.

Once again: It's all about the math.

And the math is the reason why Bovada, sole sponsor of the Buzzard's eloquently deceptive website, not only applies tight table limits, but uses software that responds decisively and defensively if an online customer has the gall to get caught using progressive betting.

Bovada is not alone in that: It's just one of many crooked operations that may or may not give you a fair shake if you bet like the sheep you're supposed to be, but will bring the hammer down if you're a consistent winner.

Online casinos are especially vulnerable to progressive betting, because they can't do as their bricks-and-mortar competitors routinely do and walk a progressive bettor to the nearest exit.

But like their land-based cousins, online game operators consider progressive betting to be cheating.  And if cheating a cheater is what it takes to thwart a serious threat to their bottom line, they will do it without a second thought.

Years ago, the Buzzard offered a $25,000 prize to anyone who could come up with a betting method that consistently beat a billion or so computer-generated outcomes, and he still boasts online about his defeat of a system-peddler lyrically named Daniel Rainsong.

The $25,000 challenge is no longer offered, a victim perhaps of a computer age in which proving that progressive betting is a long-term winner is a whole lot easier than it used to be.

When I first started talking about progressive betting online more than 15 years ago, people who share the Buzzard's dedication to promoting the invincibility of the house advantage would create breathtakingly complex simulations that would "prove" that no casino game can ever be beaten in the long run.

The irony is that today, anyone with a decent laptop can download computer-generated data offered online by the Buzzard himself, and use that data to expose the fallacy of the claim that a house edge protected by the math can't be beaten by the math.

Take, for example, the 80,000 or so outcomes contained in 1,000 8-deck "shoes" of baccarat posted by the Wizard of Odds.

The summary above confirms that betting Player only through every hand of every one of those 1,000 shoes would run up against a 1.23% house edge (about right for baccarat) and that someone backing Banker all the way would be at 1.07% disadvantage.

Let's be clear: Betting fixed amounts or betting random values would without a doubt result in a long-term loss.  That's what I'm talking about when I say that the house is protected by the math.

But you can see that a "capped" Martingale played against those same outcomes flips the Player-only outcome from -1.23% of total action to PLUS 2.88% - hardly enough to excite the whales of this world, but proof that progressive betting with a wide spread can in truth undo the house advantage.

The rules applied here were more aggressive than the basic Target algorithm, and I will get to that in a moment.

First, let's take a look at what "woulda" happened if we had created a simulation that acted defensively in a way that a human player does, walking away from any shoe that showed a persistent bias far in excess of standard negative expectation for baccarat (about 1.35%).

We're not doing anything complicated here. We're simply saying that we will stop betting against any shoe in which house gets more than five bets ahead, starting from the first hand (meaning that a five-bet losing streak will only trigger a bail-out if we were even with the house or a little behind before it began).

What we see - no tricks, no lies, no bullshit - is an 85% drop in total action, offset by a proportionately smaller reduction in the total Player win which bumps the player advantage from +2.88% to +7.44%.

Now, I have no quarrel whatsoever with any reader who responds to all this with the complaint that he or she can't possibly afford a 1 to 5,000 spread and that progressive betting is therefore a waste of time.

I'm not here to offer anyone a cheap and easy, risk-free way to consistently win at casino games of chance (or sports betting or horse-race punting, come to that).

The reason for that is that there's no such thing, and anyone who claims otherwise is a liar and (if he's trying to sell you a low-risk betting strategy) a thief to boot.

I have been saying for years that anyone who can't afford to win shouldn't play at all - unless, of course, he or she agrees with the Buzz that losing is fun, fun, fun.

And my only motivation (since unlike the Buzzard of Bovada, I'm not selling anything here) is to demonstrate once and for all that negative expectation can be beaten with disciplined, consistent play...and a ton of money.

Here are the numbers for Buzz's six-deck data set:

Once again, we see that damage control - something the Buzzard and his fellow shills dismiss as an irrelevancy - really is a factor even in simulated game conditions.

I have always found it absolutely preposterous that strategy opponents rely on data sets that are nothing like real play to "prove" that the house advantage can't be beaten.

Regular readers will know that I routinely mock what I call the "inertia factor" - the idea that a real player betting in real time with real money would sit through losing streaks so far removed from negative expectation or any standard deviation that he would lose the farm (and the one next door) before being forced to quit.

So what about the Target rules?

Well, in recent months I have seen people claiming to be unbiased evaluators trying to demolish my strategy by deliberately changing the rules, then going online with elaborate data that strangely does not include an explanation of why the published algorithm was ignored.

I like to think I'm not paranoid, but at times I wonder about the motivation of anyone who would commit transparent fraud in order to prove a point.

Then again, I'm so obsessed with accuracy myself that perhaps I tend to forget how many crooks there are out there!

Let's revisit the simplest version of the Target rules, which are very little changed since 1997, except that they have been simplified and sharpened as much as you'd expect over a span of 15 years.

(I sometimes come under fire from people who say, 'See! You changed the rules! You're cheating!' and I wonder how they feel about evolution, or even the simple process of getting smarter as you get older!).

First, Target accepts the obvious, which is that over time, we're going to lose more often than we win. That's what negative expectation means: more losses than wins and therefore, if you bet flat or randomly, more money lost than won.

It then becomes necessary for us to ensure that whenever we win a bet, we win more money on average than we lose when we lose.

A simple Martingale illustrates the point: -1, -2, -4, +8, -1, -2, -4, -8, +16 gives us two wins averaging 12 units and seven losses averaging just over 7 units.

A Martingale is one effective way to apply progressive betting - or would be if casinos didn't routinely identify its use and interfere with it as much as possible.

Target is an uncomplicated approach to progressive betting that is not quite as blatant as a Martingale.

The first step is to respond to an opening loss in a new series or sequence of bets by increasing the bet value next time, hoping that the most common pattern for both sides in a game of chance - win, loss, win, loss - work in our favor.

I recommend that NB (next bet) should be as close as possible to PB (previous bet) x5, but let's dial that down to x2, then freeze the bet: -1, -2, -2, -2, -2, +2.

At the +2 above, we're -7 in the hole, and Target seeks to recover that loss plus at least one unit, first with an 8u bet and then, if that fails, a 16u bet: -1, -2, -2, -2, -2, +2, -8, +16.

In Target language, the +2 in the example is a "mid-series win" and that's always our signal to get aggressive, however cautious we may have chosen to be after losing the first bet.

(You'll find more info about how far you can go with Target rules variations on the Sethbets website).

Assuming a win at +16 above, we see six losing bets and two winners, which indicates a 50% house edge. Never mind, we won anyway, with wins averaging +8u and losses at just under -3u apiece.

(These are big files, sometimes hard to read in the blog platform, so I'll gladly sent more legible versions to anyone who e-mails me)

What we see above is an application of the simplest Target rules set, along with "skips" applied whenever we start to get into serious trouble.

This time, though, we're not skipping entire shoes: We're assuming Big Table play that permits us to sit out one or more rounds any time we choose, avoiding long losing streaks but getting back in the game in response to a mid-skip Player win.

And let me stress that these skips are entirely automated, tied to a consistent trigger (-2 rather than -5, because in essence we're switching rather than skipping) and not to bet values.

There's one sneaky little wrinkle in the summary above involving an aggressive response to ties.

I prefer blackjack to baccarat, and pushes or ties have always irritated me because they're such a waste of time (and I cringe whenever I hear another player or a dealer say 'A push is as good as a win,' which happens way too often).

So...I'll usually double my bet after a tie, and double it twice after a "money tie" (7, 8 or 9 in baccarat, 19 or above in blackjack).

It's not about math so much as doing what works.

Here's Buzz's 6-deck sample without tie boosts:

And here's how the same set looks x2 after any old tie and x4 after a money tie:

The most important thing to watch out for in all these summaries is the screaming red-and-white EXPECTED OUTCOME number to the right of overall Target's win value.

The house edge in this set was 1.68% and the Buzzard of Bovada will tell you that only by cheating could you achieve a positive outcome, or even a negative one that was slightly less than -1.68% of your total action.

But keep in mind that Buzz and his buddies are paid to lie to you, and they do it very well indeed.

Could you afford to bet the way Target did against this data set?

Probably not.

But after a few wins like this, occasional tail-spins and prolonged recoveries (courtesy of "standard deviation") become a diminishing threat.

The 8-deck Buzz set was tough sledding for Target - but the strategy came out ahead with an average bet that, at less than $2,000, was a tiny fraction of what many high rollers push into play with batting an eye.

Big difference: the high rollers lose. Not every time, but always in the long run. It's the arithmetic!

Note that the house edge for this sample was a rather suspicious 2.57%, or about double the accepted negative expectation for baccarat.

Here's how Target did bumping the bet after a tie:

No doubt Buzz will come flapping down out of his dead tree, squawking that I cheated, I cheated, I cheated.

Cheating didn't happen at my end, and won't ever happen.

And let's face it, as a shill for a crooked online casino, that's his job.

So, what about betting these Buzzard baccarat sets (1,000 shoes apiece!) with a spread far tighter than 1 to 5,000?

Here's the compelling data I promised earlier:

The screen shots here should pretty much explain themselves to the smart people who read this blog - but I'll risk offending you by pointing out that the average bet value, and therefore the average overall risk, is LESS at a 1 to 5,000 betting spread than it is at 1 to 500, and only fractionally more than at 1 to 100.

Mathematically, that makes perfect sense, because Target and most other variations on the proven concept of progressive betting push bet values high until recovery, then drop them way back to the minimum until another threat comes along.

At lower spreads, you hit the maximum - say $1,000 at 1 to 100 from a $10 minimum - and sit there forever, because you can NEVER recover your losses.

That's what the house wants you to do, because flat betting cannot do other than succumb to negative expectation in the long run, and that's a fact.

Too rich for your blood?

Well, as I have said here many times, I'm sorry about that.

You have to win more when you win than you lose when you lose in order to offset the fact that in the long run, you will always lose more often than you win.

And once again, I want to respectfully remind you that If you can't afford to win, perhaps you shouldn't play?

Just a friendly suggestion...

To put the whole question of deliberate casino-sponsored disinformation into context (and hopefully to counter claims that I'm paranoid!), I'd like to offer a little extra insight.  Just suppose that you're a casino operator or a bookmaker, and you know from experience that there are players who treat your bottom line like a personal cash machine, risking relatively small amounts, and walking away with profits day after day.  You know exactly how they do what they do, and you're basically powerless to stop them, preferring to eat the losses rather than to make a fuss and draw attention to a method that might spread like wildfire, bringing in punters with big money behind them who could do you even more serious harm. Your greatest enemy isn't the gambler, who's almost always a self-destructive, under-funded dreamer who gets ahead of the game just enough to keep him hooked, and always falls behind again.  Your nemesis is the bettor who is looking for a reliable alternative to conventional investments such as stocks and bonds or real estate.  He's not greedy, and in the wake of the latest worldwide recession, he's not risk-averse either.  He's patient, disciplined, well-heeled and always on top of the numbers, confident that short-term losses will inevitably turn around in time, and reward him with a profit that's puny by most gambling standards, but far exceeds anything on offer from any bank or stock market.  In fact, as a casino operator or a bookie, you're his bank.  And you're none too happy about the fact that his withdrawals far exceed his deposits, and the difference is coming out of your pocket.  So what do you do when someone goes public with detailed information about a betting strategy that you know has been costing you money pretty much every day that you've been in business?  Do you ignore the threat and hope it will simply go away?  Or do you go on the attack?  Think about 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 Bovada (formerly Bodog, now with a new name that makes about as much sense as the old one!), spend a few minutes and save a lot of money by reading this.
_

If you were to bet the farm on Apple's iPhone 5 and its game-changing Siri TV and iCar apps, would you be gambling, or investing your assets wisely?

_
It's a fair question, because one of the complaints I hear most often is that by discussing the viability of progressive betting against long-term negative expectation, I am repeatedly encouraging smart people to do something very, very dumb.

The default argument is that in stocks and bonds, and to a lesser extent in forex and commodities, the big picture promises profit as a reward for patience and foresight, whereas in gambling, the only overall winners are the folks who run casinos and/or make book.

So let's single out the world's most profitable commercial enterprise and indulge in a little harmless but hopefully relevant conjecture.

Apple's shares hit an all-time high of $626.73 on April 9 this year on the strength of the release of the iPad upgrade and booming sales of the iPhone 4S, which treated eager buyers around the world to a buggy beta version of the company's still evolving voice-command technology.

Since the spike, the world's most sought-after shares (widely expected to top $900 in a year or so) have slipped back to $564.29, knocking a $22,000-plus dent in a cautious investment of $200,000.

No cause for alarm, you might say, and I think you'd be right.

After all, the iPhone 5 is just a few months away, and not far behind that will come the real Apple TV, which will turn your living room entertainment center into a warm and friendly companion almost as responsive as the "holodeck" controller in science fiction tales of yore.

"Show me live tennis," you'll say to the skinny 55-inch gizmo on the wall, and presto, you'll be watching grunting athletes whacking a little ball back and forth with intent to kill.

"Let's try that in 3D" might be your next request, and the picture will change faster than you can fumble for those infernal glasses that will continue to be your best 3D viewing option until Apple comes out with something cooler.

"Skip the commercials!" will prompt your intellygent (sorry about that) window on the world to instantly switch to another channel where the tennis you crave hasn't yet been interrupted.

When the sales pitches end on the other network, Siri will ask you politely if you want to switch back, or stay where you are until more commercials spoil your enjoyment of your favorite spectator sport.

Siri's on-the-road cousin will (so rumor has it) kick in-car entertainment up several notches, enabling drivers to keep their hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road while vocally controlling everything from their phone and sound system to the heating and air conditioning and turn signals.

All this sounds great for Apple investors, and the odds are that April's $636 record high will soon be forgotten as the company's shares blast through new $100 markers -- $700, $800, $900 to infinity and beyooooond! -- like a rocket en route to Mars.

Beats gambling, right? I mean, nothing can stop the company that Steve Jobs turned from a floundering has-been into the most successful money-making machine since...well, since money was invented.

Maybe. Or maybe not.

I've been neglecting this blog and the Sethbets web site this past couple of months because I have been looking very closely at the wisdom of applying Target's progressive betting principles to horse-race betting.

And this comes after a three-year experiment that has resoundingly confirmed that Target applied to randomly selected pro sports bets is every bit as successful as stock market gambling, and given recent history, probably not as hazardous.

(I have been writing for years about Target and casino table games, so I will skip over that this time).

I have been an uneducated devotee of racing for as long as I can remember, but until recently assumed that there are far too many contenders in any race to make its outcome predictable within parameters that would make any betting strategy viable.

Also, I could not overlook the fact that punters far smarter than I am have been trying to beat the Sport of Kings for at least 350 years.

If anyone has come up with a solution, he or she has kept awfully quiet about it judging from the truckloads of torn-up betting slips that litter every track in the world after the last race.

And then again, 999 out of a thousand "experts" believe the casino-sponsored saw that any amount bet against a negative expectation must have a negative result in spite of how easy it is to prove otherwise.

Here's where I'm at against what seems to me to be a fair and accurate simulation of 6-deck baccarat.  I won't disclose how many hours I have devoted to this game, or speculate on how much better my time would have been spent if instead I'd read Socrates on the can.  But I will admit that the win to date averages out at about $10,000 an hour!  Doesn't prove anything, but it does suggest that an overall house edge of more than 1.25% doesn't always translate into a player loss.  The trick is to win more when you win than you lose when you lose, and the only way to do that consistently is to bet progressively. My win to date is a tiny fraction of the $106,000,000 that tops the leader board for this iPhone game, and I have no idea how the front-runner achieved that.  I do know I'm not going to try to beat him or her (my right thumb won't be able to stand much more of this!).

Long, long ago in a land far away, I spent an afternoon with a high-placed racing expert whose most memorable tip was "bet the second favorite to place" and in the years since, I have had modest success with that unexciting rule of thumb.

It's a dull, safe approach that doesn't fit in with the average punter's dream of picking a long-shot winner and going home with at least ten times the amount of dosh he took to the races.

And that's really the problem with gambling, isn't it?

Gamblers are not interested in modest gains: Their adrenalin can only get a bleep-or-bust rush from taking big risks in pursuit of even bigger rewards.

Very few of them would consider a $1,000 gain on a $10,000 bankroll to be an adequate return after a half dozen hours in a casino. But the same punters would be downright delirious if they bought ten grand's worth of stock after the opening bell and saw it appreciate 10% by the close of business that day.

Some people are just funny about money, I guess.

My latest foray into horse-race betting was prompted by a flurry of e-mails from the U.S., the U.K. and Australia from readers who bombarded me with stats such as the 33% win rate for favorites and the fact that all over the world, more than 80% of races are won by "Top 5" horses.

That means that in fields of six to 15, the winner is almost certain to be ranked among the five lowest starting prices (although anyone who hopes to find a winner among 15 sets of thundering hooves had better know how to handle disappointment!).

My Target Sports transparent trial, in which each day's picks are posted ahead of game times and the results are put up next day at the latest, has been wobbling back and forth lately, largely because of my neglect.

But in spite of a slowdown in the action since I got bitten anew by the horse-racing bug, we have seen an initial $25,000 investment grow to more than $175,000.

Along the way, after about a year of play, the bankroll plummeted by more than $100,000 before statistical expectation prevailed the way it always does, and the chart line resumed its standard, steady upward climb.

The irony is that the slump came soon after I decided that perhaps very large bets on randomly-selected long-shots were not a good idea, and started pairing each day's fattest wagers with picks at the shortest odds.

It was a very bad idea, proving perhaps that whenever a bettor has to make decisions, he's more likely to get into trouble (which is why constantly hopping from Banker to Player at baccarat, from red to black at roulette or whatever will almost always help you lose more money, faster, the way the house intended).

Second-guessing my random sports picks was a dumb move, so when I began looking into horse-race betting the Target Way, I resolved to stick strictly with the numbers.

Principal among those numbers is the reality of the "over-round book" which ensures even someone crazy enough to back every runner in a race will be out of pocket when it's all over.

The first logistical challenge I faced was that while race results are readily available all over the internet, they don't come in a format that I could easily use.

Target has relied on spreadsheets since I started using SuperCalc on a pathetically underpowered computer (the best I could afford at the time!) more than 30 years ago, and I was not about to give up the best analysis tool I know.

So, I dug out results for Santa Anita, Calif. and Aqueduct in New York from the start of the 2012 meetings at both tracks, and began keying in the data and developing a format that would enable me to get answers to my countless questions without having to keep going back to the source.

It was time-consuming and frustrating, but with three months of detailed results now available to me, I'm starting to see at least a theoretical reward for all that effort.

Along the way, one of my Australian correspondents sent me results from more that 3,300 races down under between August and November last year. Mercifully, they came in a spreadsheet!

One of the first things I wanted to look at was a concept known as dutching, which usually excludes the favorite in any race and groups three or more promising contenders together in such a way that if one of them wins, the bets on the losers will be covered, plus a decent profit.

I found a useful calculator online and learned that the ideal "dutched" bet (I still don't know where the term comes from, except that it's not Holland) offers a prospect of winning that's just above 50%.

One Australian punter who helped with my racing lessons proposed a method that bets the favorite to WIN and dutches the second and third favorites, avoiding races in which the starting price on the fave is less than, say, 2-1.

I created conditionals to test that idea, but quickly found myself drawn to the more compelling notion of mimicking the Target Sports approach and setting up five separate lines backing favorites 1 through 5 to win.

I didn't much like the idea of constantly betting against myself, but concluded that the Target progressive algorithm I had developed for up to 20 simultaneous sports bets a day would be able to even out the bumps and give me a reasonable shot at a long-term profit.

I also set up models to bet just the favorite at Santa Anita from December 26 through April 22 and, separately, Aqueduct from January 1 through April 29.

It quickly became obvious that however juicy a 33% favorites win rate might sound, there are an awful lot of long and expensive gaps between hits. And a lot of the time, the odds offered on favorites (I found one at 0.05-1!) are so short that bets directly linked to the SP (starting price) are totally unrealistic.

Given a win target of $1,000 your bet at 0.05-1 would need to be $20,000 and that's insane!  No one in real life would bet that way, but because I started out accepting all odds, I had no choice.

The solution to too-short odds and prolonged droughts was a combination of filters or screens that suspended bets after a given number of consecutive losses, and also skipped wagers on favorites at an SP below a predetermined value.

I won't detail my methodology here, but I will offer some bottom lines that I find very encouraging.

I should also say at the outset that this remains a work in progress: I chose to model bets on the favorite to win, along with the 5-line all wins concept on faves 1 through 5, and I don't doubt that better approaches will suggest themselves as time goes by.

What matters right now is that both methods are ahead of the bookies after thousands of races and more bets than the average punter makes in a year (or they would be if I had been venturing real money).

Betting just favorites at Santa Anita, $100,000 invested on the day after Christmas last year to fund bets starting at $100 would have grown to $129,886 by April 22, with an unrecovered target of $19,110 rolling over to opening day at Hollywood Park (more about that another day). The win amounted to 12.34% of total action from 301 bets, and represented a 66% return on actual exposure of about $45,000.

At Aqueduct, the same methodology would have required far greater exposure ($144,823!) but would by now have delivered a win of $133,320 equal to 16.5% of total action on 255 qualifying bets. The end-of-meeting rollover was a little more than $18,000.

Against the 3,318 Australian races I mentioned earlier, exposure would have been almost $87,000 at one point, but the overall win would have been $145,900 or 14.26% of action on a total of 2,469 qualifying wagers. Rollover was a piddly $155.

Of course these are all numbers that far exceed the average weekend punter's bankroll. But that's hardly a big surprise. I have been saying for years what anyone who gambles must eventually learn: It takes money to make money.

Bummer...

The question is, I guess, does applying an odds minimum and skipping bets after a certain number of losses upset the whole idea of random selection?

I would say not, since we remain uninterested in a horse's past form, its pedigree and its jockey, as well as which way the wind's blowing and whether the going is good or bloody awful.

Numbers for the five-line theoretical trials against the same results (from Santa Anita and Aqueduct, that is, because the Oz data seems to me to be too good to be true), are as follows:

Santa Anita exposure $37,155 for final win of $23,050 (7.33% of total action of $314,570 from 1,145 bets), 62% return on risk.

Aqueduct demanded an exposure of $131,620 and delivered a win to date of $32,776 (5.8% of action of $565,100 from 1,547 bets), 25% return on risk.

None of the above proves a damn thing. As I always say, the data show what's possible, not necessarily what's probable.

I ditched the Australian data for a full five-line test because the odds on all horses across the board were 40% higher than their USA equivalents, and that makes me a little nervous.

And as I understand it, punters have it really tough down under (no bets higher than $250, accounts closed by bookies if a customer "wins too much") in spite of those seemingly more generous odds.

A preliminary run-through of the Oz data showed a 5-line win of more than $400,000 on 3,617 qualifying bets averaging $84 apiece, and that just isn't credible to me.

In every one of these model iterations, the potential draw-down has been high, and in one case it went well into six figures before straightening up and flying right.

Aha!  Say those who look down their noses at gambling while shoveling their life savings into the stock market: You could lose your entire bankroll in a day or two at the races (or the sports book or the casino) but no one ever holds onto a dwindling stock long enough to lose every penny they put into it.

I guess that since the people I know who lost millions on Wall Street in the past half decade still have millions left, there's a grain of truth in that.

But plenty of victims of the latest Great Recession saw their retirement portfolio cut in half or worse, and they have no reason to hope that they will recover all their losses any time soon.

In contrast, stats demonstrate that as with Target Sports since the summer of 2010, randomly-selected underdog picks will win a profitable percentage of their games over time, and in horse racing, favorites will slip out of dominance only temporarily.

In other words, as long as you have a big bankroll behind you and the confidence to stick with the strategy, recovery in sports betting is absolutely inevitable.

In the world of high finance and on Wall Street in particular, nothing is inevitable other than the certainty that while investors may fall through thin ice in a bear cycle, the fat cats who preside over the markets will stay warm and dry...and keep on getting fatter.

So what does all this have to do with Apple?

Merely that if things go bad in Cupertino, as some bearish prognosticators say they might, the $900 price predicted for sometime next year could evaporate with the morning dew.

Let's face it, Apple has a lot of competition that's gaining ground all the time, and any day now, one of the Chinese companies building its magical products could go rogue and start ripping off its precious patents left and right.

Google and Apple have some very big guns trained on one another, and although Apple's $300m CEO Tim Cook seems reassuringly less paranoid and aggressive than his mentor, all-out war between the two companies sometimes seems inevitable.

If it happens, share values of the two giants of the digital age could head south like ducks in winter.

And then there's Samsung, looming over both of them and hell bent on increasing its share of the smart phone, smart TV and smarter still computer markets.

What was Apple thinking of when it shipped its secrets overseas to countries that don't give a toss about patents and property rights?

Greed was behind it, obviously.

And in the long run, greed works no better in business than it does in gambling, or any other field of human endeavor.

My point is that with greed kept in check, betting on sports or horses can be at least as reliably profitable as taking long-term positions in the stock market.

In either case, jumping out of the fray because of a short-term burn then jumping back in with lessons unlearned is almost always disastrous.

Casinos and bookies count on us to be underfunded and unprepared, and Wall Street and its acolytes encourage us to keep sloshing our money around, because our indecision and lack of commitment guarantees more profit for them.

A sample from iDutch.co.uk, the best of many dutching calculators offered on the Net.  I haven't yet given dutching a fair shake in my models, but I plan to.  I do know that the Ubetido method (bet the favorite to win, and dutch the second and third favorites to win as a hedge) was an expensive failure, at least during three months apiece at Santa Anita and Aqueduct, betting eight to nine races a day.  I didn't apply any restrictions or limit bets in any way, and I don't think that's entirely fair (I believe Ubetido spurns favorites at less than 2-1, for example, skipping as many as three in every four races).

Numbers for most of the 2012 meeting at Aqueduct NY (more data to come).  This was where betting favorites progressively almost fell on its face, and I admit I don't have a $150,000 bankroll I'm willing to put at risk.  But what's interesting is that the strategy did manage to recover its losses.  Lose a hundred and fifty grand on Wall Street, and it could take you months to recover -- years the way things have been going lately.  Target 1F was out of the red in two or three days.

Target Sports as it stands today - patiently waiting for that last big turnaround...  The slump last summer was entirely my fault.  After proposing that random selection was a far more effective way to win steadily than relying on intuition or expertise, I out-smarted myself by guessing that the day's biggest bets would stand a better chance if I paired them with picks at the shortest odds.  Wrong!  As in any game, human decisions are prone to human error.  So now I'm back to making no decisions, other than limiting my bets to picks priced between +100 (even money) and +140 (1.4-1).  We're wobbling right now, but I'm willing to keep on betting that eventual turnaround is as inevitable as tomorrow's sunrise.  Even if it doesn't happen until the day after tomorrow (turnaround, that is!).

Target did pretty well at Santa Anita this year, using the Aqueduct betting algorithm.  The game continues at Hollywood Park, the L.A. County track that always takes over when gorgeous Santa Anita goes dark.  Watch this space: the rollover will be speedily recovered, and then the ride will continue, I guarantee.  I was going to call it a roller-coaster ride, but that's not accurate, since we always end up higher than where we started!

The same rules set did nicely down under, except that Oz odds are just too good to be true.  I'm nervous about the fact that overall odds were at least 40% higher than the numbers seen in the USA.  I'm also told that Australian bookies offer fixed odds, which as far as I know are not available here.  I haven't posted the 5-line results based on the down under data because, again, the news was just too darn good, especially when a hedge against last-minute shortening of the odds (between ticket in hand and the off, in other words) was factored in.  The draw-down was far less than the one you see above, but I feel I can't trust data that I don't fully understand.

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._

"High rollers who can afford $25,000 bets would never be willing to lower their standards (and mix with the riff-raff) by placing minimum bets."

_
(Updated 11:00am Monday, March 26)

The above summarizes an interesting—but in my view wholly specious!—argument that comes up periodically, most recently in an otherwise positive comment on another blog.

The other day, I was sent a link to a system-debunking blog run by a guy who calls himself "Imspirit (wishing I were just)" aka just plain Dave.

I have written here before about Dave's mystifying dismissal of Target without accurately applying the strategy's carefully calibrated rules, so there's no need for me to go there again.

The link was to a comment submitted by an apparent Target devotee, and since it's already been published online, it seems fair enough to reproduce it here:

Great site.
First of all, we appreciate your great effort and time to manage this wonderful gaming forum. I've been reading your site for more than a year now in addition to other insightful sites such as Bethsets (sic!) and the popular BTC.
From the outside looking in, and with all the remarkable constructive disagreement between you and Seth, I see two people who are highly intelligent trying to make sense (of) how to beat the game of Baccarat.
I wish we had Internet 30 years ago so people like me would have benefited from the information generated (by) your site and others.
Over the years, I'm one of the losers who won't (ever) be able to recoup (all my) losses nor do I intend to. I'm not as hard core as I was and (am now) just focusing on my business.
Unfortunate or not, the "Barney Lincoln" in me never wanes so (a) trip to the Casino is always in order two weekends every month.
The difference for the last ten months (is remarkable), because rather than losing every time, I (have) never lost a trip.
For what it's worth, the difference is the mind set, there is a game plan and the set bankroll.
This success rate happened after I used Target betting in combination with the "pattern placement betting" similar to the concept of NOR (although I haven't seen the NOR manual yet).
It's something Personally, I give credit to the Target, as volatile as it can be, because it gives one a formula to (use in) battle, and a fighting chance.
The difference is that I don't attack the shoe right off the bat like it intends to (he plays "Player" always). Meaning, I can avoid an unnecessary hole in the beginning which may take me a while to see some daylight, thereby saving (recovery) time.
The NOR bet placement is an added power due to it's optimum selection.The bet spread of 1-5000 is understandably way out of whack for most people.
High rollers wouldn't fall for $25 unit with their $125,000 bankroll, most players just don't have that much. So far (knock on wood), the 1st turnaround bet is clipping at 75% rate so I have used a small fraction of the bankroll.
If I run into nine straight "shoes from hell", that would wipe the whole bankroll and (I would deservedly) retire and do something else for entertainment.
I don't know Seth, and with all the negative accusations by extremely combative individuals, I feel the sincerity from him trying to enlighten people.
It used to be that it's almost a given that I will shell a few thousand here and there during(any) trip. Now, I was able to reverse it, and I expect to win every trip.I'm not breaking the bank by any means, but by saving losses and conversely going home with winnings is tantamount to a healthy psyche.
This is by no means an endorsement of these combined concept(s) nor do I intend to do it professionally.
The fact that the wife is happy after the trip is more than enough for me. I'd like to acknowledge Ellis, not so much of his system (of which I really don't have any knowledge), but his encouragement to all people who play the game of chance to try to be healthy with proper nutrition and exercise and alcohol while playing. I think it's the best advice for everyone.
Thanks for sharing your forum and I can't say enough about your objectivity and sense of fairness without any agenda whatsoever. Regards, M.Lee.

I hope that if he sees this, Mr. Lee will forgive me for an occasional edit and addition: His message needed a little clarification in parts, I felt.

As you can see, I have highlighted the sections of this well-meaning comment that I find most interesting, and underlined the statement with which I take greatest issue (aside from the praise for Dave's accuracy and lack of an agenda!).

I cannot say often enough that a wide betting spread is the one and only key to long-term defeat of casino games with a negative expectation—and high rollers are the players least likely to follow that advice because most of them couldn't care less whether they win or not.

Watch any high-stakes game and you will see bet ranges that match the puny 1-5 or 1-10 spreads applied by players with shoestring budgets.

The only difference is the number of zeroes on the chips, plus (perhaps) the fact that it is likely to take a whale a while longer to accept that he's sunk and can never recover.

Casinos court high rollers precisely because it is against players at the top and bottom ends of the spectrum that the house edge does the most damage, but the "top end" punters lose the most the fastest.

A high roller who wants to lose could do nothing better for the house than turn his nose up at bets below $25,000 and draw the line at wagers higher than, say, $250,000.

Years ago, I knew a guy who always bet the house limit on three hands of blackjack, taking over whichever table he selected and providing great entertainment for crowds of onlookers who thought he was nuts but rooted for him to win.

Standard deviation (the bane of all gamblers' lives) saw to it that at times, his sessions ended with spectacular wins, and he made dealers very happy with lavish tips and effusive gratitude.

The casino, for its part, piled on gifts and comps, all of which made him feel enormously appreciated, and every one of which he paid for ten times over.

Last time I saw him, he was leaving town after his excesses had drained his business of its not inconsequential profits—he was a middle-market art dealer—swallowed the proceeds of a second mortgage, and led his family to the brink of bankruptcy.

He has since served as a constant reminder to me and others who knew him that the moment you hit your maximum bet in a downturn, the odds are very much against a recovery.

The only antidote to that inconvenient reality is to make the gap between your lowest bet and your highest bet as wide as you can afford, and to consistently revert to a minimum bet (however demeaning it might seem in the eyes of those who don't know better!) after every recovery.

High rollers who sneer at "piddling" bets may get a bigger buzz from risking huge amounts, but their chances of coming out ahead in the long run are on the negative side of zero. That is a mathematical certainty.

Far better—the only way to win consistently, in fact—is a betting strategy that permits big bets whenever the bankroll is threatened, but one that grinds out profits in relatively small amounts for 99% of the time.

Since the entire range of bets cannot be placed at the same table, or the same game, or even at times, the same casino, progressive betting the Target way can be hard work, requiring endless repetition and a lot of meticulous record-keeping.

The very idea is anathema to most gamblers, because most gamblers hope (but rarely expect!) to win big money at very little risk, and to do it with minimal effort.

But whenever I describe Target, I am not doing it for the benefit of the average gambler.

Let's face it, the average gambler is a loser, and perfectly content to be that way, so long he can get a little bit ahead once in a while, to feed his hopeless dream that he will one day be a winner.

The Baccarat Plus iPhone app that I have featured here before starts you off with a $1,000 bankroll and allows bets from $5 to $100,000.


The win total shown above may be chump change to a high roller who looks at it as the proceeds of three consecutive $100,000 wins—big deal!—but I defy anyone to get $300,000 ahead against the iPhone app without using a disciplined variation of progressive betting.

Mr. Lee, whose message to Imspirit inspired this entry, will have learned that Target produces steady, reliable profits in the long run and can go a very long time between very large bets (the ones I sometimes refer to as brown trouser moments).

My critics scoff at those large bets, dismissing them as insane or unrealistic.

But the fact is that unless you are willing to defend your bankroll with whatever it takes to ride out a temporary downturn, there is only one consequence: losing.

In baccarat, unless you bet Banker all the way, it is certain that in the long run you will lose more bets than you win.

(And if you DO bet Banker all the way, you will quickly learn that the "5%" commission on successful bets will wipe out any advantage you may have gained from winning more bets than you lost!)

It is therefore essential to long-term success that you win more money when you win than you lose when you lose.

That can only be achieved if you ensure that more than half of all your bets are what I term recovery bets, meaning quite simply that their value exceeds that of all prior losses in the current series or sequence of bets.

With Target, about 75% of your bets will be recovery bets.

That's why the strategy works.

A Martingale requires that 100% of your losing bets must be recovery bets.

And that's why an unrestrained Martingale doesn't work: Eventually, you will have to place a recovery bet that no casino anywhere will allow.

(Analysis of the Martingale concept must in fairness include an evaluation of the capped Martingale, but that's been dealt with in previous posts to this blog!).

If, unlike Dave Imspirit, Mr. Lee is applying the Target rules strictly and accurately, he will have gained huge confidence from the fact that its discipline removes a great part of the uncertainty and hesitancy that plagues most gamblers.

It relieves the player of almost all decision-making. And if you don't have to make a decision, your chances of being wrong diminish considerably.

Mr. Lee spoils his endorsement of Target, as I see it, by referring to one of those "predictive" methods that both common sense and experience tell me must be absolute nonsense.

I don't dispute for a moment that there are trends and patterns in baccarat, just as there in any betting game.

But the notion that they can be identified other than after the fact is dangerous balderdash.

The popular trend-following method that comes closest to what Mr. Lee is talking about is avant derniere, which is applied in baccarat and roulette to profit from hops or chops (B-P-B-P-B-P) as well as from prolonged repeats of either of two options.

The idea is that you follow the win before last, so that P-B-P-P would call for a bet on Player, and P-B-B-P would indicate a Banker bet.

Exhaustive tests of avant derniere against millions of outcomes shows that in the long run, it is no more effective than random bet selection, so the same would certainly apply to so-called "predictive" or "trending" methods.

Target is not in any sense predictive: It is purely and simply reactive.

It tells you what to do after something has happened, in other words.

As for betting Player all the time in baccarat, regular readers of this blog will know my take on that!

Betting Player or Banker in baccarat or Red or Black or Odd or Even in roulette is like a two-hole game of Whack-a-mole.

The mole you have to whack to win can pop up in either hole at any time, and if you concentrate all your efforts on just one of those two holes, your reaction time and your accuracy will be much improved.

By switching your focus back and forth, you make success so much more elusive, running the risk of zigging when the "mole" zags and vice versa.

It also happens to be exactly what the house wants you to do.

As for the baccarat screen snap above, it is true to say that the win it shows "could have" been achieved by putting in a mind-numbing hundred hours or more in pursuit of a nine-bet run on Player that would take the $1,000 opening BR to $256,000.

I'm just guessing at the 100 hours, and I can confirm that I have indeed seen runs on Player or Banker that have lasted for 8, 9 and perhaps even 10 consecutive wins.

However, I defy anyone to play the Baccarat Pro iPhone app and parlay an opening $1,000 bet into a win of $300,000 or more!

The leader board data that comes with this nifty little game includes a win of more than $100,000,000—a staggering achievement that inspires a mix of envy and skepticism.

If that huge sum (and others in the same ballpark) was achieved honestly, I would love to know how, I admit.

Since the game will not permit a bet above $100,000 it follows that a $100 million win represents a minimum of 1,000 more wins than losses over time.

Hard to see how that could happen, since Player is mathematically proven to be at about a 1.35% disadvantage, and Banker's slight edge is blown away by the "Bank Tax."

It boggles the mind, and makes some manipulation of the app's software the more probable explanation.

Meanwhile, as someone who struggles to manipulate a toaster, never mind program code on a platform that does not permit edits or additions, I am content to wait for a reader out there to match or beat my win total against Baccarat Pro and then tell me how he or she did it!

As for the criticism that Target has no appeal for high rollers, I can only remind Mr. Lee that Target's great strength is that it tells you when to be a high roller, and when to play shoulder-to-shoulder with the little people.

Betting big all the time is as doomed as betting small all the time...it's just a lot more expensive.

And just like greed, delusions of grandeur can make a loser out of anyone, regardless of the size of his or her bankroll.

Update, Monday, March 26: I just passed a win of $360,000 playing thumbnail baccarat in a place I need not mention, and I realized that since my own max is $25,000 and I am beating an overall house edge of 1.50%, my comment above about the leaderboard win of $106,000,000 is a load of old cobblers!

Sorry about that.

My current mini-mini baccarat BR is the equivalent of almost 15 maximum bets, but that certainly does not translate into 15 more wins than losses (far from it: I'm about 200 bets behind at this point).

The only rational explanation for the $106 million win that I can come up with is that the player used a capped Martingale, with a limit of $100,000, plus profound confidence in the notion that any house spike is temporary and will eventually be offset or compensated for.

It's a dangerous game, but perhaps more likely than the alternative explanation that the big winner hacked into the app and awarded himself huge profits without having to spend time actually playing the game.

Who knows?

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._