Most people don't think they can win and some worry that because gambling is "wrong" they don't deserve to win. So they're suspicious of anyone who tells them they don't have to lose!

_
An e-mail dropped into my inbox this week that came as quite as a surprise because it was from a website that touts mystical strategies that claim to be able to predict winning trends.

I paid polite attention because the betting strategy, simply named "2-2-1," was a less-aggressive version of the "3-Play" method that I posted here more than six months ago.

Pure coincidence, I'm sure, and I am not about to claim that I was the first person to come up what these days is often referred to as a capped Martingale.

I have been writing for years about players who exploit the effectiveness of progressive betting by placing no more than two or three successive bets at any one layout, before moving on in search of the single win that will get them out of the red, and back into profit.

I see them at work pretty much every time I play in a crowded casino, and yet for years I have been hearing that they don't exist or can't exist, or if they did exist, they'd go broke in a heartbeat.

All I can say to those who insist that they have never seen Martin Gale at work is Pay attention!

The truth is that both 3-Play and 2-2-1 work well because they take advantage of the fact that most of the time, potential losing streaks are terminated by a player win within two or three consecutive player losses.

I have posted reams of corroborative RNG output on that topic, so there's no need for me to repeat it.

All I want to say this time as that in spite of detailed proof that long-term winning is possible against casino table games and in the sports books, the majority of players would much rather lose than win, and will never try strategies that would make gambling profitable for them in the long run.

I came to the conclusion long ago that it's all about guilt!

Most players (especially weekend punters on a shoestring budget) feel in their hearts that when they place a bet, they're doing something they probably should not be doing, and subconsciously they expect, even want, to be punished.

Those that don't have guilt in the back of their minds are pragmatists who assume that if it were possible for a player to win in the long run, casinos and bookies would not take bets.

And so, again, they expect to lose.

I found the 2-2-1 pitch contradictory, because the same source promotes courses and seminars that cost around $700 a pop, and claim to "teach" players how to spot a winning trend ahead of time, and milk it before backing off at just the right moment.

The truth is, of course, that both winning and losing streaks (or trends) can only be accurately measured after the fact, and nothing can change the mathematical reality that every bet is subject to the same negative expectation, give or take a tiny fraction of a percentage point.

Target, its 3-Play variation and 2-2-1 all exploit the plain truth that most of the time, a player loss is followed by a house loss, and vice versa, and that three consecutive player losses are a relatively rare event.

Use 2-2-1 and L, L, W won't make you money, but 3-Play will.

On the other hand, 2-2-1 will save you a little against a L, L, L sequence, and 3-Play will push you further behind.

Both methods require that you chase a potential winning streak if you are still in the hole after a mid-recovery win, and both are intended to protect you against a prolonged losing streak.

This blog has existed for more than four years, along with other posts I have been putting up since the late 1990s, for the benefit of the one player in a hundred who is willing to believe that losing is not an inevitable punishment for daring to gamble in the first place!

For even longer than this blog has been up, I have been demonstrating a progressive betting variation that is consistently profitable against horse-race and sports betting, in each case making selections essentially at random but applying an algorithm which is disciplined and fearless.

But as with casino table games, track and sports punters would mostly rather lose than win.

That's their right, of course.

For the sake of the few readers who agree with me that long-term profits from gambling don't have to be exclusive to casinos and bookies, here are a couple of summaries that compare 3-Play and 2-2-1 results against a random number generator set up to simulate field bets at craps.

As you can see, the house edge for the data set, which is of course the same for each of the above summaries, was far less than negative expectation for field bets at craps, which is normally just a pip or two better than -3.0%.

But in each case, after 5,000 rolls of the dice—equal to at least 2-3 weeks of continuous daily play!—the outcome bore no relationship to the negative outcome that would have applied if bets had been placed randomly.

2-2-1 delivered a solid win with the least risk of the three variations of progressive betting shown, 3-Play won a higher percentage of greatly increased action, and 2-2-2 won handily but was not quite as profitable as the other capped Martingales.

Those two deadly words, progressive and betting are routinely derided by casinos and bookmakers, and feared by most players because they conjure up a picture of huge risk for little or no reward.

In fact, progressive betting is the one and only way that negative expectation can be overcome, a statement that will come as no surprise to readers who have passed this way before.

Negative expectation is an immutable enemy that every gambler has to face down with every bet he makes.

But it can be beaten, again and again, and long-term player profits are possible in spite of it.

Unfortunately, most of you don't wish to know that!

 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. _

3-Play kills the house edge at casino table games, but anyone who expects to win online has to be crazy. Online sports books are a different ballgame (really!) and that's where Target can make you a winner. Safely.

 _
It's been six months less one day since I last posted here, and my excuse is that I have been happily tied up working on the best online betting method since...well, since online betting began.

I don't want to push the 3-Play post too far down the screen (there's a lot of good advice there!) so I'm just going to provide a link and let readers weigh the facts for themselves.  In a few days, the Sethbets website will be password-protected.

Here's a quick summary of 2013 results to date:

There's a lot more corroborative data on the Target Sports web pages...

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. _

Introducing 3-Play. It's not as much fun as, um, foreplay, but (for most of us) it's a whole lot more profitable. And by keeping wagers in check, it makes Target-style progressive betting just a little less scary.

OK, I confess I was planning to keep the "3-Play" modification of the Target rules to myself, since I'm not selling anything on these pages (or anywhere else!) and too many people going home with house money might force those sneaky casinos to make their games tougher to beat.

But then I saw the above bit of mythematical sleight of tongue, and decided to let everyone join in the fun.

Let me first of all make it quite clear that the analysis referenced by Imspirit in yet another of his stupefying attempts to spread gambling industry disinformation was not Target.

My version of progressive betting is perfectly capable of running in the green for more than 54,000 automated and human-free shoes of baccarat before being "debunked" by a one-in-a-zillion losing streak, but the author of the strategy in question was a gentleman whose PhD presumably makes him even smarter than I am.

Imspirit, regular readers will remember, was the guy who changed the rules of my betting strategy specifically to record a "loss" against a simulated baccarat data set that anyone can access online.

It took the guy weeks to agree to make his deliberately fraudulent work available for my analysis, and when I pointed out his multiple errors in methodology, he pronounced himself "not interested" in running his evaluation of Target again with the correct rules in place.

Oh, well, so much for accuracy and integrity.  Or being "just"...

The Lim Method Imspirit examined, probably without properly applying the rules, ran profitably for the equivalent of more than forty years of playing baccarat five hours a day, five days a week, for 50 weeks every year, before a spectacular crash and burn.

Imspirit was then delighted to pronounce the method catastrophic on the basis of two anomalous losing streaks that it is both logical and scientific to conclude probably would not have had a chance to prove fatal if a real player betting real money in real time had been on the receiving end of real cards dealt from a real shoe.

All simulations (my own included) assume the participation of a suicidal player with limitless funds on one side of the table, and on the other side of the game, a casino willing to accept bets from one to thousands of units at the same layout.  Neither element exists in real life, obviously, but "sims" save time and money so we're stuck with them.

To the nitty-gritty, finally:

Progressive betting is a strategy that recognizes and exploits the mathematical given that since in the long run no one can hope to win more often than he or she loses, the only way to consistently beat the house advantage is to win more money when you win than you lose when you lose.

It takes arithmetic to beat arithmetic is another way to put it.

The problem with progressive betting is that it can push bet values very high indeed before recovery or turnaround is achieved, and a losing session or series of bets is at last profitably concluded.

Target mitigates the draw-down problem to some extent by limiting increases in wagers from one bet to the next to a handful at a time (unlike, for example, a Martingale, which keeps doubling the bet until a win recovers all prior losses, and a new series begins with a minimum wager).

After telling Target students to be flexible and to tailor the strategy to their own style and resources, I usually recommend at least a 3x bet after an opening loss, followed by at least one double-up (-1, -3, -6) before freezing the bet until a win ends a losing streak.

Better yet, x5 after an opening loss, then x2 twice (-1, -5, -10, -20), but that needs a hefty bankroll and gonads to match.

3-Play is a more cautious way to go, one that's based on the mathematical certainty that over time, more than 85% of all streaks either way (for the player or for the house) will end in three bets or fewer.

The math is simple enough: In a relatively even game (blackjack or baccarat, for example), half of all outcomes will be followed by an opposite outcome (+1, -1), 25% will extend to one more win (+1, +1, -1, either way) and half as many again will be three like outcomes, followed by an opposite (+1, +1, +1, -1).

Add 50% to 25% to 12% and you will see that in the long run 87% of all house winning streaks will end in three bets or fewer.

The same applies to player winning streaks, of course, but we will get to that in a moment.

At a full-size baccarat layout with multiple seats filled, it's possible to apply 3-Play by sitting out after three consecutive opening losses in a new series (say, -1, -5, -10).

Assuming you're too smart to swallow the casino crap about Banker being the only smart bet in the game of baccarat, you would be backing Player and a nine-round Banker winning streak would look like this: -1, -5, -10, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, (0).  And after missing out on the Player win that ended the losing run, your Target bet in response to the trigger would be 26u.

As always, your chances of winning your hoped-for turnaround bet are no better or worse than for any other bet, namely a pip or two above a 49% probability at baccarat.

What we're saying in the bet sequence above is that we hope to win a minimum of 1u per round overall, although we won't complain if a "chop" (B, P, B, P, B, B, P, B) pattern persists throughout the shoe, and we end up with an even bigger profit than that.

The standard Target sequence for the above rounds would be -1, -5, -10, -10, -10, -10, -10, -10, -10, +10, making the recovery or turnaround bet worth 76u instead of 3-Play's 26u.

My recommended sequence would be in even bigger trouble after nine consecutive losses: -1, -5, -10, -20, -20, -20, -20, -20, -20, +20 (-(116+10) = 126u, cut to 100u if an NB=PBx5 cap is applied).

The idea is to accept a smaller overall win in exchange for fewer (I'm using the technical term here) brown-trouser moments, and 3-Play does a very good job of that.

However you choose to apply progressive betting, you're going to run into logistical problems from time to time, the most common being that your required next bet exceeds the current table limit, and you have to move to a more expensive layout to get the money down.

You'll also encounter baccarat games where sitting out for one or more rounds is not permitted by the house, in which case, you should simply drop the bet to the table minimum, and proceed that way.

The minimum drop is the only option at blackjack, too, but at craps and roulette you can skip as many rounds as you want without being hassled.  You're facing tougher odds at those two games, but that should not worry you until the NB (next bet) values climb really high.

As I am always saying, I dislike mindless sims.  But at least they help illustrate what can happen when a betting strategy's rules are modified against the same set of random outcomes.

For example, here's a 5,000-round RNG sample with Target backing Player throughout, with 3-Play applied with the sit-out option (-1, -5, -10, 0):

And next, 3-Play applied the same way against the same random data set, but with Target betting BANKER all the way:

We get a tidy profit whichever side we choose to bet, meaning that partners betting opposites independently at the same table would both be winners after 5,000 rounds (roughly 65 shoes, or two weeks of grind for a player with an extremely high boredom threshold!).

A pattern you will see repeated pretty much every time is that, in spite of the fact that the Banker bettor won more often against the same set of outcomes, the so-called "5%" commission saw to it that he or she went home with two-thirds of the Player profits.

Sure, Banker wins more often than it loses.  But the house gouge more than makes up for the difference, over and over again, and if you are a Banker slave (as many baccarat players sadly are) you will pay dearly for those extra wins.

Here's the same data sample with Target staying in the game with 3-Play dropping to a 1-unit bet after three opening losses:

...and Banker against the same outcomes:

Again, "Banker" took home 40% less than "Player" because of that ugly commission rake.

I have on occasion admitted to switching temporarily from Player to Banker after a prolonged losing streak, and I hate to do it.

When I make the hop to the dark side, I hop right back to Player as soon as I rack up a turnaround.  And every potential recovery bet (defined as any bet that will get you out of the hole if it wins) is subject to a boost of at least 10% to cover the "Bank Tax."

Truth is, baccarat is in my view the most numbingly tedious game that isn't played on ice (sorry, curling fans) and its only saving grace is that in most casinos, routine table limits are higher at full-size layouts than they are for blackjack.

So, that's all I have for now on 3-Play, a great way to go for Target players who prefer to trade bigger wins for smaller risks.

And if course, like any other, my RNG can be prodded into showing a "catastrophic" loss for Target.  But in real play, I don't sit still for 27-round losing streaks, and my guess is that neither do you.

Target's overall win rate sits at 99.95% (five losses in 10,000 series is a worst-case scenario) and that's a very considerable improvement over the random bettor's 49.35% win expectation betting Player at baccarat.

Obviously, you won't win any more often with Target: Negative expectation will always see to it that over time, the number of your wins will be exceeded by your number of losses.

But you will leave the casino with more cash than you took to the game over and over and over again because (as in the first screen shot above) your average win (+19) exceeded your average loss (-15) by a percentage far greater at +23% than the actual value (AV) of the house edge for the same 5,000 outcomes (1.16%).

Given the AV, if you had been betting randomly and racked up the same action as Target, you "should have" LOST almost 1,000 units.

Instead, you WON more than 7,000u (almost +8.8% of your action instead of -1.16%).

And that, folks, is the name of the game when you play it with Target on your side.

(Here's the streak analysis for the 5,000 random outcomes that produced the screenshots above):

 


_ 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), spend a few minutes and save a lot of money by reading this. _

It's fine by me if the gambling biz wants to portray me as a clueless crackpot. But stupid? Now they have crossed the line! Oh, and if you're looking for gambling's holy grail* it's been right here for years...

...

Let me first reassure my loyal readers that I'm not the crackpot who's threatened to sue the author of the rant extracted above (which continues at length on his blog).

I'm a different crackpot.

As it happens, I would not trust this guy to accurately count his own fingers and toes, let alone run a fair and open-minded evaluation of a betting strategy intended to overcome the house advantage at casino games of chance.

That's because about a year ago, Virtuoid aka Imspirit ("wishing I were just") took it upon himself to publish a detailed debunking of my Target strategy based upon an algorithm that later turned out to bear scant resemblance to the progressive rules set that has been evolving for years.

When I was first directed to Imspirit's exhaustive demolition of my work, I scratched my head and wondered why someone apparently dedicated to the pursuit of accurate and unbiased mathematics would undertake such a project without first checking the rules with the source.

Target's methodology is a lot less complicated than it used to be, but it still has to be followed with discipline and confidence, plus a bankroll that will sometimes need to be very large indeed (it grows rapidly, so that problem diminishes over time).

I took Imspirit's failure to consult me as a clue that something fishy was probably going on, and pressed him for weeks to explain exactly how he got the results he did.

After more than a month, the blog supplied a link to a page that identified the Buzzard of Bovada's 1,000 simulated 8-deck shoes of baccarat as Imspirit's source of outcomes, and listed the "Target" bets line by line.

Surprise!  Imspirit had tossed out Target's limit on the extent to which a bet can exceed the value of the preceding bet, widened the recommended betting spread by a factor of four, and ignored a critical rule about what to do if a first turnaround attempt after a mid-recovery win is a failure.

No explanation.  No apology.  Nothing!

I was particularly offended by the Imspirit travesty, because the guy (the only other name I have for him is Dave) provided a slew of negative data and charts based on the blatant abuse of a verifiable source of outcomes that I knew for sure Target had knocked into a cocked hat, as they say in the old country.

Why, oh why would he do that?

The Buzzard of Bovada, by the way, is better known online as the Wizard of Odds.  I prefer to recognize his professional role not as someone on the side of the players, but as an unashamed and blatant shill for a web gambling operation with questionable credentials and a murky reputation.

You'll find Mike Shackleford's 1,000 simulated 8-deck shoes and 1,000 6-deck shoes by clicking on whichever you choose to look at.

Zumma's data sets are subject to copyright, but available to anyone with persistence and a commitment to accuracy that V/D/I apparently lacks.

For the record, here's a summary from a recent run-through of the actual Target algorithm applied to the Buzzard's 1,000 8-deck data set:

 And the Buzzard's 6-deck simulated shoes:

Plus for good measure, Target's result against 1,000 "real shoes" that Zumma Publishing put out years ago:

And 600 more Zumma shoes made available more recently:

 
Combine the four separate verifiable trials, and you get this:

Yes, there were some losses in there.  And yes, there are some very large red numbers along the way to the overall win against almost 250,000 verifiable baccarat outcomes.

But I ask you to keep in mind that in simulations like these, the "player" is required to keep betting through crippling losing streaks, and we are also assuming the existence of a casino that would permit bets ranging from two to six digits at the same layout.

Neither conceit has any application to real life.

The above summaries include at bottom right a breakdown of major threats to the bankroll in each sample of outcomes, and a threat is defined as any series requiring a maximum bet.  Would anyone keep betting against a baccarat shoe that had the house 21 bets ahead?  Or even 10 bets ahead?  I don't think so.

Periodically, someone challenges me for "changing the rules" of Target, ignoring the fact that since I first posted a progressive betting method online (in 1996!) I have stressed the need for flexibility and a commonsense approach to whatever the game might be.

There's really only one rule that matters, and that is that after one or more losses in a new sequence of wagers that began with a minimum bet, you must be ready to venture a sum that covers your loss to date (LTD) plus your chosen win target (hence the name of the strategy).

I have not updated the rules set available if you click for it at the top of this blog, and I don't plan to.

But the summaries shown here include the application of a couple of very significant updates: If the first turnaround or recovery attempt in a losing series is lost, bet LTD+ a second time, and set a limit on how large a multiple of the previous bet (PB) your next bet (NB) is allowed to be in response to a mid-recovery win.

Another cunning little wrinkle, which is entirely player's choice, adds 1 unit to the win target for each bet in the current series, so that if your potential recovery is triggered by a win on bet #8, your next bet will be LTD+9.

You can also cut the PBx factor after an opening loss to less than 5 if you wish, although I don't recommend less than x3 because that way, a win with bet #2 will give you a profit of 1 unit for each of the two bets in the series.

Simple enough, and very, very effective.  Unless, of course, you happen to be a gambling industry mouthpiece so lacking in integrity that you will change the Target rules in order to "prove" that progressive betting doesn't beat the house advantage in the long run.

Winning in a casino always comes down to this simple truth: Over time, you will lose more often than you win, which means that when you win, you must win more on average than you lose when you lose; the only way you can achieve that is by the consistent, confident and well-funded application of progressive betting.

Red or black, odd or even, Player or Banker...none of that stuff matters, and any betting strategy that claims to rely on patterns, trends or predictive switching is a load of hogwash, to put it mildly.

In baccarat, I refuse to bet on the Bank if I can avoid it, which is 99 times out of 100.  When my arm is twisted, I goose the target after a win by at least 10% to cover the commission gouge, making a $500 Banker bet $550 and more often $600 so that if I win, I cover the house's outright theft of my hard-earned money, plus a little extra.  Again, a player's choice option!

Next, a summary that shows very effectively why Target in particular and progressive betting in general is the best and only safe bet in the long run.

The house edge for the quarter-million baccarat rounds was high at 1.43%...but Target kicked house butt anyway, and that's all that matters.

Sure, your chances of seeing the "twins" (two consecutive wins) you need to turn a losing series around are no better than the house's win probability at that moment, but that's not a problem because you just keep trying again and again until you prevail.

It's all about the right bet at the right time, a trick most players somehow don't learn in a lifetime of losing.

(If you want to start learning in your own time and in your own home, here's one way.)

An analysis of any truly random data set will show numbers very close to those above.

What we see (and always will) is confirmation that most wins will be followed by a loss, and most losses will be followed by a win.

Paired losses and paired wins are about half as frequent as isolated outcomes of either stripe, and triples are roughly half as frequent again.

Most important of all, more than 70% of streaks in either direction will end after two rounds (the rationale for Target's recommended -1, -5, ?10 opening sequence) and more than 85% and after three rounds.

Numbers, numbers, numbers: everything else in a casino is a distraction, and bet selection has no role to play.

Make a choice, stick with it through thick and thin, and with Target's help, you'll make money.

Without Target, you'll need a lot of luck.  I just hope you agree with the casinos that losing is a whole lot of fun...

Finally, I'd like to address Imspirit's claim that all "crackpots" base their loony claims on innumeracy and/or faulty computer simulations.

For all the years I have been doing this, it has been my habit to question every positive long-term result that my computer models indicate, and to build simulations that have built-in error checks.

The Target Betting rules can be modified in all of the models so that I can see the effect of each variation bet by bet or line by line.

That means that every Target "x factor" can be reduced to the lowest whole number above zero, and if the model is reporting accurately, the strategy's bottom line with a "1" in every trigger box will precisely match the sum total of all wins and losses.

So, if betting a single unit on every round shows a net result of -136 units after 10,000 bets (an actual value or AV indicating a negative expectation or NE of -1.36%) the Target summary block must show the same number or something's up.

Mistakes are a major time-waster and I won't tolerate them (although unlike Imspirit and other casino-sponsored mythematicians, I'm just a stupid human being and sometimes it takes me an hour or two to spot 'em and fix 'em!).

Let's imagine a roulette session in which a Target player with deep pockets and a razor-sharp talent for mental arithmetic bets Red and Black, Odd and Even and First and Last (aka Low and High) all at the same time.

Sure he's betting against himself, technically, but that's because he hates to lose!

Here's a sample output from a roulette model I created years ago but tidied up a little recently so I could let it out of the house:

First, I want to make it clear that results like this cannot possibly be guaranteed for six simultaneous bets against a game with an expected 5.26% house edge (this is double-zero roulette) and an AV that turned out to be a full percentage point higher than that.

I play roulette from time to time, but as soon as I get into just a little trouble, I take up my chips and walk to a less deadly game (usually blackjack).  But what the heck, this was a free trial...

Target's 6,000 bets in 1,000 wheel spins showed a net profit of +3.7% against an overall AV of more than -6.0%.

Imspirit and his casino-coddled cohorts would tell you that a result like that is impossible without blatant chicanery or a stupid mistake.

That's what they always say, because it's their job to keep you from finding out that if you bet progressively with a disciplined plan and money behind it, you will in the long run beat the bleep out of any casino game that has a house edge below 2.0%.

Next, here's what the same roulette model reports when all the Target switches or rules are "turned off":

The bottom line is that only my readers can judge whether or not I'm faking these results.

And all I can say is: Why would I do that...?

I'm not selling anything.  And please believe me, I am my own toughest critic! 

As for that ultimate scare word, progression, it is in the best interests of the gambling industry that whenever a player hears or reads that word, he or she should think of the Martingale and endless doubling, and reject the whole idea as suicidal.

As it happens, a capped Martingale can do very well for a very long time, and the casinos know that and will do whatever it takes to protect their profits from its unwanted effects.  Try it sometime!

Target Betting is, of course, a progression (it's also progressive, but that's something else again).

The big difference is that Target interrupts progressive betting as often as is necessary before recovery is achieved.

It slams hard at the front end of a losing streak, backs off, slams again, and keeps on switching from tiger to tabby cat and back again until a profit has been achieved.

The probable long-term success of the method is predicted by the chart above, which confirms that over time, streaks either way usually do not last long.

Let's look at a Martingale sequence with Target's approach alongside it:

Sure, I have manipulated the numbers here to create a worst-case scenario with a 0.006% probability, but it serves to illustrate the difference between a restrained progression and what the casinos want you to think the word progression means so that you will avoid it.

Here's a more likely scenario:

This time, the Martingale (aka 2x, double-up and other scary aliases) did better in percentage terms, but once again lagged in bottom-line profits.

With Target, you can basically do whatever you want after the second or third loss in a losing streak, but you must revert to the LTD+ win target rule in response to a mid-series win.

Some Target players prefer to slow down the escalation of bet sizes by refusing to bet more than a parlay after a mid-recovery win.  It slows the winning process down and because of that I don't recommend it...but it still works.

I have heard from other Target followers who choose to keep on reducing their bets during a prolonged losing streak, saving their chips for an extra hard SLAM! in response to a win.  I don't recommend that either (I'm a purist)...but it works.

Target's win rate is confirmed by error-checked and fully verifiable simulations to run at around 99.97%.  If those predicted three losses in 10,000 bets are sure to wipe out all your prior winnings, what's the point, you might ask.

That begs another question: Why play at all...?

Without an effective betting strategy (one that makes all your decisions for you and frees you from the extreme hazards of random wagering) you have less than a 50-50 chance of winning in the long run.

A win rate of 99.97% may not be a sure thing, but I'm just stupid enough to believe that it is a big improvement on all the alternatives.

(For more about accuracy, please visit this page at Sethbets.com).

* Caveat: If you are looking for a way to pile up profits in a casino with a shoestring bankroll and little or no risk, you should pass Target by and continue your quest through the rest of this life and into the hereafter.  The bad news: They don't have casinos in heaven, I'm told, because everyone there is already a winner.  In hell, the casinos cheat, although they do that here on earth anyway.  What table games come down to is that as long as the player has full control of bet values and has the discipline to fully exploit that control, the house edge can be consistently beaten.  But casinos apply spread limits precisely because they know this to be a mathematical fact, and players cripple themselves by applying stringent spread limits to their own play (usually because they can't afford to do otherwise).  A spread of less than 1 to 100 can make a player a steady winner for hours on end, but always at some point, a much wider range will be called for, and by then, 99.9% of all punters will be broke.  I have been saying this for years: If you can't afford to win, you shouldn't play. Getting those words out to people who I believe need to be wiser is the sole motivation for this blog and all the other words I have ever written about progressive betting.

_ 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), spend a few minutes and save a lot of money by reading this. _

If something new and different comes along and it looks too good to be true, it makes sense to be skeptical. But perhaps you shouldn't pass judgment until you have all the facts?

It was P.T.Barnum who said that there's a sucker born every minute, and someone probably equally famous but unknown to me commented that it isn't possible to under-estimate the intelligence of the American people.

(Sounds like Will Rogers to me, and maybe he was talking about American gamblers...but who knows?).

I have indulged myself in minor rants here before, and the best I can hope for is that they contain something of relevance to my long-suffering readers, so here goes!

I've been swimming upstream and against the current of conventional wisdom for long enough to know that some people will half-listen to what I have to say about beating the odds, and then conclude that I'm a compulsive liar, a con artist or barking mad.

And any demonstrations I offer, such as huge "wins" against iPhone gambling apps or online demo games are dismissed as anecdotal or flat-out cheating.

Same goes for randomly-generated numbers that show profits against more outcomes than a high-speed casino player would likely encounter in 100 lifetimes (assuming that cards could be dealt, wheels spun and dice tossed with equally blazing speed!).

Quite how it's possible to push the bankrolls into the high six figures in games I didn't write, cannot control and certainly don't know how to hack is beyond me, but I suspect some people are more comfortable accusing me of fakery than they are with accepting that maybe their long-held beliefs are wrong.

My horse-race betting project has been galloping ahead (pardon me) for almost a year now, and these days the Sethbets website is solely devoted to it.

As usual, I have gone overboard with spreadsheet models and colorful outtakes, and also as usual, progressive betting Target-style is proving to be a powerful means of winning consistently over the long term against odds that would seem to be insurmountable.

That's not to say that sometimes long-shots don't take over the lead positions for too many successive races, temporarily upsetting statistical expectation and Target's apple-cart, but anyone who has ever tried gambling in a serious way knows the truth of the cliche that it takes money to make money.

The horse-race pages on my website have been regularly updated for about six months now, and once in a while I will hear from someone who says they have seen enough numbers in my summaries and breakdowns to hazard a good guess at the betting method I am using.

If they're right and they can make money from what they have deconstructed from my bulletins, they don't have to say thanks and they're very welcome.

This week's e-mail brought something new: A commentary from an old handicapping hand who told me that the algorithm he had deduced (inaccurately as it happens!) was "brilliant"...but that it would never work in the real world.

The scenario that my imagination called up in response to this featured an exciting new car that Detroit had kept under wraps except for a wheel and part of the back bumper visible through the curtain.

Up comes a critic who says to the car's (proud but humble) designer:  "Did you road-test that thing?  Has it been through wind-tunnel tests?  Does it have an engine?  I can tell you right now, it's never going to work."

A couple of interesting questions came my way as my tires were being kicked:  Did I know that if you make a bet bigger than $500 and win, your bookie will never take your money again, and did I realize that odds change even after the starting gate clangs up so an odds-based strategy can't work?

My answers: No and no.

It is certainly true that if a Target GG player were to place a $25,000 bet on a race with a relatively paltry pool, he'd drive the odds on his selection through the floor and in effect he would be betting against himself.

With thanks and appropriate obeisance to the redoubtable NYRA, the above is an example of a pretty decent pool in which a Target max bet would not cause much of a ripple.

But what's lost here is that Target GG isn't intended for on-track use as much as for application in casino and online race books, where bets have no effect whatever on track odds.

It is true, of course, that off-track books have limits, but a $25,000 bet would faze very few of them, and in any event, my recommendation has always been that large bets be spread across multiple books to keep warning bells to a minimum.

That is a practical option as long as I keep doing what I do, which is to bet track by track and not race by race.  Logistical problems are a major headache if  races are only a few minutes apart, but most tracks program at least 25 minutes between events, and the time lag is often much longer.

As for rapidly-changing odds, that would certainly be a problem if Target's bet values were dependent on tote prices.  But they're not and that's that (a more detailed explanation is not called for here).

The future I see for Target GG lies with a network of investors and runners who will together profitably exploit an opportunity that I see as unique.

Progressive betting is demonstrably viable against casino table games, but they require a player to suffer through hour after hour in a noisy and uncomfortable environment in which second-hand smoke can kipper their lungs.  Fun for an occasional hour or two, maybe, but no way to make a living.

My (almost) two-year transparent sports betting project at Sethbets was a long-term winner, but 20 bets a day was as much action as I could find, and the process requires patience and commitment, both of which I have, but some days I felt like I was on the brink of barking madness (see above).

Horse-racing is on the face of it volatile and hazardous, and for years, much as I loved an occasional day at the races, I used "too many contenders" as an excuse for looking elsewhere for betting action.

Then one day, a link to this blog found its way onto a horse-racing bulletin board (they call them forums these days and I had nothing to do with it) and I was quickly bombarded with queries about whether or not Target could make money at the tote.

Almost a year later, I have the answer:  Yes, it can.

Oh, and about those silly iPhone games...

_ 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. _

There's nothing new here for regular readers, but if something's worth saying once or twice, it's worth saying three times...or as often as it takes!

THE TARGET MESSAGE

The message I have been trying to get across to casino gamblers is that house table games can be consistently beaten, and progressive betting is the only way to do it.

That’s not just my opinion—the gambling industry believes it too, which is why there are table and house limits, all of them in place solely to make effective progressive betting difficult, if not impossible.

The argument that I have with the so-called, self-appointed “experts” challenges their insistence that exactly the same method of progressive betting must be used in every game and in every circumstance.

That’s as dumb as saying that if you can’t drive off-road over rocks or snow and ice the same way as you drive on a wide open road in warm sunshine, then you shouldn’t drive at all (hence my analogy that the safest car in the world is a death trap if the steering, brakes and gas pedal are all disabled!).

We all have to deal with two harsh realities: a limit on the amount that we are willing or able to risk in a casino game, and restrictions on the amount the house is prepared to let us bet in order to recover our past losses.

When I started out on this project more than 30 years ago, I too believed that it might be possible to discover a single method that could mathematically overcome the long-term house advantage in casino games of chance.

Now, I know better, which is why I recommend a flexible application of progressive betting.

You may have seen that the Target Betting objective is to “win more when you win than you lose when you lose” and while that motto might seem to be stating the obvious, few gamblers seem to realize that since we’re all certain to lose more often than we win over the long haul, we have no winning option but to ensure that our average win is worth more than our average loss.

That objective cannot be achieved long-term without progressive betting.  Period.  Luck can make it happen in the short term, but over time, luck becomes totally irrelevant (as well as being unreliable!).

For example, let’s say you place 100 bets and encounter a house edge of 2.0% which results in you winning 49 bets and losing 51 bets.  If your average overall bet value was $100, you will have won $4,900 and lost $5,100 and in 100 bets, you will have lost $200 or 2.0% of total action of $10,000.

Now let’s say your average win value is $120 and your average loss value is $100, a 20% win/loss surplus which is consistently achieved with the Target method.

The picture changes: 49 wins @ $120 = $5,880 and 51 losses @ $100 = $5,100, giving you an overall win of $780/$10,980 = +7.1% against a -2.0% house edge that gave you (according to those “experts”) an expected LOSS of -2.0% x $10,980 = -$218.

I have often been accused of attempting to deny or change the house advantage, and of course that’s impossible.

But it’s only impossible when we’re talking about the overall number of losses vs. the overall number of wins.  The loss total (number of losses, if you like) will always exceed the win total (number of wins) over time, but that does not mean that the total amount of money lost must exceed the total amount of money won.

I do not recommend use of the standard Martingale, which is the best-known method of progressive betting (-1, -2, -4, -8, -16, -32, +64).  It is the simplest approach, but it is also the most dangerous—and an added problem is that casinos routinely interfere with its use because when it works, it can be very bad for the house’s bottom line.

In the sequence above, the average win was 64 units and the average loss was just over 10 units.  We don’t need a win/loss surplus to be that dramatic (600%!) to achieve steady profits long-term.  An average win value that exceeds our average loss value by 20-30% will do the job just fine.

It is relatively simple to create a random number generator simulation which will demonstrate conclusively that the conventional wisdom about the house advantage is just plain wrong.

What such a simulation will repeatedly confirm is that while the house has a slight mathematical or statistical edge in every bet, the house wins two bets in succession only about half as often as a house win is followed by a player win (-1, +1 from the player’s viewpoint) and three consecutive house wins occur about half as frequently as two house wins followed by a player win (-1, -1, +1 for the player).

The problem with the Martingale is that while, say, 10 successive house wins is an extremely rare phenomenon, it is a “black swan” event that does occur from time to time, however infinitesimal the odds, and when it does, it can be very expensive for the player.

So when talking about progressive betting, we should be thinking in terms of imposing our own limits on bet values and on the number of times we are willing to re-double our bet before applying damage control by either freezing or reducing the sum of money in play.

One rule must always be applied: When we win a bet after a losing sequence of any duration, we must follow that win with a bet that, if permissible, recovers all of our prior losses—our loss to date or LTD—plus an overall win target, or profit.

A Martingale makes a profit of just one unit after a losing streak, whether it’s an isolated loss (-1, +1) or a prolonged downturn (-1, -2, -4, -8, -16, -32, +64) and that’s not enough—unless you’re playing blackjack or betting the field at craps, which occasionally provide paybacks that are multiples of the original bet value.

I just set my “sim” to bet 5,000 rounds using a very conservative method of progressive betting that applied the following rules:

·         If the first bet in a new series or sequence of bets is a loser, double the bet

·         If the first bet in a new series is a winner, add 1 unit to the bet

·         After any isolated loss in a recovery series, double the bet

·         After a second or subsequent loss occurs in a recovery series, halve the bet

·         After a mid-series win, double the bet.  If the bet wins and all prior losses for the series are recovered, fall back to a minimum (1 unit) bet.  If the bet loses, double it once, then halve it if another loss occurs, and continue halving the bet until the minimum is reached.

·         The maximum permitted bet is 5,000 units

The opening few hands in my sim looked like this (the first column shows the bet value, the next the outcome, the third tallies the total win or loss for the current series, and right-hand column tracks streaks and indicates when a turnaround bet is called for or a recovery has been achieved):

1	-1	-1	-1
2	2	1	OK
1	-1	-1	-1
2	2	1	OK
1	1	1	+
2	-2	-2	-1
4	4	2	OK
1	1	1	+
2	2	2	+
3	-3	-3	-1
6	-6	-9	-2
3	-3	-12	-3
2	-2	-14	-4
1	1	-13	ta
2	2	-11	ta
4	4	-7	ta
8	8	1	OK
1	-1	-1	-1
2	2	1	OK
1	1	1	+
2	-2	-2	-1
4	4	2	OK
1	1	1	+
2	-2	-2	-1
4	-4	-6	-2
2	-2	-8	-3
1	1	-7	ta
2	2	-5	ta
4	-4	-9	-1
8	8	-1	ta
16	16	15	OK
1	-1	-1	-1
2	2	1	OK

In Target betting, a “recovery series” is a sequence of bets in which the player is in the hole and looking to win enough to achieve turnaround (“ta” in the example above).

Wherever you see “OK” above, prior losses have been recovered in the indicated series, and the bet reverts to the minimum so we can start all over again.

Here are the results for just one iteration of the simulation:

		Maximum bet permitted	5,000	units
		Actual maximum risked	5,000	11	max bets	0.22%
		Final outcome	20,073	12.64%
		Overall action	158,851
		Flat bet final outcome	-60
		House advantage	-1.20%
		Expected outcome	-1,906	units lost
	Won	2470	36	average	132%
	Lost	2530	-27

You can see that the house won more bets than we did, giving it an overall edge of 1.2% which is about right for blackjack or baccarat.

We won 20,073 units after placing 5,000 bets that were collectively worth a total of 158,851 units in action/handle/churn (all terms that describe the combined aggregate of winning and losing bets).

We had to “bet the max” 11 times in 5,000 rounds—once in every 454 bets, on average.  Overall, our average bet was worth 32 units.  But what matters the most is that although we lost more often than we won, progressive betting enable us to win more when we won than we lost when we lost to the tune of 36/27 = 132%.

The house edge of 1.20% indicated an expected loss (edge x action) of 1,906 units—but progressive betting in this sample gave us a “player’s edge” of 12.6%.

Of course, I am not suggesting that a win like this will happen every time, using this same set of rules, and all those “experts” out there will dismiss these data as being anecdotal, which is just a fancy way of saying that they are unique and therefore irrelevant to the big picture.

But the experts can’t have it both ways.

It’s hard to argue that 5,000 rounds is “not a representative sample” because that many bets would take most players at least 50 hours to play out (far longer playing baccarat!) and that’s a lot of time by anyone’s standards.

The conventional wisdom is absolutely clear: Bet 5,000 rounds against a house advantage of 1.20% and you will lose at least 1.20% of your total action.

What the experts never tell you is that the relentlessly-repeated axiom that any amount bet against a negative expectation must have a negative result only applies if bet values are fixed or randomly selected.

And that’s really what this whole argument is all about.

If you bet the same amount every time, or if you vary your bets randomly according to hunches, whims, gut feelings or the careful study of runes and/or chicken entrails, and if you lose more often than you win, then at the end of the day you will have “made a contribution” to the casino’s bulging coffers.

Bet progressively using discipline, confidence and consistency (the Target method being the smartest way to go!) and when you go to the cashier’s cage, you will be making a withdrawal in cold hard cash instead of counting your losses.

As I said, accurate simulations that mathematically demonstrate the inherent weakness in the house edge at casino games of chance are easy to write and just as easy to validate.

But for some reason, all the vocal champions of the status quo choose to ignore the truth.

It may well be that the same simulation will show multiple losses over hundreds or thousands of iterations—I don’t deny that.

What I do say is that all simulations, mine included, ignore what I call the inertia factor by assuming two things:

1. A player must be willing to keep on betting through a prolonged losing streak without taking any defensive action by, for example, dropping back to minimum bets or walking away from an anomalous downturn, and
2. The house must be willing to permit bets from 1 to 5,000 units (or any other very large amount) at the same layout.

  

Neither of the above conditions exist in the real world, so any “proof” that the same betting strategy applied the same way for a bazillion rounds must eventually crash and burn is...worthless.

I have watched countless Martingale bettors escaping the notice of eagle-eyed pit personnel (at least for a while) by placing no more than two or three losing bets (-1, -2, -4) at any one layout before moving on to another table or a different game in search of the single win that will recover all their prior losses plus a profit.

I mentioned blackjack and craps as the best Martingale prospects because of 3-2 (these days, more likely 6-5) paybacks on naturals, “extra” profits from successful splits or double-downs, and the allure of 2x or 3x field payouts on 2 or 12 at craps.

The same potential benefits apply to Target betting, obviously, and the level of aggressiveness applied is entirely a matter of player choice.

I find it tiresome when yet another Target critic whines on about rule changes and “cheating” and the best I can do on that score is provide a link to a web page where I address the charge.

The crux is that there’s only one immutable rule, and that’s the one that kicks in when a win finally comes along in the middle of a recovery series.

Your chances of winning a second consecutive bet are no better or worse after a first mid-series win than they are at any other time—you don’t need to be a gambling “expert” to figure that out.

But it’s your job to see that IF that second or “twin” win occurs, you derive maximum benefit from it.

Table limits have nothing to do with Target’s prospects of long-term profits, but of course house limits do.

You’ll read anti-progression rants that point out that if you’re betting from a $5 start at a table with a $300 maximum, it will take “only” six successive losses before you hit the table limit and then what...?

The What? is easy: You either bet the table limit, then bet it again (or just enough to recover the balance of your prior losses)—or move to another layout with higher limits and bet what’s needed.

You can, if you wish, bet just once at each layout, switching from baccarat to blackjack to craps to roulette or whatever with each successive loss, and your win and loss prospects are mathematically unaffected.

You are only “in trouble” (and it’s not much trouble at that) if you are stuck in a casino where ALL the tables and games have a low house limit.

And even then, you can simply walk away with a losing series unresolved, and resume betting at the same level when you next have access to a casino that permits you to spread wider than at the tin-pot locale where you initially got into trouble.

The numbers—“The Math”—stay the same no matter what.

It’s true that the size of bets Target sometimes requires can be intimidating to someone who’s just starting out on a winning path.

But the strategy builds profits at a steady pace, making it possible to increase your minimum little by little as your burgeoning bankroll allows.

My rule after any winning session is to add half the session profit to my bankroll, putting the other half in my pocket to cover expenses plus wine, women and song or whatever else takes my fancy.

It’s why I haven’t had a losing year since 1989.  Tough days, weeks and even months, for sure—but never a losing year.

Seth Theobeau

Nevada

©1978-2013

 

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. _