In the most recent 2020 post (the one I thought would probably be my last) I detoured into baccarat and reiterated my long held belief that anyone who thinks betting Banker is the best policy "because it wins more often" is either deluded or daft.
But then I remembered that however much proof to the contrary I produce, a lot of readers of this blog assume I'm both deluded and daft when I insist that progressive betting my way will consistently beat most casino house games.
Either that or...I'm a conman peddling an impossible dream, an idiot who has made a whole series of fatal mistakes in my arithmetic for the past 40 years, and I'm too stupid or stubborn to admit it, even to myself.
I discovered long ago that most of the insults hurled my way originate with people whose agenda is diametrically opposite to mine.
They want to preserve the myth that negative expectation can't be beaten in the long run, but good-time gamblers can have lots of fun trying before they empty their wallets and head for home.
My campaign is to convince sentient gamblers that it stands to sense that only progressive betting can beat the odds and win in the long term. But this post is not a rant on that topic.
What I am hoping to do here is to prove definitively (and verifiably) that the Bet Banker argument is a load of old cobblers and that commission-free winning bets on Player only is the smarter, safer way to go.
For years I have referred to 3,000 shoes of baccarat offered online by the Wizard of Odds (Mike Shackleford) or printed in hard copy by Zumma Publishing.
Analysis of those independent and incorruptible (by me) blocks of outcomes proves that my approach to progressive betting is viable and dependable.
After last month's post, I decided to expand the sample by 2,000 more shoes, taking those from one of ten data dumps put up by the redoubtable Wizard.
What I have seen in the past after running tests in which the Banker-only punter follows my strategy while his Player-only pal does the same is that over time, both methods win about the same amount at the rate of roughly $2,000 an hour.
Because such tests demand that every single bet must count and there can be no escape from killer losing streaks, a table minimum bet of $25 will often balloon to $50,000 and both "players" must at times have very deep pockets indeed.
In theory, that's fine, because baccarat attracts the highest of the world's high rollers, and bets far fatter than my $50,000 cap are commonplace.
I don't believe that even a bonkers billionaire would sit through some of the mean streaks that Target had to endure, but I guess the end result is all that matters when the sample contains over 380,000 rounds, or about 50,000 hours of continuous play.
What I have always argued is that while Banker will win more rounds than Player, even in a single shoe, the "five percent" commission applied to every win will turn a perceived (and heavily promoted) edge into a liability.
The Wiz's data confirms this every time: In the 8-deck set, Banker wins 50.7% of all non-tied hands, and the 6-deck 1,000-shoe sample, Banker wins 50.6%.
Fine and dandy, until you take Banker's 65,595 wins and chop 'em down by 5% for a final net total of 64,160 against Player's net (and gross) win of 64,231.
You'd be right to say there's not much in it, but however shills like Shackleford may try to spin the numbers, there is NO Banker edge at baccarat.
In the Zumma 1,000-shoe set, Banker grosses 37,152 and nets 35,294 wins against Player's 35,959.
This stuff matters because 99.99% of all players bet randomly in effect, even if in their minds they think they are successfully winning more when they win than they lose when they lose.
Target bettors know for sure that they will achieve that goal if they stick with my progressive strategy, but most punters don't have a hope in hell of pulling that off.
Bottom line: Here's the summary from the 3,000 shoes mentioned here plus another 2,000 picked up from the Wizard's more recent batch of (gasp!) 250,000 random shoes...
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| How 5% isn't really five percent... |
The thing to notice here other than Banker's horrible net outcome is that with the Target strategy precisely applied on each side, both grossed about the same amount, suffered similar punishing losing streaks, and would have gone bust but for access to a bankroll about a fifth of the amount a famous poker player "won" at baccarat in two casinos a while back.
(Somehow, two sets of judges in two different countries were able to deny him his "winnings" without saying he cheated!).
Also worth noting is that Player managed an average win about 7.0% greater than his average loss against 5,000 shoes while Banker's gross average win was equal to his average loss, and with the gouge applied, dropped to less than 96%.
In fairness, I would not apply the Player progressive strategy to Banker wagers if I were crazy enough to bet them, but I had no choice in this trial because the objective was to accurately highlight the myth of the Banker edge.
So there you have it. If you're not among the 0.01% of gamblers who seriously play to win and a shill tries to bamboozle you with bad baccarat advice, just remember the five Bs: Betting Banker is Barking Bloody Bonkers.
You'll thank me one day.
Appendix = TMI?
The Wizard of Odds and I have both fallen into the high-speed
number generation trap!
He has much fancier gear than I do, but after restricting my
baccarat analysis to 3,600 verifiable shoes supplied by the Wiz and Zumma
Publishing, I decided to branch out a little
Mr. Shackleford clearly figured that if he could generate 2,000
random shoes, why not 250,000 by golly, and his most recent 20
MILLION-round data dump is where I went for my expanded effort to
illustrate my position on Banker bets at baccarat.
Here’s a summary from 7,000 shoes, or more than half a million
bets on the casino table game that most closely resembles a snoozing sloth:
Readers who think I am making all this up won’t budge
because of the latest analysis, but those with open minds will note that Banker
and Player won about the same amount with Target’s help, as logic and
arithmetic agree they should.
Then came the “5 percent” gouge that in this test proved to
be almost 35% overall, and knocked Banker down to a win a third less than
Player’s.
The central panel above shows that in two data sets out of
five, each 1,400 shoes or more than 110,000 bets, Banker grossed more than
Player. But in all five, Banker’s net
win was less than the other guy’s un-gouged gross (and net).
It is, as we would expect, helpful to win more bets than you
lose, and because of that edge, Banker did not see as many maximum/limit bets
as his commission-dodging pal.
Then again, Player’s average win was almost 15 percent
greater than his average loss, while Banker fell short of a 4 percent AWB/ALB
edge.
For both punters, a very high percentage of the overall
positive outcome came from bets above $500.
Player lost overall on bets below $5,000.
Surprise!
You will hear mythematicians argue that since the house
advantage for the game of baccarat (about 1.35%) applies equally to every bet,
it must also bear negatively on bets at every value. That has always been twaddle…unless bets are
flat or random.
In strategic progressive betting, bets rise in value in
response to protracted losing streaks, and our numbers show that the house edge
diminishes as bet amounts increase, as logic predicts.
It’s plain enough: If the house is, say, ten bets ahead in a
given series or sequence of bets, an excessive run of house wins must be at
least partially offset by opposite outcomes in order for the long-term known
negative expectation to prevail.
For example:
Target backs off after a certain point in a losing sequence,
and piles on the pressure when a mid-series win suggests that a second
consecutive house loss might occur.
There is never a guarantee of a second win, obviously, but
our aim is to be as ready as we can be if it happens, so a well-timed win will
do us the most possible good.
Bet values are not relevant in this analysis! I have been saying for more than 25 years
that party-time punters with penny-ante bankrolls have no hope of long-term profit. The house edge will always get ‘em in the
end.
Disciplined strategic betting is something else entirely.
When this blog was born, I talked about pattern betting, and
that remains the essence of Target, along with the common-sense dictum that you
cannot hope to recover prior losses by betting the same amount or less.
It is a reactive discipline, not a predictive one, and
anyone who pretends to know what is coming next in a game of chance is
blowing smoke.
The house advantage is built on a foundation far stronger
than the simple truth that over time, you will lose more bets than you
win. The rock that matters most is money,
and the house is betting that it can survive an anomalous losing streak for far
longer than you can.
Tests like this one involve deadly losing streaks far longer
than any a human being would be willing to endure, scary slides in which flight would have been much smarter than
fight for an actual player.
But in these 7,000 shoes and the 3,600 that preceded them, unreal
hazards applied equally to Banker and Player, and the final outcome is all that
matters.
Because of very deep pockets on both sides, long losing
streaks were successfully surmounted—it just so happens that in the end, Player
was able to turn a more-losses-than-wins scenario a third sunnier than his
over-taxed, Banker-betting buddy.
And on the topic of bet values, in real play there would be
no sense in untidy bets like those you see above: rounding up (but never down)
would be applied.
As for players with limited bankrolls, I can promise them
that if they learn and rigorously apply the principles of Target, they will
enjoy themselves much more at the tables and hang on to their money for much
longer.
(Here's a little story that might help you to visualise the idiocy of setting any betting strategy loose on half a million outcomes with no human or natural input allowed, other than the right to set bet values. Imagine that you're signed up for a kayaking adventure that permits you to buy as many little floating ducks as you want, with the promise that if you make it to a special dock down-river, you'll be allowed to sell them back at a profit. You're also given a net that you can use to scoop up any additional toy ducks that you see bobbing about within reach along the way, and those will also fetch a premium price from the cashier's window, if you ever get there. The rules are really tough, though. You won't be given a paddle, and you will be expected to go with the flow, drifting wherever the stream takes you. You have been told that there will be occasional rapids, rough patches that could sink you, but you are not allowed to protect yourself from them, and all you can do is sit tight and pray you don't tip over. How good are your chances, do you reckon?)
_ 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, spend a few minutes and save a lot of money by reading this. _
