Taking dumb chances is never a good idea. But sometimes, calculated risks should be welcomed, not avoided.

_
There is probably a Google Analytics report out there somewhere that says blogging activity drops right off in the summertime.

I haven't posted a peep for almost a month, with endless sunny days beckoning me out of doors here in rural northern Nevada, but thankfully that has not stopped feedback from coming in.

I was happiest to hear from Daniel Rainsong, whose betting method was soundly trashed by the online shill who plies his trade as the Wizard of Odds.

The Wiz used one of those runaway sims favored by academic mathematicians everywhere to "disprove" Mr. Rainsong's ideas, pocketing a $4,000 bet in the process.

Apparently, Mr. Rainsong expected a fair shake and coughed up the cash like a gentleman, happy that the forfeit was covered at least 20 times over by his winnings from online and conventional (meaning regulated!) casinos.

All I can say about the Rainsong "procedure" (as he describes it) is that it has two things in common with target betting: it is a progression, and a clever one at that.

Readers who would like to know more about it can contact me via one of the links on this page, and I will pass on their requests.

I was also pleased to hear criticism of my suggestion that target betting can at times be profitable at long-odds games such as craps field, roulette and 3-card poker, the consensus being that anyone who blunders into one of those sucker traps deserves to get skinned.

True enough.

Constructive criticism is useful when it provides an opportunity to refute misunderstandings that only a masochist who has read every post to this blog could avoid!

In everything I have ever written on the subject, I have always qualified my embrace of games with a high house edge by saying that whenever bets start to look like serious money, it's time to beat a retreat to safer havens such as blackjack and baccarat.

I learned a long time ago that even in a game with a crippling HA such as the 5.26% that applies across the board in roulette, target betting can exploit the ping-pong effect that can be observed in the win-loss pattern almost as often as at blackjack.

But the greatest advantage of flexibility is that it helps throw casino bloodhounds off the scent.

When a pit prodnose sees someone winning at blackjack more than he "should" his first assumption is that card-counting is the problem, and when bets don't drop dramatically in response to a shuffle, dumb luck gets the blame, at least for a while.

Pit staff are first taught, and then learn from observation and experience, that no one can win forever at house games, and when counting and a hot streak are both ruled out, cheating is for them the last remaining explanation.

Occasional winners are more than welcome in a casino...they are essential to the business, because they're the lure for losers.

Regular winners are as popular among pit personnel as flagrant cheats, which some of them probably turn out to be.

As the known value of negative expectation at different games increases, so does the likelihood that the undramatic undulation of the win-loss pattern will pitch a fit and lurch egregiously in the house's favor.

But even the 2-1 vertical numbers columns at roulette offer opportunity for a target player, within reason, the trick being to halve and round up the current LTD when the time comes to update the NB value.

My guess is that an unbreakable accord between Israel and its neighbors is a whole lot more likely than progressive betting being embraced by supporters of the conventional gambling wisdom, and that is just fine by me.

And we will also disagree in perpetuity about the relevance or fairness of a testing method that assumes that all gamblers are suicidal idiots.

I have been lectured over and over again about the inability of even the smartest player to avoid absolute subjugation by the house edge at games of chance.

The message is that even if you can stay out of fatal trouble for a million bets or more, the house will always beat you in the end.

All samples of bets, however large, are anecdotal and therefore irrelevant if they show a player winning against a clear long-term house advantage.

Conversely, any sample of any size that depicts a gambler getting his clock cleaned is proof that the house edge cannot be beaten.

I do not suggest that a player who takes a break before a potentially fatal negative trend can destroy him will never get into serious trouble.

What I do say is that prolonged negative trends are a relative rarity and that a cautious response to early warning signs will avoid a significant percentage of them.

Remember that target betting generally requires just two consecutive wins to achieve turnaround (or "get out of the hole") and in many situations, just a single win will do the trick.

It is possible to encounter a win-loss pattern that defies probability and excludes paired wins or any player wins at all for an extended period. But that is not a common occurrence.

If you play like a mindless robot and take whatever comes at you without applying any form of damage control, you will lose sooner or later, even if you faithfully apply the rules of target betting as I have laid them out.

Many gamblers believe that stepping away from a punishing game and resuming play at another time in another place is futile, and they are encouraged in that self-destructive belief by the Wizard of Odds and his casino industry sponsors.

A target player knows better.

Occasional tough times are inevitable and they cannot always be avoided.

But if you are going to put your good money at risk in a game in which the odds are against you, you at the very least need enough sense to come in out of the rain.

You are sure to lose more bets than you win, in the long run, so you have no choice but to bet in such a way that you win more when you win than you lose when you lose.

Perennial losers (a term that describes more than 99% of all punters) think that what I just described is an impossible dream.

It is not impossible. It is essential.

And even the most corrupt "mathematical" methods devised in the service of the gambling industry cannot prove otherwise.

One of the distractions I have been enjoying since my last post is an iPod touch, a present from our youngest son, and among the apps I downloaded was a blackjack game that can be played at speed with just one thumb.

There are many better uses for the ultimate iPod, I realize, but naturally this was one I could not resist.

The game starts you out with a $1,000 credit and automatically allows a "marker" for $500 every time you go broke.

Most important, the permitted spread is from $5 to $5,000, which is better than most virtual blackjack games.

As I type this, I am almost $40,000 ahead after a total of maybe five hours of play in three weeks.

The free app has a stats utility that tells me that I won 622 bets, lost 714 bets, and pushed 109 times, indicating an overall house edge of -92/1445 = (6.37%).

So...this is not a game honest enough to survive in a real casino (since when was single-deck blackjack tougher to beat than roulette or pai-gow poker?).

The app does not track action, but it is clear that I did not lose 6.37% of whatever the "churn" number might have been, in spite of negative expectation.

Target betting commonly delivers a win equal to 5.0% (or more) of the final handle, so my $40,000 in profits suggests an average bet of around $550 and an indicated LOSS of $50,000. Oops...but at least we know where I went right!

In response to an earlier post, a regular reader recently chided me for, he said, confusing actual value (AV) with the house advantage (HA) or negative expectation (NE), which he argues never varies.

Technically, he may be right, but if in a <1.0% game such as single-deck blackjack, the dealer wins more bets than expected, the house clearly enjoys a greater advantage than if (in the sample mentioned here) it had won 14 more bets than I did in 1445 rounds, rather than 92.

The same old friend bemoans the fact that target betting offers no (to use his term) bankroll protection and takes too many risks when the going gets tough and the "hole" is already too deep for comfort.

In fact, the reverse is true.

First of all, an adequate bankroll is the best protection a player can have assuming his disciplined adherence to a viable betting strategy.

Protecting the protection is the equivalent of refusing to use sophisticated weaponry in a firefight because the ammunition is too expensive.

The only alternative is certain death. But look at the money you save!

Obviously, no one wants to push their entire bankroll into the fray willy nilly, but significant threats are shown by the conventions of mathematics to be very rare indeed.

Cutting the method off at the knees right at the moment when its forceful approach is most needed is, to put it bluntly, suicide.

Target betting certainly seems at first blush to be riskier than most betting methods and far outside the comfort zone of the majority of gamblers.

But its ballsy concerted assault on the house edge rapidly generates a mounting stockpile of fresh ammunition that proves that attack is the best form of defense.

And because of that, the size of the bets required becomes a diminishing concern.

But we knew that already, didn't we?

Gambling has countless cliches that can be heard any night in any casino, covering speculation and accumulation in a wide variety of words and phrases that describe every player's dream of going home a winner.

The one that says it best, in my opinion, is Scared money never wins.

In other words, If you can't afford to win, you shouldn't bet.


As the caption confirms, the above results from the iPod blackjack app don't prove that target betting will always win. But they do illustrate what is possible, and given the consistent success of the betting method, probable. I have not checked the fairness and accuracy of the app, but the stats shown above suggest that it falls far short of Ken Smith's clever little Blackjack Strategy Trainer. Given its head, target betting will flip the house edge into a far greater player edge. But weakening it by imposing unrealistic bet limits, thereby requiring longer winning streaks to enable turnaround, is worse than counter-productive: it is suicide. I know from years of careful analysis of data from a wide variety of sources that a spread of less than 1,000 to 1 is not viable in the long term. The iPod app allows a $5,000 maximum bet, and that is its only practical advantage over BST. It is encouraging to see that in spite of a consistent AV far greater than expected, the house was unable to sustain streaks long enough to defeat target betting. What is important is that a disciplined betting strategy requires the house to be far "luckier" than negative expectation predicts, putting it on the defensive, in effect. That's a good thing!

The iPod touch is a brilliant piece of technology, and I am looking forward to seeing Apple's rumored expansion of the interface to tablet size. This little do-hickey cost about $300, and ballooning it from 2x4 to 10x12 or whatever will probably put the resulting tablet computer in the $1,000 neighborhood. Bring it on, Steve!

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.
_

When it comes to reporting on Indian gaming deals in Florida, white man speaks (writes?) with forked tongue!

_
I have been watching developments on the gambling front in Florida with some interest lately, not because I plan to waste money on a trip down there but because the fuss and palaver provides clues about the way state legislators think.

After much self-righteous huffing and puffing, lawmakers basically caved to all the Seminole tribe's demands, swallowing whole the bait that 45,000 new jobs will be created and $4 billion will be added to state revenues by game expansions at the tribe's seven casinos.

Today's news item reflects the immediate impact of Florida's concessions to its Native Americans: a blatant attempt by the Indian casinos to gouge players at their blackjack tables.

The deal's publicity push promised $5 blackjack and baccarat, plus no-limit poker and sundry other gambling options, but when it came down to it, low-limit blackjack tables were nowhere to be found.

Worse than that, $25 players suddenly found their tables being switched up to a $100 minimum.

And unlike in Nevada, where low-limit players are allowed to keep playing at low stakes when the table minimum is hiked, anyone attempting to bet below the new limits was told to take a hike.

What amazes me is that none of the stories I have read makes any attempt to address the question of what table limits are all about.

Or why state pols invariably cave to casinos' demands, sucked in by promises of huge revenues that save them from the politically dangerous responsibility of funding services from legitimate sources untainted by moral murk.

Countless studies have shown that wherever it gets the nod (including in Nevada and New Jersey) legalized gambling costs more jobs than it creates and more money than it generates.

But somehow legislators never read those things, or are persuaded not to believe them.

Back to table limits: We can all guess that minimums are bumped up on weekends when demand increases because casinos are crowded, and we can grudgingly accept it as good business.

But the reality is that higher minimums reduce player's spreads, and that's where extra house profits lie.

A $5 player might spread all the way up to (gasp) $50, and even if he chooses his bet values more or less randomly, his 1-10 spread gives him a marginally better shot at staying ahead of the game than if he were to flat-bet at $5.

If the same player with the same limited budget is coerced into opening at $25, his spread will likely still cap out at or near $50, making him a more likely loser.

Of course higher minimums mean more moolah in the house's coffers, but tighter spreads make player losses that much more certain.

There's no good news about spreads in any of my models, that's for sure.

It is absolutely possible to win for a while with a spread as tight as 1-5 or 1-10, and if that were not so, no one would play table games and folks like the Florida Seminoles would lose their Native American shirts.

But the longer you play with a limited spread, the more likely it is that the prevailing house edge will gobble up your bankroll, especially if, like most gamblers, you are challenging the negative odds with inadequate funding.

Whatever your maximum, you will need many multiples of that amount in the bank to enable you to ride out rough spots and come out the other side ahead of the game.

And the narrower the spread, the larger the multiple, with a decreasing chance of success proportionate to the value of the "max." That's because the sooner you hit that green ceiling, the more you will be at the mercy of the house edge.

Overall, with a mere half-million or so mixed-game outcomes in my data set, a spread tighter than 1-2,500 will always lose in the end. It will do nicely for very long stretches, but will ultimately fail.

That assumes, of course, that you follow the dictates of computer simulations and take no defensive action whatsoever when a house spike hits and suddenly you can't win a bet to save your life.

A spread that wide is out of the reach of almost everyone, I realize.

But the harsh truth about gambling games is that they cannot be beaten without a disciplined plan with big bucks behind it.

Then again, a fat bankroll alone won't win in the end, so money is not everything.

Spread is the key, and evidently, those wily Florida Seminoles (whose casinos are actually being run by even wilier pros from Las Vegas and Atlantic City) know it.

Blackjack is far and away the best table game for target betting, because of its doubles, splits and naturals.

But variations on the traditional game, especially Royal Match, should always be avoided like the plague, along with layouts where the pay-out on a natural has been cut from 3-2 to 6-5.

Baccarat lags behind blackjack because wins never pay more than 1-1 (forget Ties and other distractions...they're a rip-off!), and the only sensible way to bet is to back Player only.

I know, I know, Banker wins more often than Player by an infinitesimal percentage. But the tiny edge it offers is blown to bits and then some by the 5% commission on Banker payouts.

The great advantage of baccarat is that it's a high rollers' game offering table limits that are generally far higher than for blackjack.

So when a recovery series drags on and bet values are weighed down with multiple zeroes, baccarat may be the best option for target betting.

Camouflage is a critical element in target betting, and full size baccarat layouts with all manner of high-value chips in play can provide it like no other game.

There are several target betting options that can be profitable when bet values in a new series are relatively low, but because the house edge is much higher (five times higher or more) you should figure to head back to blackjack or baccarat the moment the going gets tough.

Personally, I enjoy field bets at craps in spite of a house edge that ranges from around 2.6% to above 5.0%, depending on the payout for 6,6 (go for 3x tables whenever possible).

As in blackjack, a turnaround bet on the field can hit an x2 or x3 payout, greatly adding to the EOS profit.

I like 3-card poker for the same reason, although target betting has to be modified to accommodate the ante/raise procedure.

An important rule: never, ever bet on "Pair Plus"!

It is very rare indeed to see a player who doesn't put money in that innocent-looking drain-hole, and it is the reason most 3-card poker players are losers.

Bet only the ante, raise only on a Q,6 or better, and when figuring your LTD+ values, you should HALVE your current loss to date, rounding up in appropriate increments (-$275 calls for an ante bet of $150, for example).

The house edge for the game is around 4.0%, or at least 4x that for blackjack. But as long as bet values are at the low end of your sliding scale, the game's ante bonuses (up to 6x!) can make for profitable play for a while.

Again, never waste money on Pair-plus and ignore whatever sales pitches you may hear from dealers and even other players.

Pair-plus makes about as much sense as a Tie bet in baccarat, and in effect it requires you to constantly bet against yourself!

Roulette has its charms when seats at blackjack and baccarat layouts are hard to find, but the house edge of 5.26% makes it a short-term option at best.

Put your money on 1-1 options only (black/red, odd/even, first/last), although I confess that often I do well picking a 2-1 column (usually the first on the left), sticking with it every time, and applying the same LTD/2 rule as for 3-card poker.

Those are the only table games I will ever play in a casino.

My ranking: blackjack, baccarat, craps field, 3-card poker, roulette.

And when the going gets tough, blackjack is always #1, backed up by baccarat when table limits become a problem.

Table limits are, of course, much lower at craps, 3CP and roulette than at blackjack and baccarat, so that is another solid reason to limit your play against games with higher (or should that be lower?) negative expectation.

Follow the target betting rules consistently and you will win consistently too, which always becomes a problem after a while.

Losers get nothing from casino personnel other than forced sympathy and encouragement to lose some more.

Winners are welcome, as long as they eventually become losers - if they keep on winning, they are assumed to be cheats, and hell hath no fury like pit boss who suspects illegal shenanigans.

As a frequent winner, expect to be scrutinized and sometimes even gently harassed.

But don't expect the treatment to let up even after you have been proved honest and upright...winning is itself a sin in the house's book.

Your best allies are the dealers. Treat them well, and they will be less inclined to clue in their bosses on how you are managing to reverse the expected direction of the "chip flow."

Dealers who know you and can rely on you for steady tokes will usually tip you off when they are on a hot streak, a concept that academic mathematicians insist can have no bearing on overall odds but every player knows to be a very real part of gambling life.

You will win steadily and reliably, sometimes attracting the attention of other players even before the dealer takes notice (although dealers are mostly much quicker and smarter than they are given credit for!).

In spite of that, never run away with the idea that you are invincible. You have standard negative expectation whacked, for sure, but sometimes the house edge can go dangerously haywire before it settles back to the norm, and you need to be ready for that.

Pit staff will want to get to know you, but never be flattered by their attention.

Winners attract "comps" because the house wants them to stay where the money was won until it gets lost again, which is how the script plays out for most punters.

Never angle for comps. You don't need them, and their price is too high.

(Losers are sometimes "comped" too, but only the ones who keep returning for more punishment, demonstrating that they have money to burn and are looking for a light!).

You will be tracked during play once the spotlight is on you, but you do not have to make the house's job easier by giving them your name.

If you can, shrug off overtures from glad-handing pit personnel and say you are just passing through and no thanks, you don't want a Privileged Player's Premium card, or whatever.

Anonymity is a much better way to go, although it gets harder to achieve the longer you keep winning.

Play quietly and politely, keep your head down, and resist the temptation to tell wayward players how to improve their game, even if they ask for your advice (and they will).

Just remember that losers make the games possible. You need them as much as the house does.

In spite of negative expectation, you really do have the math on your side.

Although each bet theoretically faces the same negative odds, there are other numbers at work in a gambling game that work in your favor.

Among them is the demonstrable fact that for both sides in a game, more wins are isolated than are followed by a second win.

That's bad for you when you are bumping your NB value in response to a mid-recovery win. But, more often, you are betting (with the OL, 2L, 3L and MSL target betting rules) that the house will comply with expectation and lose on the heels of a win.

It is a fact that you will lose more potential turnaround bets than you win, thanks to the house edge.

It is also a fact that because you keep adjusting your NB values to match and exceed the loss to date right after a mid-series win, that small disadvantage will only very rarely be a problem.

You know you are going to lose more bets than you win.

It follows both logically and mathematically that in that case, you must ensure that over the long haul, you win more when you win than you lose when you lose.

Have I said that before?

Blackjack players will often tell you that the house advantage lies in the fact that you, the player, have to decide the fate of your hand before the dealer does. So if you draw a "stiff" (two cards that have to be hit) and then bust, the dealer wins even if he turns out to have had a worse starter hand than yours.

The "bust first" rule is a factor, certainly, and it bolsters the house edge significantly. But not nearly as substantively as the simple fact that the dealer has a lot more money to back him than you do.

The house can take a licking for an awfully long time, and will probably be rescued by its flimsy numerical edge long before it has to cry Uncle.

All a flat or random bettor can do is soldier on when times are tough, and pray for a miracle.

The target player needs neither prayers nor miracles.

As a target strategist, your best weapon lies in the fact that you set bet values, not the house.

The house will always, in the end, win more often than you. But you get to determine how much it wins when it wins and how much it loses when it loses.

That is true for every player, but it consistently makes the difference between winning and losing only when target betting is part of the picture.

Target betting shows you how and when to exploit control that most players don't know they have.

Random players hit their personal limits very quickly, and from then on will usually need to win more often than they lose because the odds are that that is the only way they can hope to win more money than they lose.

Your bets freeze in a downturn but will, when appropriate, keep rising to stay one step ahead of the LTD.

And that makes it really difficult for the house to beat you in the end.

In the good old days, pit bosses often used index cards on a chest-level desktop to track the activity of players who were either regulars requesting a rating, or of special interest for some other reason (an excess of "luck" for example).

One column of cards would track losers, and the column beside it would be for winners.

Usually, a card moved into the losers column would never move out of it, making it easy for the pit staffer to mentally tally one set of cards against the other and guess the current state of the house's bottom line.

What they would rather not do was move a card from lose to win, then lose, then win, which is what will happen again and again to a target player who stays in the same blackjack pit for too long.

Keyboard clicks have mostly taken over from squiggles on index cards, but either way, the moral of this tale is: Keep moving.

Most of the time, recoveries will come in six bets or fewer, and profits will accrue at a gentle pace that does not attract much attention.

Paired wins are less frequent than isolated wins, for sure, but on average they are rarely more than a handful of bets apart.

However, when a series drags on for ten or more rounds and the bets begin to look like real money, never be tempted to show the pit how clever you are by achieving EOS under the watchful eyes of the same crew that saw you place your piddling opening bet.

Betting from $5 to $500 in the same general vicinity is a bad idea.

I did that several times too often before I determined that profits and a low profile mattered more than demonstrating how deep a hole I could get out of.

Cash, not kudos...that's the rule!

If you really want empathy (especially when alternate layouts are temporarily hard to find) it is best to suspend play against a challenging series that would usually require a move, keep the LTD/NB numbers in your head, and drop back to a minimum bet.

You can accumulate several "deferred" series if you choose, saving them for another casino or another day, and your (temporary) losses will keep at least one pit crew happy for a while.

The folks in the next pit you visit will likely have a lot less to smile about.


The screenshot composite above is from the current BST blackjack session, which as I type this is a little over half done (I don't play as often or as long as I used to, on the grounds that my point was made long ago!). The numbers you see are not "proof" of anything, just an example of what can be achieved with target betting. Three of the four sessions had more losses than wins, and the other was a virtual break-even. In each case, the state of the bankroll after the last hand belies those numbers (and unlike many no-dough apps, BST does not permit players to alter their bankrolls!). I suppose it's possible that similar results might be seen if a simple Martingale were used against Ken Smith's elegant little app, but I have my doubts. I also suppose that cheating is an option. But it isn't for me. As I always say: What for? Target betting is easier and more reliable than cheating could ever be!

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.
_

To answer questions about Oscar's Grind, it's better than flying by the seat of your pants, but target betting is better still.

_
I get questions about Oscar's Grind from time to time, usually from people who want to suggest that there is a more than coincidental similarity between Oscar's variation on the money management theme and my own.

The two methods are as alike as an apple and an orange (both grew on a tree, both are spherical and have pips, both taste good and...that's about it).

I have always enjoyed the story of the origins of the Grind, which legend has it was created by a crusty old geezer who played just craps and used a stubby pencil to record the result of each roll in a battered notebook. Too many adjectives!

I'm more inclined to believe that like card counting, Oscar's creation is encouraged by the casinos because most people mess it up, and when they do, they lose more money than they probably would otherwise.

The idea as I recall it from Tom Ainslie's book How to Win in a Casino is to freeze the bet after a loss, add one unit after any mid-series win, and revert to a minimum bet after recovering prior losses for the series, plus one unit.

If the next bet in a series would exceed 20 units, it's Game Over and back to a minimum wager, and that's the part that makes me suspect that "Oscar" was actually a casino employee with evil intent!

A 1-20 spread has zero chance of winning in the long term, with or without following the OG rules. That's an absolute factual fact. With the loss limit removed, "Oscar" does marginally better than a random bettor on a winning streak and can stay ahead for a good long while with a decent bankroll.

Against the BST blackjack data set, for example, OG earned about 5.0% of target betting's win to date while racking up more than 50% of my method's overall action. That translates to a greater risk with a far lesser reward.

Mr. Ainslie's description of Oscar's Grind makes no provision for a win progression, which seems to me strangely short-sighted unless there is an ulterior professional motive. Incorporating +1u after an opening win, continuing until a loss, then freezing the bet per the standard rules and playing on until the loss is recovered +1u, pumps OG's win by more than 30% while increasing the action by less than 10%. Why not do it?

OG is a progressive betting method, of course, so it wins more often than not. It's just not a very good progressive betting method!

A simple Martingale does much better, my version of a Martingale is more effective than the original, and target betting knocks them all into the proverbial cocked hat (one of these days, I must look that one up!).

Now seems as good a time as any to revisit the topic of which games to tackle with target betting.

Blackjack is by far the preferred option because of its low net house edge and the extra profit opportunities offered by double-downs and splits and 3-2 payoffs for naturals (never play at a layout offering 6-5, unless you are stuck at the last blackjack layout on earth).

Field betting at craps is a great place to start a series and take a break from blackjack, because of the x2 payoffs for 2 and 12 that are still x2 and x3 in some casinos. The negative odds are more than 5x blackjack's with x2x2, so you should never let the bets get too high before bailing out for a safer game.

Baccarat is the #2 option, but you should never, ever bet on Banker. That so-called "5 percent" commission is one of the great lies of gambling because it can easily swallow all your winnings and leave you in the hole in spite of your best efforts. I'll be posting more about that one of these days, with the help of the baccarat data sets from Lee Jones and Lorenzo Rodriguez (all 300,000+ of 'em!).

Roulette is a wonderfully streaky game best played (in my opinion) with the "wobble" method of picking black or red, odd or even, or whatever - never "inside" bets. Wobble is from WBL which in turn means Win Before Last, or as the French have it, avant derniere (or is it the other way around? I can never be sure!).

The big problem with roulette, of course, is its 5.26% house edge. So, again, kick off a new series (or several) at roulette if you must, but always back off before the NB gets out of hand, and take your LTD/NB numbers to a more player-friendly game.

Just don't rely on old Oscar, may he RIP. Mr. Ainslie claims to have paid for several gambling trips to the Bahamas with that method. Guess he's just a lucky cuss...?

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.
_