The conventional wisdom says a million wins don't matter and losses are all that counts. True, but false at the same time!

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A mathematician arguing for the YCW (you can't win) philosophy will tell you with a straight face that progressive betting can never be profitable because more bets lost than won must always result in more money lost than won.

No amount of evidence to the contrary will be considered acceptable, in the same way that for centuries, the conventional wisdom dismissed data showing that Planet Earth was not flat.

It is of course completely rational to warn against a betting strategy that will occasionally suffer a catastrophic loss that will always wipe out all prior profits and bankrupt the player.

But progressive betting will only match that caveat if the method is applied the way the casinos and their house-trained experts want it to be, in real play or in computer simulations.

That means that the player must keep on betting through prolonged downturns, and meekly throw in the towel whenever his next bet is prohibited by the prevailing table limit.

The ideal gambler is, in the view of all casino operators and the mythematicians who promote the gambling industry's ordained right to the contents of all our wallets, an impetuous spendthrift who comes to the table with an inadequate bankroll. He then bets a very narrow spread, and sheds first his inhibitions under the influence of "free" booze, then his stash.

It is theoretically reasonable to suggest that since target betting my way lost just once in some 70,000 recoveries, that loss might have occurred in the very first session, and therefore the method is potentially too hazardous to merit consideration.

It is theoretically equally reasonable to argue that since 1 in 70,000 American motorists will be killed or seriously injured in a road accident on any given day, the car in your garage is potentially unsafe at any speed and you would therefore be ill-advised to drive it ever again.

I cannot refute a statistically supported recommendation that the only certain way to win in a casino is to keep all your money in your pocket and, better yet, never step across the threshold.

But short of an outright ban on gambling, the evidence shows that progressive betting is a better way to win than any of the alternatives.

Those of you who come to agree with me after a few hundred hours of cautious exploration and practice (I certainly do not expect you to take my word for anything!) will learn that target betting can be modified in all sorts of ways to suit your gambling personality and your resources.

In fact, the more modifications you develop, mixing and matching them as you see fit, the less likely you are to be identified by casino pit personnel as a player who wins "too often" and should be stopped.

Elsewhere in this blog is data that show that even the much-derided Martingale or double-up betting method (-1, -2, -4, +8 etc.) demolishes the house advantage in the almost 400,000 real-time, real-play outcomes that are the subject of the current trial.

Played right, double-up can be a powerful antidote to the house edge. If the casino you have selected allows you to play it at all, that is.

Target betting with my rules applied is far harder to spot, and the modifications that I recommend or that individual players will develop for themselves make it even more effective in the real world.

Here's the latest BST data set:

(Click on the image to enlarge it)

An important reminder: The only person likely to make money out of this blog is you, Dear Reader. There's nothing to buy, ever, and your soul is safe (from me, at least). Test my ideas and use them or don't. It's up to you.
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The YCW (you can't win) Brigade will tell you that if you can't be sure of winning, you should never attempt a betting strategy...

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...but if you don't have a plan, you are much more likely to lose.

It is plain to see who benefits most from the gambling attitude promoted by mythematicians, who go on to say: "You should think of gambling as entertainment, nothing more, and only bet what you can afford to lose."

My advice is fundamentally different: "Play to win, but don't play at all if you can't afford to win."

In other words, if a penny-ante bankroll is all you can muster (and there's no shame in that!) then you will probably be better off to trust to blind luck and hope that at worst, you break even.

Beating negative odds requires a bankroll large enough to keep you in the game through the inevitable rough spots when the house edge is temporarily far greater than standard negative expectation.

The latest batch of BST figures is not much different from its predecessors. It shows "the house" getting way ahead in terms of player losses vs. player wins, and as long as the 1-200 spread limit is applied, the result is another loss for the good guys (who don't work for the casino, let's be clear about that!).

Set target betting loose with an appropriate bankroll, and as before, we end up with an overall win with the total action (sessions A and B combined) greatly reduced. Also per prior experience, we see far more "big ticket" bets when the BST table limit is applied than without it.

So much for "conservative" play!

The BST results have been truly demoralizing lately, without target betting giving up a thin dime.

Here are the current "Batch #s 1-15 to date" numbers:-

Win Rate TD 100.0000%

ALL ahead +$1,715,420 = +5.17% of
$33,161,885 action
$25,000 max
$444 avg bet
$2,299 per hour
5.2 x avg bet


RISK (181,475) = 18.14% of bankroll
return 945%

EOS x 13,403 in 74,620 rounds
Avg EOS 5.6 rounds

AV/HA -5.28% (3,938) -5.28%
Expected ($1,750,087) per gross AV or (597) per net AV of -0.80%
TA/T 2.0 x expected result


+ MAX 12
- MIN -16
ABV $444
$1,000+ 3,536 4.74% of all bets

+ series 4,286 32%
0 series 4,153 31%
- series 4,964 37%
1-win EOS 8,737 65%

Most of the data are self-explanatory. Note that betting my way, big-ticket wagers were less than 5% of the total, and that the win to date represents better than a 5.0% "hold" of total action, against an overall house edge of between 0.8% and 5.28%, depending on the method of measurement.

Sometime soon, I will post average bet and $1,000+ data for a 1-200 spread for all 15 BST models, but it is safe to predict that action will be way up, the result will be an overall loss in line with negative expectation, and max bets will be in the majority, not a rare event at 1 in 20 or less.

I use a "net" number for the house edge (HA) or actual value (AV) which factors in doubles, splits and 3-2 payoffs for naturals. The old-fashioned way is to count hands as either won or lost: do that, and you end up with an HA that's more than SIX TIMES greater than my more inclusive approach.

As you can see, winning series (hey, they were ALL winning series) with more bets lost than won greatly outnumbered series with more wins than losses. Series that were negative or neutral still account for 68% of the total, so "expectation" demanded either a break-even or a loss in all those instances. Sorry, expectation.

The trial opened with a $1,000,000 bankroll almost 75,000 blackjack hands ago, and that has long since been covered by winnings, plus a 70% return on the investment which does not include $1,000,000 in profits left in the bankroll to take us through future downturns.

Maximum exposure for the initial bankroll was $181,475, or a little more than 18%.

I do not expect target betting to keep winning forever.

At some point, a win-loss pattern will be encountered that first pushes the strategy to its maximum bet, leaving it at the mercy of an ongoing negative surge that exceeds expectation for the game.

Then, the strategy will cease to be a strategy at all...it will have to wait out the surge and hope that sanity returns before the balance of the bankroll is swallowed up.

In the 300,000+ baccarat outcomes discussed in earlier blog posts, there was just one "crash and burn" and target betting came out way, way ahead in spite of it (see the archives or do a baccarat search).

The certainty is that winning sessions will always hugely outnumber losing sessions if you follow my rules.

The experts warn that the million-dollar bust could happen today or tomorrow, long before you have built up enough profits to avoid actual loss of your original buy-in.

But my way, probability is overwhelmingly on your side. Their way, it's against you every time you belly up to a blackjack table. The choice, of course, is yours!

The (nearly) 75,000 BST outcomes break down as follows:

(Click on the image to enlarge it)

Just for the fun of it, each of the target betting models also tracks results for two versions of the widely derided Martingale, the old-fashioned x2 kind (-5, -10, -20 etc.) and a more aggressive update which brings in more dough with a modified progression: -5, -10, -25, -50, -100, -250 etc.).

The YCW preachers scorn double-up as suicide, warning that "you will hit the table limit, and then what?"

"What," my friends (all of a sudden I'm John McCain?) is a move to a new location where the required NB is permitted. And if at some point you hit a house- or self-imposed green ceiling that can't be defied, then you keep on betting the max. The odds are very much in your favor that the WLP will stabilize and you will recover prior losses and then some.

Once again, I will say that I don't recommend double-up, not because it's a losing method, but because it is too easily spotted and casino pit staff will invariably interfere with its use.

I don't have double-up numbers for all 15 BST sessions yet, but here are the data for the current batch (#15). Notice that target betting is a more effective alternative.

(Click on the image to enlarge it)
Here are the newest BST numbers. I have to stop doing this. But maybe not quite yet?

(Click on the image to enlarge it)

The BST "table-limit" bets enormously outnumber max bets with target betting rules because in the current batch, a tight-spread punter would have been at the limit for the last 1,200 rounds. And since he's in the hole by more than $65,000, he is going to be betting the max until the cows come home.

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.
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