It's beyond me how there can be any argument about the critical role spread limits play in casino games of chance. So I am especially baffled by new "gaming" rules in Florida and regulations already in place in other states.
Florida is working on new laws that will permit casinos operated by the Seminoles to offer a full range of table games, but there is concern that blackjack betting should be limited in the $5-$25 range to protect patrons from excessive losses.
Similar rules are already in place elsewhere: Colorado, for instance, limits blackjack bets to $5 a hand, opting for "player protection" rather than boost state gambling revenues by allowing people to bet whatever they want.
This is madness!
Tight spreads and table limits at kindergarten levels may slow down the rate at which some players lose, but the real winners are the casinos.
It is a mathematical fact that the tighter your spread (most people do not dare venture beyond 1-10 and 1-5 is about average) the more certain it is that your win-loss pattern will track the known negative expectation for the game.
I ran some tests against the 80,000 BST blackjack outcomes in my models and did the same for the 114,000 or so rounds of baccarat supplied by Lorenzo Rodriquez, and there were no surprises for me.
But the results provide a useful illustration of what players are up against when they try to beat the odds with a shoestring budget.
First, a couple of summaries:
The assumption that most people make is that the wider you spread, the more you will bet and the more likely you are to lose.
Not so.
Both the spread summaries show that my recommended spread range (1-5,000) requires less action than a 1-250 spread at baccarat and a 1-100 spread at blackjack.
The BST blackjack screen shots have been telling us that since the BST tests began more than 80,000 rounds ago, but a little extra confirmation never hurts.
Sure, if you spread 1-50 or less, you will churn less money than you would at 1-5,000. But you will also lose your bankroll, for certain.
It is an absolute fact that as soon as you hit your maximum bet limit, whether it is self-imposed or a house restriction, you lose your "wiggle room" and are instead totally at the mercy of the house edge from that point on.
So it follows that the higher your max, the better off you are. Only a protracted negative pattern will push you to your limit, if it is high enough. And the longer it takes you to get there, the more likely it is that the "down trend" that got you into trouble will be at least partially offset.
Skeptics love to talk about independence of trials and that old cliche, the Gambler's Fallacy and use them to "prove" that a wild swing in the house's favor may never be counter-balanced.
This is prime mythematics!
Given a 1-5,000 spread, the house edge in a series will have to climb well into double figures percentage wise before the dreaded "green ceiling" will cap bets at the top limit. That's nice for the house, for sure, but it can't go on.
The primary engine of a successful betting strategy, assuming discipline and consistence, is having sufficient chips to ride out an egregious house spike.
Most losers take too little cash to the table, and a prolonged swing against them will wipe them out.
Money cannot buy the pot, but an adequate bankroll combined with an effective progressive betting method will make the house advantage irrelevant time and again.
Here's a dramatic illustration of how tight spreads guarantee long-term losses while wide spreads do exactly the opposite.
The chart combo below applies to a baccarat sample selected at random from the 16 blocks in the "Rodriguez Collection" of verifiable rounds and shoes collected by Zumma Publishing.
Baccarat, for those who don't know it already, is a tougher game to beat than blackjack because it lacks double-downs and splits and 50% "bonuses" for naturals. It's also a yawwwwwwnnn, in my opinion, but I know there are people out there who play nothing else.
I can hear my critics screaming that no one could possibly afford the level of spread that I recommend.
The summaries to the left of each green chart show the action for each spread, along with the average bet value and the hourly win, based upon one shoe per hour (about 75 rounds).
You will see that action (or risk) increases with each step, levels off, and then drops even as the size of the maximum bet heads ever skyward.
The earlier summary above contains another critical column of information - the number of bets of $1,000 or more required at each spread level.
In both data sets, the $5-$25,000 spread range required by far the smallest number of bets of $1,000 or more of any of the ranges in which a $1,000 bet was actually permitted.
That's important.
Get smart. Spread tight and you will lose. Spread wide and you won't.
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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