Take the time to learn the strategy rules, playing against "funny money" games until you are an expert. Then, you will be ready to be a real winner!

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Target betting simply means knowing at all times how much you are "in the hole" in a given series, a series being a string of bets that starts with a minimum wager and continues until a profit has been achieved.

Your objective is to make a steady profit, and because you know ahead of time that in the end you will lose more bets than you win, you also know that the only way you can make money is by winning more when you win than you lose when you lose.

Psychic ability is not required.

What's needed is a set of responses tailored to circumstances and requiring a different reaction to a win than to a loss. In this way, the damage done by a string of consecutive losses will be less than the benefit derived from a similar string of consecutive wins, and over time, the value of your average winning bet will be greater than that of your average losing bet.

For example, 49 wins at $11 will offset 51 losses at $10 and overcome a house advantage of 2% (negative expectation being a loss of $21, replaced by a win of $29 or 2.8% of overall action).

It is not my purpose here to explain in detail why the method works, but to challenge skeptics to try it themselves and discover its merits from their own experience rather than mine.

Step one is to learn the rules below. Step two is to put them into action without risk until confidence (and competence) has been gained. Step three is to take what you have learned into a casino and kick ass.

As long as you are behind in a series, carefully track your loss to date (LTD) until a win comes along, then respond to that win by pushing out a next bet (NB) that covers the sum total of the LTD plus a target profit ($5 or 1 unit is good, $25 or 5u is better).

If the mid-series win is followed by a loss (as it will be slightly more often than not) the loss becomes the new NB value, and the series continues until the next win, when the process is repeated. Eventually, a second consecutive mid-series win will bring an end to the series (EOS), and the bet falls back to the minimum 1u.

Target betting will prevail in the long run with just the LTD+TGT rule in place, but I recommend rules variations that will not only boost profitability but will serve to camouflage what you are doing and confuse the enemy (you know who they are).

After an opening loss, bet 5x the previous bet (PB).
After a second loss, bet PB/2 and do the same after a third loss.
If losses continue, repeat the bet (NB=PB) until a win, then apply the LTD+ rule.

After an opening win, bet 2x (NB=PBx2), and keep doing that after each successive win until the bet hits $200.
When the win progression (WP) x2 limit is reached, NB=PB+$100 until a loss ends the winning streak.
When an opening winning streak ends with a loss, NB= the lesser of PBx2 or PB+$100 and LTD=PB.
If losses continue, freeze the bet (NB=PB) and continue doing so until a win calls for the LTD+TGT rule.

Doubled wins (meaning any wins greater than the value of the original bet) do not affect the NB value, but doubled losses change the NB value to match the prior loss (-1, -1, -1, -1x2, -2, -2, -2x3, -6 and so on).

After a push (about 9.0% of all bets at blackjack), double the bet (NB=PBx2) to a maximum added value of $100, and do the same after a dealer natural except if a 2x bet would be due anyway (see above), in which case, add $100 (NB=PB+$100) on top of the doubled value. Treat any dealer 21 as a push, and respond accordingly.

With this method, bets can increase very rapidly, sometimes to amounts that are prohibited by the table limit at the layout where the series began. Whenever that happens, move to a higher-rent layout, and continue the series as before.

(If you are playing against Ken Smith's BST app, you will have to deal with a $1,000 table limit, which is also a 1-200 spread limit, assuming a $5 opening bet for each new series. Freeze the bet at NB=PB until you recover, and as you record each outcome in a log, console yourself with the knowledge that with a less house-biased table limit, each twin-win pattern would rocket you out of the hole and into profit! And please, send me scanned copies of your logs if they're legible - I will be happy to process them at the correct betting levels).

Higher bets mean greater risk, at least in your first few hours of target betting play, but they also mean recovery of past losses in fewer bets than it took you to get into trouble and in the end, bigger profits.

Always add at least half of every session's profit to your bankroll, enabling you to grow stronger and tougher to beat.

Whenever you feel uncomfortable or threatened in a given location, move and take your NB/LTD numbers to a new layout ("the math" will be unaffected). Never break the strategy rules, never touch alcohol during play, and never take losses personally, because they are always temporary.

And...keep reminding yourself that if you win more when you win than you lose when you lose, then losing more often than you win won't hurt you. It's sound logic, and irrefutable arithmetic. Now get out there and win.

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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Reading that ghosts can help you win at blackjack makes me a whole lot less apologetic about my "wacky" gambling theories!

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My target betting method has been taking pretty good care of me for the best part of 30 years, and since the idea first popped into my head in Las Vegas in 1978, I must have written at least a million words about it, and illustrated it with tens of thousands of spreadsheet and photo files.

Blogging suddenly struck me as the perfect way to get other players (not gamblers!) involved because I have been working on a blog about a completely unrelated business topic for the last few weeks, and have found it an ideal forum for fresh ideas and observations.

Probably each new entry will have to be headed with a repetition of the following:

Anyone who has ever gambled for more than an hour or two knows that all casino games have a house advantage that makes it impossible for even the luckiest player to win more bets than he loses in the long term. It follows that anyone betting flat or random amounts is also sure to lose more money than he wins. Target betting is about wagering in such a disciplined and consistent way that you win more when you win than you lose when you lose. Impossible? Follow these rules, and you will learn that losing more often than you win can actually make you a winner, without the help of psychic powers or friendly ghosts.

The ghost reference comes from a post I just tripped over that makes for great reading but may not be inspirational to anyone who doubts that dead people are luckier than live ones (probably the opposite, in fact).

I don't plan to repeatedly defend the concept of target betting. I have done that in three or four versions of a book that I have been writing and rewriting for decades without changing the core concept that dates all the way back to March of '78.

One of these days, I will get the book right (write?), although by then I may have concluded that I am better off keeping my ideas to a limited audience and simply using them to make steady money in casinos.

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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