Beating the house is like safe driving. You have to pay attention, be alert, and steer, brake or accelerate as conditions require.

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Runaway sims may be enough to satisfy mythematicians that the house edge in casino games is unbeatable, but they have very little to do with actual play.

Take camouflage, for example.

The double-up method of progressive betting (call it the Small Martingale, if you like) is unplayable because after a handful of redoubled bets at the same layout, you might as well pull out a klaxon horn and blast it in the pit boss's ear.

Double-up makes money, for sure. But it also makes waves. Big ones.

Consistent winning is, as far as the casinos are concerned, a crime akin to outright cheating, so if you want to play on undisturbed (and of course, you do) you have to dodge and weave a little from time to time.

The core of target betting is the rule that you must at all times know your loss to date (LTD) and be ready to cover it with an LTD+ bet when the right "trigger" comes along.

All the other rules, profitable as they may be, are essentially window dressing, in place to distract and befuddle the enemy.

That means that you can vary application of those rules as you see fit, tapping the "brake" or the "gas pedal" when you feel the moment is right (Cialis costs extra!).

All of the target betting spreadsheet models are required by the rules of fair testing to maintain the same set of parameters or protocols throughout. That means that like runaway sims, they do not tell the whole story, although unlike sims, they at least tell no lies.

Human beings playing with real money in real time against a real game quickly develop a sense of when things are going well and might continue to do so, and the reverse. And so, like a driver on a country road, they know when to speed up or slow down.

All the target betting models are based upon a minimum bet of $5 and a "house limit" of $25,000 and the method is backed by a bankroll of $1 million in make-believe moolah.

My models permit doubling the bet up to an added $100 in response to a push, and all the other target betting rules are there, including open and second loss responses, win progressions and the mid-series loss "do over" option (see the rules if this is all Greek to you!).

Missing from the mix are my recommended responses to a dealer natural (NB=PBx2) and a dealer 3+ (three cards or more) 21 (same as a push), both of them useful ways to improve profitability without adding too much extra risk.

It's worth noting that the "push rule" alone adds about $11,500 to the overall "win" from the current blackjack trial, which as I type this stands at 6,695 rounds and 1,130 recoveries unblemished by a single bust. You get a 10% increase in profits along with a 22% increase in action, which can be interpreted as potential added risk. Is it worth it? That's for a human player to decide, something a runaway sim cannot do.

Other real-life complications that are tricky to model in a simulation include "round-ups," meaning the conversion of a clumsy number into whatever units are currently in play, a variable value.

For example, when a $500 win leaves you with an LTD of $45, you would be more likely to push out a $100 chip than a $25 and 4 $5s, and a $15 LTD calls for a $25 bet. Sure, I can do that in my spreadsheet models, but why bother? (the money isn't real anyway!).

For years, I have had a habit of betting a limited spread at local "low roller" casinos where the table minimum is $5 and the max $200 or $300, accumulating several apparent "busts" to be played off when I can make a visit to Stateline or Reno, where the limits are higher.

The effect of this approach is that while very often a tight spread can be profitable, in the long run I am a loser at my neighborhood haunts. I don't broadcast the news that hanging series are always recovered down the road (literally and timewise!), because no one else needs to know that.

Among the most powerful advantages of target betting is that it tells the player when to stop winning.

Let's say that I take a half dozen incomplete NB/LTDs into a high-rent casino, each of them frozen at 200/500, meaning that I am $500 x 6 "in the hole" and the next bet required by the rules is $200, matching the wager I lost before suspending the series for later recovery.

I am not planning to bet at the $200 level indefinitely, but only until the dangling series have been recovered. If things go well, I will wrap up all six incompletes and then fall back to whatever minimum bet applies at my current location (probably $10-$25).

Without a betting strategy, I would be starting out with $200 bets, winning $3,000, then trying to decide whether it's time to quit while I am ahead, or keep on playing knowing that if I get 15 bets or less behind the house, I am going to be back in the red.

Target betting does not permit that risk. Once the suspended series have been recovered, a new contest begins back on the first rung of the ladder, with uncertainty and greed both erased from the picture.

This is a process you can see repeated over and over again if you scroll down any one of the current set of target betting models.

The average EOS for target betting comes in less than six bets at blackjack, which generally has faster turnarounds than baccarat because of naturals and winning splits or double-downs that happen to coincide with a potential turnaround bet.

In the current batch (#15) there are at this point 1,130 x EOS in 6,695 rounds, making for a 5.9-round average. But only one third of all series drag out to more than 6 bets from opening bet to recovery. That indicates that after resuming play at the suspended betting level, the odds are better than 2-1 in your favor that EOS will come in six bets or less.

Confidence and cold cash are both essential to a target betting player's long term success, but a little luck now and then does not hurt. What is important is that you always know when to quit, something that very few gamblers can claim.

There is a temptation to try for a fatter bottom line by dispensing with the "low roller" phase and starting each new series with a $100 minimum bet.

Don't do it!

Assuming a $5 minimum and an available house limit is $25,000, a $100 opener would slash your spread from 1-5000 to 1-250, and that significant "tightening" will eventually choke you. A 1-1,000 spread is about as tight as you should figure to go, if you want to keep winning without an excess of "brown-trouser moments." It's just arithmetic.

Here are more BST numbers...

(Click on the image to enlarge it)
Important data missing from the summary because of the error I described cover the comparative overall result for target betting and a limited 1-200 spread, as follows:-

bst090330c: AV/HA -9 = -6.08%, TB won $2,000 = 13.66% of $14,640 action, 157 rounds net incl 3-2 naturals, avg bet $99, bets of $1,000+ = 2

BST TL $5-$1,000: LOSS of ($9,000) = -5.73% of $157,000 action, avg bet $1,061, bets of $1,000+ = 148

It's the same old, same old...a loss forced by a tight spread, with far more high bets required and a result closely in line with negative expectation (-5.73% vs. -6.08%) and a very different story for target betting, which delivered a tidy win with a far smaller average bet value and just two bets of $1,000-plus.

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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You may be playing blackjack, baccarat, craps or roulette. But for the house, disinformation is the name of the game.

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The way the "gambling experience" is packaged in America's casinos today, the image is that betting (and losing) is a fun form of recreation made even more pleasurable by luxury suites, five-star restaurants, and non-gambling activities suitable for all the family.

It's not to be taken seriously, for sure. Lose only what you can afford, play and bet the way the casino expects you to, and you will be treated as a responsible adult who is in control of all that happens on an exciting, rejuvenating getaway to (wherever).

Of course, you are not really in control at all. Step out of line by just an inch or two, and you are on your way to becoming an entry in the industry's famous Black Book as a player who has the gall, the unbridled temerity, to try to win.

I am not talking about the Nevada Black Book, which like the black box always sought after a plane crash, is not black at all (see the link above) but the database each casino maintains and fills with personal information and facial recognition parameters about people who are bad for business.

Most of them are cheats and swindlers, but many are card counters and other players who are honest sticklers for good conduct and fair play but have learned enough about table games to be able to beat the odds time and time again.

The disinformation campaign sponsored by the casino business maintains that the house advantage is as powerful as the law of gravity, exerting a gentle but firm pull on all the chips in play until eventually they come home to the dealer's tray.

The message is that you can't beat house games in the end, but trying is so much fun and perhaps once in a great while you will get lucky, take home more money than you started with, then bring it back to lose it the way the natural order of things has ordained.

Mythematicians will tell you that of all the silly methods devised to upset gambling's laws, progressive betting is the silliest.

What is truly silly is that most people believe it to be true.

In fact, progressive betting is the only way to win consistently, and the casinos have known that since the dawn of betting.

"Consistently" is the key word here. It is possible to win, and it happens to thousands of people every day. But you have to get lucky to do it, assuming you don't have a plan. And as everyone knows, luck never lasts.

Mythemaniacs reserve their most acid scorn for a method known as double-up or the Small Martingale: double your bet after every loss until a win recovers all prior losses plus one unit, then start over.

The method works most of the time, thriving on the simple fact that losing is a progressive process, and so doubling after a loss keeps precise pace with it until a single win interrupts the losing streak.

This blog contains charts and screen shots relating to hundreds of thousands of real-play outcomes along with confirmation that target betting beats them all.

Ironically, so does double-up!

But the big problem with the Martingale is not that it does not work, or that it demands bets that are too high. The problem is that casinos won't let anyone play it.

If you doubt it, try it.

You will win a few series, and then the house's Martingale Machine will move into action.

While drunks and other fools lose money all around you without a comforting word from anyone on the casino's pit roster, you will be singled out for especially solicitous attention.

You will be politely advised that doubling up is a really bad idea, sure to eventually rob you of your bankroll.

Do you seriously imagine that the casino staff is concerned for the safety of your bankroll? It's the house's they are worried about!

Other players are quite likely to reinforce the message. After all, how smart can it be to bet hundreds or thousands of dollars just to win $5, or the value of your opening bet?

Actually, when you place a big fat bet several rounds into a losing streak, you are not aiming to win $5. Your objective is to recover all the bets you lost, plus a profit.

The size of the surplus doesn't matter. What counts is that in a single bet, you are "out of the hole" and ready for another contest against the seemingly all-powerful but actually very vulnerable house edge.

Ah, say the experts, you will be in big trouble soon enough because eventually you will lose so many bets in a row that you will bump up against the table limit. After that, a win will not cover all your past losses and you, silly fool, will be stuck in the hole forever...and it serves you right.

As it happens, x2 bettors are at work in busy casinos all the time. They avoid attention by betting, at most, three losing wagers at any one layout before moving on in search of that inevitable single win.

And if they do fall foul of any one table's bet limit, no problem - they take their money to a layout where their next wager is allowed, knowing that moving can have no negative impact on their chances of eventual success.

They especially like blackjack and field bets at craps, because there's an outside chance that the win they need will turn out to be a natural, or a multiple pay-off for dice roll of 2 or 12. That's when the gravy really flows!

More and more, casinos are combating Martingalers by barring entry to blackjack tables between shuffles: a nuisance, but not a fatal blow.

The campaign to keep as many punters as possible in ignorance of the true math of gambling is critical to the casino industry's bottom line.

The house makes a lot less money (usually none at all) from players who know the numbers and play them with precision. Those people are a threat to the whole house of cards, and should be thought of as cheats.

In Nevada, a casino can "86" a player for any reason it sees fit. In New Jersey, winning is not an allowable reason for revoking betting privileges. In the hundreds of casinos in between, there is little or no regulation, but you can be sure that if you make a habit of winning "too often" you will feel some serious heat wherever you are.

That's why it is important for a strategy player to maintain a low profile, be at all times courteous and friendly to pit personnel and other punters, and learn how to camouflage what he is doing.

Here's a summary of target betting's performance against 201,000 baccarat outcomes.

It mirrors its wins against tens of thousands of rounds played against Ken Smith's BST blackjack application.

More detail will follow, but you should know that I did not generate these outcomes or have any control over them. The data set was provided by Lee Jones, a baccarat systems promoter who assured me they were extracted from two bet-by-bet books of "real shoes" compiled by Zumma Publishing.

All that matters is that I did not alter or massage the data in any way.

(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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