Some see it as a choice between excitement and monotony. It's not! It's between losing and winning.

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The average gambler's fondness for thrills and excitement (the fun of making badly-timed bets and losing yet again!) is the reason why target betting will never be a major threat to the casino industry.

Most people can't be bothered to "play smart." They would much rather go with the flow, even if it drowns them. To them, logic and practicality are anathema...they have no place at a gambling table, they believe.

I sympathize, I really do. Casinos are designed to exude the allure of temptation and guilty pleasure as effectively as a seductress wafts pheromones at her hapless mate. And money is meant to become almost meaningless, except as a measure of fun.

Some people can spend their whole lives gambling without discovering that winning is actually more pleasurable than losing. They win from time to time, for sure, but they see getting ahead of the game as a signal to take even more chances, having even more fun, until eventually they are back in the hole. Where they want to be.

When players like that come up against a prolonged negative trend (a hot dealer, or a cold table) they see it as a challenge, and keep piling on the bets in the belief that if they keep plenty of chips in motion, their luck will change. Sometimes it does..."and that's why they call it gambling."

The way I see it, dodging what often seems like certain destruction and making a little money against all odds is a whole lot more entertaining than following the script that the gambling industry has written for me.

But that does not mean that I think target betting is invincible. It is not. It needs my help to succeed. And that means knowing when to push, and when to pull back.

Table limits are theoretically a hindrance to target betting, but in practice they provide us with triggers and signposts that help us because we cannot ignore them without attracting unwanted attention. And attracting the attention of people who can interfere with our game plan is something we do not want to do!

I have talked before about rendering house spread limits harmless by imposing spread limits of your own, and the lesson is worth repeating.

Given a $5 opening bet, a spread of 1-20 to a maximum loss of $100 is probably fine, especially in a busy casino where a $100 bet is considered to be chump change.

Walking away from a low-limit table after every failed $100 bet wastes time and opportunity, so it makes more sense to make a mental note of each incomplete series, fall back to a minimum bet, and keep playing until there are enough saved targets to make stepping up a level worthwhile.

Above the bottom rung, a 1-5 spread is about as wide as you should go, following the same procedure as before. And you can keep on "stepping up" until you hit either your own maximum or the house limit.

You will always lose more EOS bets than you win. That is a fact of life, just as it is inevitable that over time, you will lose more bets of any kind than you win. What matters is timing, and target betting enables you to have the right amount of money on the table at that moment when you beat negative odds and win for a change.

Here's the latest BST set:-


This time I suffered brief brain fade and omitted comparisons between $5-$1,000 spread limit results and the outcome for target betting unchained, so here they are...

bst090410a HA/AV -1 = -0.43%, target betting wins $7,408 = +8.14% of $90,987 action, 253 rounds net, avg bet $406, bets of $1,000+ = 17

BST spread limit result loss of ($248) = -0.26% of $93,603 action, avg bet $418, bets of $1,000+ = 66

bst090410b HA/AV 22 = +9.57%, TB +$8,525, +1.92% of $443,235 action, 248 bets net, avg bet $1,979, bets of $1,000+ = 32

BST spread limit wins $8,678 = +13.94% of $62,258 action, avg bet $278, bets of $1,000+ = 40

bst090410c HA/AV = -25.5 = -14.66%, TB +$3,193 = 14.83% of $21,523, 177 bets, avg bet $96, bets of $1,000+ = 30

BST spread limit wins $453 = 1.99%/$22,743, avg bet $102, bets of $1,000+ = 39

This session was a rarity, one in which a tight spread involved less risk than target betting and for once managed to deliver an overall win! Target betting did much better, of course (about $20,000 vs. $9,000) and we expected that...

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 difference between winning and losing at casino table games isn't luck. It's all about discipline.

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You may not know it, but the casinos you love to frequent have a plan for you, and it goes like this:

You will...

• Go to the table with an inadequate bankroll.
• Bet within a very tight spread (probably not more than 1-5) so that even a relatively short negative trend will wipe you out.
• Respond to a downturn by dropping back to minimum bets and playing scared or pushing out ever-larger bets until your money's all gone.
• Gratefully accept "free" cocktails so that your play becomes increasingly reckless and self-destructive as your inhibitions are buzzed into oblivion.
• React to a run of luck by raising your bets, then stubbornly sticking to high wagers when luck deserts you (as it always will) until all your winnings are back in the dealer's tray.
• Go home a loser, convinced that it was not your fault that you made another "contribution" and
• Come back again for another drubbing because you never learn anything from being beaten.

Casino personnel are trained to have a very low opinion of their customers' common sense quotient and to steel their hearts when they see someone losing far more than they can afford (no one forced the fool to gamble, after all).

The house's fat bottom line depends primarily on the fact that the vast majority of gamblers have no idea of the negative odds they are challenging, and assume that whatever the numbers may be, they don't apply to them.

A consistent winner, on the other hand, will...

• Accept that luck is an irrelevance because it favors the house as much as the player and
• Recognize that the house advantage makes it inevitable that over time, the smartest punter will lose more bets than he wins.
• Be fully aware of the negative odds he faces, while knowing that the tiny edge the house enjoys is far less of a factor in player losses than poor money management.
• Know that winning requires a substantial bankroll (something the house knows, too) and that long-term profit without risk is a mathematical impossibility.
• Grasp enough math to understand that if he is going to lose more bets than he wins in the long run, then the only way he can make any money is to win more when he wins than he loses when he loses (an objective that sometimes requires balls, but never crystal ones!).
• Learn the best way to play any "house game" he chooses to venture and ignore side bets and sucker traps such as Royal Match at blackjack and Pair Plus at 3-card poker (which is itself only suited to players with too much money).
• Play consistently and cautiously, knowing that what many people assume is conservative betting actually increases the house's already favorable odds.
• Study win-loss patterns and see in them the simple truth that they key to winning is exploiting positive streaks in such a way that cumulative losses can be recovered in fewer bets than it took to get into trouble in the first place.
• Do everything possible to avoid attracting the attention of paranoid pit personnel who assume that anyone who wins "too often" must be cheating. Effective camouflage includes:
• Varying strategy rules without ever flouting the core principle that a mid-series win must always be followed by a loss to date plus target bet (LTD+).
• Never spreading bets so wide in one location that pit staff or other players notice the low-high gap.
• Bailing out of any prolonged negative trend, knowing that house "spikes" are not the norm (in blackjack and baccarat, at least!) and that betting against a losing streak can be more damaging than moving.
• Knowing that moving from one layout to another (or a different game or even a different casino) has no effect on probabilities, as long as the next bet (NB) and loss to date (LTD) values are maintained.
• Never playing when tired, bored or otherwise uncomfortable, because winning can always wait a while and the tables aren't going anywhere!
• Never taking losses personally, because they are almost always temporary.

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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