Blackjack can be consistently beaten without a millionaire's bankroll. But beware of "Catch-21" (the "rule" that what you know won't help you win)!

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"Catch-22" author Joseph Heller devised a fictitious military decree that only insanity can get you out of the Army, but if you are sane enough to know you're nuts, then you don't qualify for a medical discharge.

In similar vein is the cliche that insanity can be defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Does it apply even if the results you get every time are positive?

Personally, my favorite (tangentially gambling-related) funny story involves a conversation overheard in a schoolyard: "My little brother thinks he's a chicken and me and Dad want him to see a psychiatrist. My Mom won't let him - she says we need the eggs."

Defying the conventional wisdom that house table games cannot in the end be beaten, and spending several decades proving that the house advantage can indeed be overcome, qualifies as madness in most people's opinion.

And I would have given up the effort years ago if the numbers coming at me from a succession of increasingly powerful computers, and ever more sophisticated spreadsheet models, did not keep turning the "invincible" house edge on its ear.

Like many of you, I am disappointed that so far a method of winning with little or no risk has eluded me.

But on the other hand, I figure that if casino operators have to front millions (billions!) of dollars to make blackjack, baccarat, craps, roulette and other beatable games available to us, we should try not to resent having to invest a little time and money to win at them!

I have said in earlier posts that the basic principles of target betting can benefit pretty much anyone tackling a casino table game, given a reasonable level of discipline and a bankroll to match.

But nothing I have learned and am attempting to pass on to you for free can do you any good if you believe the academic argument that past outcomes from games of chance, however large the sample or mathematically, objectively impeccable the analysis of them, cannot predict the future.

It's nonsense, of course.

In every other field of human activity, from a baby's first steps to the most complicated scientific research imaginable, the past is our surest guide to what's ahead. We learn from our missteps, in other words.

But not in gambling, say the experts...random numbers (stats, probabilities, percentages or whatever else you might choose to call them) are so uniquely and magically erratic that studying them is fruitless.

Baloney!

Common sense is probably a player's best ally if he expects to win consistently, as long as it (sensibly) rejects the idea that you can't win at games of chance.

And I should say again at this point that anyone who approaches a casino game with a will to win and the mental and monetary means to do it should never think of himself as a gambler.

Gamblers are, by their own definition, losers who say they want to win and might even believe it, but then repeatedly do everything they can to sabotage their own efforts.

Frequent players know that in big picture terms at least, table games are broadly predictable, repeating patterns of wins and losses along with seismic swings north or south of the wiggly line that we think of as "the norm."

What most players don't know is how to effectively exploit those mostly reliable patterns, betting in such a way that more wrong bets than right ones do not in the end mean more money lost than won.

And that, of course, is what target betting is all about.

All that really concerns us is the frequency of paired or "twin" player wins even when the overall trend of wins vs. losses is dramatically in the house's favor.

As long as we are not betting at our maximum level, meaning that we no longer have wiggle room and switching locations will probably not help us, twin wins will quickly get us out of trouble. And if the MSL rule is applicable, a win-loss-win sequence will do the trick.

On average, paired wins occur about five bets apart, enabling disciplined target betting to stay constantly ahead of the game in spite of more bets lost than won over the long haul.

Once in a while, the right pattern will become as scarce as hen's teeth and bet values will soar. But it happens rarely and never lasts for long, making the long-term prospects for target betting consistently positive.

It is simple enough to create an RNG model that will visually confirm the frequency of "twins" in spite of a relentless HA (anyone interested can e-mail me for an Excel example). Much as I dislike "sims" I have to accept that from time to time, they can be useful.

Academics who see themselves as the guardians of the status quo, defending the gullible from snake-oil salesmen like me (never mind that I am not actually selling anything!) insist that progressive betting is suicide.

I insist exactly the opposite, and have proved it again and again, oblivious to claims that since "it can't be done" I must be either crazy or a crook.

All target betting really says is that because you will certainly lose more bets than you win in the long term, you must see to it that you win more when you win than you lose when you lose.

Sure, we have been there before, I know. But defying the conventional wisdom demands almost endless repetition of what I see as the obvious but others somehow find controversial.

If you are losing at blackjack, baccarat, roulette or whatever and are betting fixed amounts or randomly choosing the value of each new bet, you must either win more bets than you lose to get out of trouble...or win more money than you lose from now on.

The first option is completely out of your control, and may be achieved if you get lucky. But luck is not something you can count on.

The second option is only partially out of your control. You can determine bet values, but however clever you may be, you cannot know the outcome of each bet ahead of time.

To get around that little problem, you must make certain that when you win, you derive maximum benefit from having things go your way for once.

If you are playing at a 1.0% game such as blackjack, every single bet you place faces the same negative odds (495-505 to 1 against being one way of describing those odds).

When you choose to increase your bet value (and that never happens except in response to a mid-recovery win) you must know exactly how far behind you are, and therefore the precise amount you will need to win to get "out of the hole" plus a small profit.

The optimum rules set I have described throughout this blog is, to some, an aggressive approach that increases risk while proportionately increasing potential profits.

I can prove that to be a false assumption, but must concede that a $25,000 maximum bet and a $1,000,000 bankroll is beyond the reach of most players, whether they think of themselves as gamblers or not.

Just remember that erratic, emotional, irresponsible play will not win without a lot of luck even if there's a million bucks in the bank - high rollers don't win more, they just bet more, and don't hurt as much when they lose!

The solution to the added challenges of "economy play" is to scale back on some of the target betting strategy's more ambitious rules, saving them for that not far-off day when the bankroll has grown enough to make them less scary.

From the top, the optimum opening loss (OL) multiple I recommend is x5, meaning that if the $5 opening bet in a new series goes south, the next bet (NB) will be the previous bet (PB) x5, or $25.

Next is 2L x 3, meaning that if the second bet loses, NB=PBx3 = $75. Right after that comes 3L x 1.33 (you guessed it, after a 3rd consecutive opening loss, NB = $100).

All of the OL rules can be shelved to shield a limited BR, although be warned that the effect of that is to extend recovery time and thereby potentially increase risk.

Target betting's win progression (WP) component is another critical profit booster, and before I go any further, we should revisit the whole question of exploiting opening winning streaks.

If you ask a blackjack dealer the best way to "chase" a winning streak, the probable answer will be a "plus one" progression (+$5,+$10,+$15,+$20) that is the standard house recommendation, and is not surprisingly far better for the house than for you.

Think about it: Three successive wins at $5 followed by a $5 loss puts you $10 ahead; bet the house's way and you will also end up $10 ahead, your only hope being that along the way from $10 to $20, you hit a 3-2 natural or score a winning split/double.

The house likes "plus one" because a high percentage of potential winning streaks play out +$5, -$10, handing the dealer's tray an extra chip more than the conventional +$5, -$5.

Dealers do not always give bad advice: they usually preface every little lesson with the words "The books says..." But giving good advice is not part of their training, for obvious reasons.

The WP xfactor I recommend is 2, but the most critical WP rule in target betting is that you should not do as a dealer would recommend and fall back to a minimum bet after an opening winning streak ends. Bad, bad, bad idea.

Instead, you should treat the losing bet as your new loss to date (LTD) and set about recovering it in full.

Failure to optimally exploit winning streaks costs more players more money than just about anything else that happens in a casino, other than over-indulgence in "free" cocktails! (Greed and stupidity play a big role, too, but that's another story).

The WPx2 rule caps out at +$100, meaning that you don't double after PB=$200 but instead add $100 after every subsequent win.

And when the streak ends, as it always will, the recovery series is written off (with a profit of not less than $590) if the lost bet was worth $500 or more.

I am not opposed to the "plus one" approach, as long as the eventual loss is converted to the LTD and eventually recovered.

Skip that rule, and you will regret it.

Next up among "adjustable" target betting rules is the MSL or mid-series loss rule, referring to a second attempt at recovery (a do over) if the first LTD+ bet fails.

It's a major boost to the strategy's long-term efficacy because because most house wins are followed by an opposite outcome, as are most player wins. I recommend an MSL value of $1,000, meaning that a second LTD+ bet will follow a failed turnaround bet if its value was $1,000 or less.

On a budget, you can cut the MSL value all the way down to $100 (the lowest value I would be happy with) or even to ZERO if you have the fortitude to smile through all the series that would have turned around, if only...

The greatest value of the "L" rules is that they make it possible to turn a mounting loss around with a single win, a handy reversal that can occur more than 70% of the time at blackjack!

Blackjack is the best possible game for target betting because of the real (but not absolute) control afforded the player by consistent adherence to sane and sensible basic rules of play.

Skeptics dismiss past results as proof of anything, but against 85,000-plus rounds from Ken Smith's Blackjack Strategy Trainer, I have managed to keep the HA down to well below 1.0% overall in spite of almost always choosing the 8-deck shoe option.

I do that because there are usually far more split and doubledown options against a multi-deck game, and because I welcome the "streaky" nature of output from a long shoe.

If I don't like what I am getting, I can always go somewhere else - a rule that every target betting player should keep high on his list!

The results illustrated below can easily be dismissed as anecdotal or completely irrelevant but I believe they have much more to say about how we can hope to win at blackjack than runaway sims that do away with every single aspect of the casino experience other than random numbers.

Imagine if all casinos offered were heads-up games against a random numbers generator, with rules requiring that you bet from your lowest value to your highest in the same place, and forbidding you from quitting when you felt like it.

If you walk in a straight line across a minefield, paying no attention to where you put your feet, chances are you will be blown to bits before you reach the other side.

If you drive a car very fast down a winding mountain road without touching the steering wheel or the brake and gas pedals, you will probably crash and burn long before you get to the valley below.

If you jump out of a high-flying plane without a parachute you...well, by now you probably get my drift.

So it is with "runaway sims": they eliminate cards, dice, tables, dealers, players, wheels, chips and almost everything else including real time, and are then claimed to accurately represent what you can expect to encounter in a casino game of chance.

They don't.

I am sometimes accused of dreaming up arbitrary rules that by sheer luck prevail against a given set of outcomes, and will never beat another sample of any size.

That might be fair if the rules of target betting were derived from the blackjack outcomes summarized here.

In truth, those rules have been around since the early 1990s and were first published on the 'Net in 1997, while the BST outcomes trounced here date back just a few months (the product of more time at my computer than I care to admit to!).

Take them or leave them.

The same advice applies to all of the charts and summaries published here.

They are warts-and-all slices of objective data that demonstrate conclusively something most people already know: If you bet fixed amounts or randomly, you will lose.

Progressive betting is not suicide, it is survival.

Winning is not always easy, and it gets harder the more you tighten your spread and the smaller your available bankroll.

But at worst, it is a whole lot more fun than losing.

Here's that blackjack data:


The run-through summarized here features target betting's performance top-lining in the chart, with the session results to the right of the line seen headed boldly north-east.

The other blocks of data are from a souped-up version of Oscar's Grind, a standard Small Martingale (-1, -2, -4, -8, +16) and a more aggressive Martingale (-1, -2, -5, -10, +25).

Target betting invariably does best of the alternatives programmed into my models, which are included simply to underscore the superiority of almost any method of progressive betting over a hit-and-hope, seat-of-the-pants approach.

It is important to understand that the deeper the hole you are in, the bigger the shovel you will need to get out of there!

That means freezing the bet value after any mid-series loss, assuming MSL is not in play, and making sure after a win that you press as hard as your BR permits.


Again, the BR has been cut to 20% of the $1m optimum, and the spread has been tightened to 1-2,500 while increasing the minimum bet from $5 to $10.


Above, we still have a $200,000 BR, but the minimum is up to $25 and the spread is 1-1,000.


And here's what we get with all target betting's bells and whistles in play: one crushing loss, then a sustained string of wins suggesting that serious threats are so rare, they can almost - almost - be discounted.

Note that none of these data summaries conform with the so-called conventional wisdom, which would probably accept 85,000 rounds as a reasonably representative sample, and require that the final outcome be within range of the product of action multiplied by the 0.85% HA.

Expected or indicated results - what "should have" happened are plain to see in all the summaries.

The HA is, to target betting, a mere nuisance.

My version of Oscar's Grind (owing very little to the disaster recommended by the author of a best-selling book called "How to Gamble in a Casino"!) at least managed to do a little better than break-even.

But we are not about breaking even, are we?

We want to win. And we know how!

The most effective antidote to the house edge is making bet values as variable as your BR permits, keeping in mind that variable does not mean random!

Target betting rules do all a player's thinking for him, and that in itself lifts a huge burden (although some critics have suggested that I have taken all the "fun" out of gambling by replacing spontaneity with discipline).

Tom Ainslie's glacial interpretation of Oscar's Grind keeps bet values on an upward climb, it's true.

But because it lacks a win progression and adds just one unit in response to a mid-recovery right bet, it is doomed to comply with the HA in the long run.

My upgrade of Oscar applies a +1 WP and permits the bet to be doubled after a mid-series win until turnaround is within reach, so it actually makes consistent headway.

But in spite of the turbo-charge, OGX (short for Oscar's Grind Extra) falls far short of even the most cautious version of target betting.

Against the BST blackjack data set, "Ainslie's Grind" ended up losing 0.67% of its overall action, which was at least a slight improvement over the net HA of 0.85%.

Maybe that's why Mr. Ainslie's book is not titled "How to WIN in a Casino"!

OGX came in at +0.63%, not quite flipping the HA into a significant player edge, but making a contribution to expenses.

The tamest, most toned-down version of target betting delivered a win equal to +3.65% of its total action.

As an old-time mathematician would put it: "Q.E.D."!

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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Occasional losses are inevitable as long as there is a house advantage (and there always is). Target betting makes those losses very rare indeed.

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Sims tell lies. We all know that. But when they say things you want to hear, they're so cool.

Opponents of any and all betting methods that challenge the supremacy of the house advantage in casino games of chance are crystal clear in their interpretation of the "laws" of mathematics.

If the actual value (AV) or house advantage (HA) applicable to a representative sample of outcomes is a negative percentage, then a player's losses against those outcomes will closely approximate his total action multiplied by the HA.

So 1,000 bets against a negative HA of 2.0% with an average bet value (ABV) of $10 will result in a loss of $200, give or take a chip or two.

There is no room for equivocation here: "Any amount bet against a negative expectation must have a negative result."

Luck can upset the house's applecart for a while, but it is a temporary phenomenon according to the law(s) of large numbers, and the axiom can be boiled down to three little words...you can't win.

That means that the following sim-generated results could not have happened:




They did happen, against outcomes supplied by a random number generator (RNG), with all five indicated progressive betting methods showing a profit after 1,000 rounds in spite of a very substantial house edge.

Last time, I posted a summary from 150,000 RNG outcomes that showed target betting well ahead of the game in defiance of the "laws" of arithmetic as interpreted by the gambling industry and its very smart experts.

And to be fair, their pessimistic view of a gambler's long-term prospects is logical as long as the punter bets fixed amounts or bets randomly.

If he bets progressively with a very specific target in sight, negative expectation will be thwarted at least 99.99% of the time, making results like those above and elsewhere on this blog commonplace.

The methods summarized here include the standard Small Martingale, which doubles the bet after any loss until a win is achieved, delivering a profit equal to the value of the opening bet, and a souped-up Martingale (-5, -10, -25, -50, -100, -250, +500) that gooses win values in proportion to an increase in overall risk.

Target betting heads the list, of course, with OG referring to a version of Oscar's Grind that departs from the rules laid out by Tom Ainslie in his book.

Mr. Ainslie claims that "Oscar" has been a steady winner for him year after year and is endorsed by one of gambling's premier mathematicians. But I have been far less lucky whenever I have applied it against one of those sims that systems debunkers love so much.

The OG shown above doubles the bet after a win, to a maximum value of the loss to date (LTD) plus one unit.

The Ainslie version adds one unit after a win, ensuring that recovery after a prolonged downturn will be long and arduous indeed.

Mr. Ainslie recommends abandoning a recovery attempt and starting over if the LTD hits 20 units (-$100 at a layout with a $5 minimum). That rule makes getting ahead a very iffy proposition.

OGT spices things up a little by making the win target not one measly unit, but 10% of the maximum loss in the current series. So if the method is $500 "in the hole" at one point, the win target is $50, and so on.

In each of the above summaries, EXP shows the amount each method "should have" lost in compliance with the HA x Action formula promoted by the gambling biz.

As you can see, it didn't happen, which is not to say that it never will.

The estimable Wizard of Odds, by far the most eloquent of all the casino shills plying their trade on the Internet, describes his decisive debunking of a betting strategy devised by a challenger with the lyrical name of Daniel Rainsong.

I have no knowledge of Mr. Rainsong's method and have been unable to track him down, but my guess is he wuz robbed.

The sim that beat him imposed a spread limit of 1,024 to 1, which might not have stymied Mr. Rainsong's strategy but would be a big problem for mine.

Mike "Wiz" Shackleford, self-billed as an international casino consultant, was able to offer Mr. Rainsong a seemingly generous house edge in his "billion bet sim" because he well knows that it is a deficiency in the critical combination of spread and bankroll, not the value of the HA below double digits, that seals a player's negative fate.

Hell's bells, he could have set the runaway sim's HA at zero and still have "beaten" the Rainsong method. But that, of course, would have given his game away.

Like many gambling industry insiders, the Wiz is well aware that inadequate bankrolls and tight spreads are the stuff that fat house wins are made of.

An even-money game (the sort that does not exist in any casino) would draw out the house's winning process a little longer, it's true. But it is short-term negative spikes against the player that put the wind up inexperienced players and wipe out piddling bankrolls, not gouge-level HAs.

The great joke in gambling is that most punters would be defeated by a game that actually gives them the edge!

That is why casinos routinely report game win percentages that far exceed the known HA for blackjack, baccarat, craps, roulette and the rest.

Think of the billboard slogan that suckers could be reading as they pedal-to-the-metal towards their certain doom in Las vegas: "We'll give you a player edge, but we'll STILL kick your ass."

Spread is the whole ball of wax for progressive betting or for ANY winning method, and a 1,024-1 limit is a deliberately deceptive gift to anyone claiming that the house edge is unbeatable.

It is a non-issue for most gamblers, for whom a 1-10 spread is too much excitement, as well as a guarantee that they will lose unless they get very, very lucky.

Casino operators have known since the beginning of time that capping the bet spread is the most effective way to protect the house edge.

That is why table limits ($5 to $500 at a blackjack layout, for example) exist, and why pit personnel are on the lookout for players who gradually escalate their bets until they achieve a turnaround win and then start over.

"The math" demands that the sooner you hit your upper limit, whether it is house-imposed or your choice, the more likely you are to fall victim to negative expectation.

Conversely, the more wiggle room you are permitted, the greater is the probability that you will be able to win more when you win than you lose when you lose, thereby overcoming the otherwise inexorable ill effect of losing more often than you win.

It is a challenge to work a casino with target betting, and it can only be done by keeping as low a profile as possible.

My policy has always been to spread no wider than 1 to 50 at a bottom tier casino (say, $5 to $250), and no wider than 1-5 at any one layout once the bet has reached $100.

Above the bottom level, the rule of thumb remains 1-5 at the current layout, and drops to 1-10 in any one casino.

The theoretical effect of this sliding scale is a whole lot of to and fro between layouts and casinos, but theory has a habit of evaporating when real life takes over.

Because the odds against you do not change much from deck to deck or game to game, a recovery series made problematic by "local" limits can be suspended until better conditions are available. But that will not happen often.

As your bankroll grows, it becomes easier to stay calm and confident when the pressure is on, and respond appropriately.

In spite of all of the Wiz's claims to the contrary, computer simulations are not a substitute for real play because they exclude the most critical component of gambling, the human element.

They also eliminate cards, dice, wheels, dealers and real time.

I have on occasion been accused of being an agent of the casinos because I offer players an alternative to losing that cannot possibly help them in the long run.

All I can say to that is that anyone claiming that games of chance cannot be beaten is a far more effective shill for the casinos than I could ever be.

Bet flat or bet randomly and you will lose.

Bet progressively according to the rules that I have been providing free of charge for more than a decade, and the odds will be dramatically in your favor rather than fractionally against you.

Either way, the arithmetic is very simple.

Against a game with a 2.0% house edge, you have a 49% chance of winning any bet and a 51% chance of losing it, whether you use target betting or not.

That means that each and every time you place an LTD+ bet in the hope of turning a losing series around, you will probably lose it.

But because your bet values keep changing to match the LTD (and because you either win or lose 100% of your bet, not some cockamamie amount in between) you can be confident that eventually, you will beat those negative odds.

On average, target betting with optimum parameters applied will turn a recovery series around in just over five rounds.

Both versions of the Martingale will do the job a little faster, but their greatest drawback is that they are unplayable in most casinos (pit staff will interfere with their use because they know they represent a real threat).

Tom Ainslie's inch-by-inch version of Oscar's Grind needs an average of 30 rounds to get out of the hole with the 20-unit bust limit omitted. It cuts that number by more than half with the limit in place, but struggles to make a profit, obliterating its gains with a succession of $100 bailouts.

Oscar's Grind could easily be a creation of the casino industry because the limits Mr. Ainslie advocates guarantee that it will fail while deluding the player into thinking that he is in control.

It is a progression, to be sure, but a halfhearted and nervous one that is no threat to the house advantage.

Capping the bet at $100 (assuming a $5 opener) will accelerate the bankroll's downfall and might even be more dangerous than betting random amounts within the same range and hoping for a little luck.

A veteran dealer at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas once told me that Frank Sinatra, a blackjack enthusiast who liked to take over an entire table, would stuff his pockets full of chips and walk away when he won but was not required to pay off his marker when he lost.

That, I admit, may be the best betting strategy I ever heard of. Target betting is the next best thing, far superior to any version of Oscar's Grind!

It all comes down to the comparative frequency of wins and losses, or the win-loss pattern (WLP), and the demonstrable mathematical truth that for both sides in the game, isolated wins are more common than streaks.

For a random player, the WLP whisks his fortunes back and forth like a falling leaf in a gentle breeze, a win here, two losses there, a win, a loss, two wins, three losses.

In essence, the target player bets against the house being able to sustain a winning streak, which is subtly different from putting his money on his own luck.

Most gamblers backing what they hope is a player winning streak do so diffidently, often failing to recover the chips they lost when the WLP went against them.

Target betting's primary objective is to recover past losses in fewer bets than it took to lose the money in the first place.

It is "axiomatic" that if the house cannot take a bite out of your bankroll by winning more often than you do, than the house has a problem.

When all of target betting's rules are in play, the strategy will recover prior losses with a single win more than 70 percent of the time (not as impressive as a Martingale's 100 percent, but usually not as dangerous or as obvious, either!).

Until the strategy's top limit bet value is reached, two consecutive wins will do the job.

Once the "max" is on the table, target betting is as much at the mercy of the house advantage as any other method.

But in order to get into a hole that deep, the method must have been battered by a spike in the house edge that will at some point have to be at least partially offset in order for the known laws of math to hold true.

Let's say that the house edge went haywire for a while, putting you 12 bets "behind" in in 30 rounds, for a series HA of -12/30 = -40.0%. Ouch! All of a sudden, you are at your limit, and the only thing that can save you from certain death is the size of your bankroll (and your intestinal fortitude).

How likely is it that the house spike will continue, or that the next few dozen hands will not contain enough player wins to get you out of the hole? Not very.

Negative expectation for the game is, say, 2.0% (higher than blackjack, but easier to work with when it comes to arithmetic). We know that at some point in the future, the 12 bets you are now behind will be mixed in with upcoming wins and losses until the overall house edge for a sample beginning with the first bet in the current series drops from 40.0% to a number much closer to 2.0%.

In theory, the WLP could bounce gently to and fro without any significant streaks either way for the next 570 bets until the overall house edge settles at the level where it is "supposed" to be.

But that is very rarely the way things go in games of chance. Much more likely is a pattern resembling one of the three red-line charts shown above: more downs than ups, but enough ups to save the day for you and your bankroll.

For most players, falling just a handful of bets behind sets them on a slippery slope that cannot be escaped without a calculated exploitation of every potential winning streak.

Bumping the bet in response to every win will at times increase the speed of the downward slide. But it will also make a very rapid recovery possible.

I spend a lot of my casino time watching other players from a respectful distance, because seeing them succumb to a WLP that I know I could easily have beaten is almost as satisfying as winning myself.

Don't get me wrong, I get no pleasure at all from seeing strangers lose their money. But there is nothing I can do to help them, and monitoring their avoidable missteps at least provides one of us with a positive outcome!

If you want to win consistently, you first have to accept that over time, you are going to make more wrong bets than right ones, and decide what you are going to do about that.

If you are $50 behind and plan to stick with a bet value averaging $10, then you know you will need five more winning bets than losing ones in the near future just to break even again. How likely is that? Again...not very.

By freezing your bet after a loss, you are, in a sense, betting that the house will continue its winning streak for a while.

When you bump your bet value in response to a mid-recovery win, you are up against the same negative odds that apply to every bet but recognize that a ping-pong volley of bets of equal value is not going to get you out of the hole.

The great irony is that much of the time, betting as wide a spread as you can afford will put you at less risk than betting smaller amounts over and over again as you slowly slide deeper into the mire.

Along the way you have to set aside the standard gambler's dream of rich rewards for little risk, and think instead the way the house does.

Be happy to pocket a win that is just a few percentage points of your total action, remembering that that is how the bills get paid in the casino that surrounds you.

Don't be greedy, don't be noisy, don't get cocky and above all, keep your head down.

You will win far more money far more often than the average gambler. But that does not mean you are unbeatable.

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 only thing your fancy charts and lists prove is that you have wasted your life on a mirage. And even if you don't like it, sims tell the truth."

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As Ronald Reagan (not one of my heroes, I admit) famously said to an opponent: "There you go again!"

The two most powerful pointers to a mythematical disinformation campaign orchestrated by the gambling industry are the claims that past outcomes hold no clues to the future, and that simulations accurately reflect real-play conditions.

Come on! Let's use a little common sense here!

The French have a saying that translates to "The more things change, the more they stay the same" and any experienced gambler can confirm that it applies to what happens inside a casino as much as to life in the real world.

There is nothing mathematically unique about random results in games of chance, and learning from experience is as valuable for a gambler as it is for anyone who prefers to keep his money safe.

Simulations, on the other hand, have very little to teach us, because they assume that all players are self-destructive idiots, and you and I know we are better than that.

The long-standing campaign to discourage meaningful research in the field of casino table games smacks of age-old heresy trials at which clerics warned that those who asked too many questions were headed straight to hell.

It really is ridiculous to pretend that the future will not repeat the past. The past IS the future, and if we fail to take the time to learn from it, we deserve to lose.

I should qualify my objection to "sims": those that recreate the random numbers critical to roulette and craps can be helpful; those that eliminate every element of blackjack and baccarat other than the percentage of the house advantage are deliberately deceptive (dissimulations would be a better word for them).

Target betting is at its core the application of good sense to the gambling experience, which for most of its participants is about as removed from reason and wise judgment as an activity can be.

For many, the primary appeal of placing a bet is that it is risky and unwise, and the longer the odds, the greater the thrill of winning.

It's about being naughty and knowing that you are probably going to be punished for it while hoping that maybe this time you will get away with it, and be rewarded for your sins.

No one who feels that way will have much use for target betting, and will side instead with the chorus of "experts" whose message is always the same: You can't win.

You can win. But not without working at it.

I am often criticized for devising a betting method that can only be profitable for players who already have a lot of money.

The truth is that sensible money management is better than the senseless alternative even for weekend punters on a shoestring budget, although generally the best they can hope for is that it will simply make their money last longer.

What the casinos depend on is that gambling is all about choices, and most players will make the wrong choice almost every time.

Target betting, like basic strategy play at blackjack, exists to eliminate choices and replace them with consistent smart moves.

Because gambling is what it is, the smart move is only the right move when you win. But it stands to good sense (common sense) that consistency and discipline are sure to bring better results in the long run than flying by the seat of your pants.

It always amazes me how few gamblers take the trouble to learn the numbers that apply to the games they play, and with a nod to their worst enemy, I hereby offer the following easy acronym: WYNN, short for Watch Your Negative Numbers.

A week or so ago, I was playing blackjack in my hometown casino with a kid whose wrong moves were so frequent that finally the dealer blurted out in a stage whisper, "Are you sure you want to do that?"

He wasn't sure, and from then on the dealer and I between us coached him so successfully that his diminishing pile of chips took a turn for the better, and within 15 minutes, he was back in the black.

Target betting depends on constant awareness not just of the depth of the hole you are in, but that to win, you must always recoup your losses in fewer bets than it took you to get into trouble.

There is nothing delusional about that, and it is not heresy either. You will in the end always lose more bets than you win, so the only way to get ahead of the game is to win more when you win than you lose when you lose.

That requires discipline, confidence, consistency and (sometimes) a lot of cash, and none of those attributes conflict with the laws of arithmetic.

Google "progressive betting" and you will find hundreds of thousands of entries, most of which argue that it is a suicidal method that cannot win.

The truth is that it is the only method (other than dumb luck, which is not a method at all) that can overcome the reality that losing bets will always outnumber winning ones in the end.

House-trained mythematicians warn of the very real danger that at some point, the next bet in a progression will exceed the table limit "and then you are sure to lose" or words to that effect.

Quelle crappe, comme dites les Francaises!

No one without adequate funding should ever consider progressive betting, and for a player with a healthy bankroll, a looming table limit is simply a signal to back out of the game and go find a layout in a higher rent neighborhood.

The simplest progression is the Martingale or double-up, and players who succeed with it never incur more than three successive losses at one layout before moving on.

That way, they stand a chance of flying under PR (pit radar) while repeatedly turning their losses around and fattening their bankrolls still further.

They tend whenever they can to bet blackjack and field bets at craps, where naturals and x2 or x3 payouts will occasionally make a long-awaited win very profitable indeed.

Those Google citations I mentioned will often argue that a player has to be crazy to start out with a $10 bet and potentially risk thousands to win "just ten bucks" when a win finally breaks a losing streak.

They are written by math-challenged people who fail to grasp that a winning bet worth thousands wins thousands, not "just ten bucks" and achieves what most gamblers can only dream of: recouping all prior losses in a single wager.

In fact, the house's passive "system" is more like a Martingale than anything else, permitting a few players to get thousands of dollars ahead while secure in the knowledge that soon enough, they will lose and all those borrowed chips will be back where they belong.

In theory, a house edge of 1.0% at blackjack means that the casino will see a profit of just $100 for every $10,000 "at risk" - a level of reward that a Martingale player would find less than satisfactory.

In fact, most blackjack players are as bad at the game as the young man I mentioned earlier, and the true house edge is closer to 12% or $1,200 for every $10,000 of action.

Target betting requires knowledge and intuition, hence WYNN: watch your negative numbers, and when the house gets too far ahead, get the hell outta there!

Using my method with all its switches at their maximum setting can be a risky proposition, one that should not be undertaken without a very substantial bankroll.

But forget everything but the LTD+ response to a mid-series win, and the method is routinely more effective than a Martingale without the screaming sirens and flashing red lights that double-up will set off in any pit if a player is dumb enough to get caught using it.

I will say again, I don't recommend a Martingale, not because it is too risky, but because I do not want to be chased away from the games I love to play and WIN AT.

All those target betting switches can provide a long-term boost to profits, but their primary function is as camouflage.

They can be turned on or off or dialed up or down at will, which is one of the many reasons why simulations that feature a suicidal maniac betting exactly the same way ad infinitum are just plain dishonest.

I recommend that the starting point for nervous newcomers to target betting should be LTD+1u for an EOS goal, plus a win progression of x1.5 and MSL set at a modest -100.

If you have forgotten the rules, that means that in response to a mid-recovery win, you would bet LTD+$10 at a $10 table, repeating the formula if the end of series wager goes south for a total of $100 or less. After an opening win of $10, NB would be $15, then $25, $40, $60 and so on, with the eventual streak-ending loss becoming the new LTD.

Those cliff-drop negative trends that runaway sims depend upon cannot apply to a target player because of the spread limits that the rules impose: not more than 1 to 20 after a $10 opener, then not more than 1 to 5 at any one location.

Spread is the most critical factor in any casino table game, which is why the house imposes table limits that are getting ever tighter as the years roll by.

A big bankroll alone will not guarantee an overall win when losing bets outnumber winning bets.

A wide spread (1 to 5,000 is optimum) will make you a winner every time.


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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Experimentation with past outcomes is a fruitless waste of time. But observation is the key to long-term success.

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In the 30 years since I first figured out that a 2-win progression should be less risky and more effective than a 1-win Martingale, not much about the target betting concept has changed.

After my Eureka moment on the dusty road out of Las Vegas in 1978, I had to wait quite a while for personal computers to catch up with my need for a speedy but reliable way to evaluate my idea.

I posted a version of the strategy on the Internet in 1997.

Since then, I have simplified it while protecting the core concept that a mid-recovery win should always trigger an attempt to recover the entire loss to date (LTD) for the current series of bets.

A wide betting spread (sometimes as wide as the casino will permit) is the key to eliminating the threat of the house advantage, which exists in all table games and ranges from 1% or less for blackjack to 5.26% for American roulette.

Table limits do not prohibit target betting, although they do slow it down somewhat - not always a bad thing.

House limits matter very much, because if the maximum bet the strategy requires cannot be placed, all the arithmetic in the world will not get a losing series out of the red and into profit.

For more than a dozen years, I have had a parade of self-styled experts wagging their fingers at me and warning me that experimenting with a sample of outcomes - however large - to come up with a betting method that will nullify the house edge is mathematically insupportable.

It does not matter to my critics that I have never offered a strategy based on a fixed data set.

What would be the point?

I do not agree with those who claim that the patterns of wins and losses created by games of chance are somehow magically and mysteriously unique, never to be repeated.

That is an argument that works wonderfully well for the gambling industry and is swallowed whole by most of its customers, but has little or no basis in reality.

From the start, I have viewed the challenge of beating house games as two-fold.

Firstly, a long-term strategy must be able to handle the worst losing streaks that blackjack, baccarat, craps or roulette are ever likely to come up with.

In other words, it has to actually work.

Secondly, a successful method must be able to slip under a casino's radar so that paranoid pit personnel do not quickly spot it and come up with ways to interfere with its use.

The notorious Martingale or double-up method fails because it sticks out like a Harlem Globetrotter at a pygmies' picnic.

Sensibly applied, double-up can be very successful for a very long time...but I still do not recommend it.

(Against the Jones baccarat sample, SM achieved a 6.63% win!).

Target betting has the untouchable "NB=LTD+" rule at its core, and that alone enables it to make the house advantage irrelevant.

All the other rules serve a dual role, part camouflage and part profit enhancement.

The purpose of this post is to present spread data from the more than 200,000 outcomes in the Lee Jones baccarat sample, but rules variations for target betting are always relevant.

The opening loss (OL) rule at least doubles the bet after an opening loss in a new series, simply because most house wins (or player losses) are followed by an opposite outcome.

The same applies to the 2L and 3L rules, which together make the first four losing bets in a new series a little like a Martingale. But not suspiciously so, we hope.

The win progression (WP) rule exists because any strategy that does not exploit winning streaks is, at best, wimpy and wishy-washy.

The WP basically doubles the bet (5, 10, 25, 50) until $100, adds $100 each round for as long as the streak continues, and ends the series if a loss is $500 or greater.

If a streak-busting loss is less than $500, its value becomes the LTD and NB=MIN(PBx2,PB+$100).

The mid-series loss (MSL) rule kicks in only if a potential EOS bet of $500 or less goes south, repeating the LTD+ bet in the hope of a probable opposite result, probable being a word with special meaning when it comes to gambling games.

None of these "extra" rules need to be defended here. They do a great job of both boosting the bottom line and bamboozling the other side.

I mention them only because the results below included their use.


As you can see, the spread analysis summary for the 202,214 Jones baccarat outcomes very closely follows those for baccarat and blackjack in the previous post.

That brings us to almost 400,000 hands or rounds, enough to keep a full time punter busy for at least four years.

They together demonstrate that the pretense that win-loss patterns in gambling games never repeat themselves amounts to disingenuous disinformation.

As before, losing tactics (those applying much tighter or narrower bet spreads) required far more action, and therefore greater risk, than the spread I recommend for target betting.

Also as before, by far the greatest number of bets valued at $1,000 or more was required by the spread with a maximum bet of $1,000 than by the recommended maximum of $25,000.

The models for this test always assume a "bust" limit of 40x the maximum permitted bet, so 1-5 busts at -$2,000, 1-50 at -$20,000, and so on.

Target betting's 1-5,000 spread busts at a cool million, but it didn't come close to that in this baccarat sample.

By the time an $855,000 slump came along (one that would have been easily avoided in non-robotic play), the strategy was more than $500,000 ahead, reducing the exposure of the initial bankroll to barely 35%.

By the end of the Jones baccarat test, target betting had paid down its seed money and was sitting pretty with almost $3,000,000 in funny-money profits.

Once again, the arithmetic of games of chance is telling us that tight spreads will kill you!

In this very large sample, spreads of 1-500 and under failed, although they at least managed to dent the house edge.

That alone is "impossible" according to the house-trained experts who have tried to talk me out of my mathematical heresy.

The same was true for the 80,000 blackjack rounds, although a 1-5 spread (about average for most weekend punters) actually increased the house edge.

The Rodriguez sample, which he assures me is taken from Zumma Publishing's baccarat "tester" books, was the toughest to beat, and only target betting's 1-5,000 spread came out ahead.

Something to keep in mind is that any prolonged test like these must deal with deadly downturns that would be far more rare if the "player" had been permitted the option to bail out whenever he felt the need.

In real play, table limits would make huge dips like those shown here pretty much impossible.

The "experts" argue that when a player bails out of what he perceives to be a difficult and potentially prolonged downturn, his chances of finding improved conditions elsewhere are no better than 50-50.

That may be true for a random or flat bettor.

But a target bettor needs only two successive wins and more often than not just one isolated win to recover his losses.

For him, the odds of a safe escape from a possible threat to his bankroll are better than 10 to 1 in his favor.

In any event, table limits require the target strategist to keep on the move, because betting too wide in the same location will blow his cover.

This whole challenge comes down to observation and experience.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, win-loss patterns are remarkably similar not just from one representative sample to another but from different games.

You cannot accurately predict the result of the very next bet. But you can learn from patterns from the past and be confident that both good and bad will be endlessly recycled in the future.

You can then bet in such a way that you optimally exploit them.

The gambling industry does not want you to know that, of course.

Casinos need you to bet a relatively tight spread, to select your bet values more or less at random, and above all to think of losing as fun.

If you plan to win consistently, you need to learn how to maintain a low profile.

Target betting teaches you how.

The most important endorsement of the strategy comes, as it always must, from outcomes as yet unplayed.

That is why I tell readers of this blog not to take my word for anything. Learn the rules, then use them - that is the one true test of a betting method.

Which brings me to the latest BST results...




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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Baccarat "tight spread" results are in, and it's not a tale of triumph, just another lesson in the wisdom of wideness!

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Running target betting under tight restrictions is not something I relish because I know ahead of time that a hobbled horse can't win a race.

Still and all, limiting the spread to 1-200 ($5 to $1,000) resulted in 40,706 bets of $1,000 or more. Target betting spreading wide needed only 4,859...but with most of the recommended rules set aside, it lost anyway.

Baccarat is a frustrating game because somehow it is far "streakier" than blackjack. And since backing Banker is a bad idea because of the 95-100 payout on wins, I find it about as much fun as watching a deep puddle evaporate on a cloudy day!

With the rules fully intact, target betting handily beat a 1.6% house edge, but that was not the object of this particular exercise.

As we know, the target strategy bets more but less often. And the wiggle room it gets from its wide spread wraps up series faster.

Crippling the method with a $1,000 limit brought the final outcome in line with negative expectation (-1.6%) with an actual AV of -1.77%.

Turning off most of target betting's switches but leaving the $25,000 maximum in place gave us far fewer busts (4 vs. 26) but the hobbled version's failures were huge, and its overall AV was more than double expectation at -3.61%.

There was just one "bust" with all the rules in place, and next time I will post charts that again raise the critical question, Would a sentient being stand (or sit still) for a beating this bad...?

Here are the relevant summaries, "tight" first, then "wide." The third shot covers target betting with the recommended rules modified to compensate for baccarat's slower pace and its lack of doubles and splits or bonus payouts.

(Click on an image to enlarge it)



The experts who deny that the house advantage is vulnerable in the long term reject any data that indicate to the contrary, and these will be no exception.

Analysis of past outcomes (the only analysis that is possible!) is not ideal, but as with studying the weather, history is all we have.

That is why I recommend to anyone who wants to learn how to win that they apply target betting's rules to real-time play as soon as possible, preferably without risking any money until they know what they are doing.

Reality contradicts theory and analysis all the time, but that is in target betting's favor (actual conditions are almost invariably easier to handle than situations in which intuition and experience cannot be applied).

For example, table limits and the need to disguise the betting method from prying eyes make prolonged negative trends far less likely. And EOS bets have to be rounded up in real play, sometimes increasing exposure for a while, but always resulting in greater overall profits.

The summaries above all reflect the application of a rule requiring that an EOS bet cannot be less than the value of the successful bet that preceded it. In real play, that would be optional.

One thing you can take to the bank is that if the house edge was truly invulnerable, all of the results posted in this blog would be flat-out impossible.

They are real and accurate because winning more when you win than you lose when you lose is the only antidote to the house advantage.

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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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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Waiting for the other shoe to drop could take a lifetime (and it may never happen at all!)

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The assumption that mythematicians like to cling on to and batter us about the head with is that if you are certain to lose more bets than you win in the long run then you must also be doomed to lose more money than you win.

They don't care that models and data summaries covering millions of outcomes with a clear overall house edge include countless thousands of profitable series that consisted of more losses than wins.

They just keep chanting that the sample, however large, was "not representative" and warn that at some point, the sum total of all losses must exceed the sum total of all wins. So, beware, insolent peasants, and be ready to pay your dues.

Here's the latest BST log:

Click on the image to enlarge it
It's true that from time to time, a win-loss pattern will set in that has a succession of isolated wins (wins immediately followed by one or more losses). And if the PB value is outside of your MSL ("do over") range, two wins separated by one loss will not save the day before the cavalry rides over the hill in the form of "twins" (two wins in succession!).

The horrors of long stretches in which the NB keeps jumping skyward with each failed EOS bet diminish dramatically as your confidence grows. But it never hurts to keep in mind that you are playing a game in which the odds are almost always against you.

As I explained in the summary, table limits usually extend the battle to climb out of the hole because without wiggle room in your bet values, the green ceiling forces you to keep betting the max until the WLP switches to a more positive trend.

But that assumes you do not have the option to back away from the layout that has put you in the hole, and resume play at a location where you can continue to strictly follow the target betting rules.

Here are the target betting bets applied by the spreadsheet model to the outcomes in the pencil log shown above. The final totals differ from the numbers at the bottom of the log because the recommended responses to dealer naturals and dealer 21s are not applied. I'll fix that at some point, but my purpose here is to keep on demonstrating that more lost bets does not translate to more lost dough!


Click on an image to enlarge it
The blocks of numbers in the spreadsheet line up with the checks and crosses etc. in the log, so if you print out the three images, it should be fairly easy to match them up.

As always, there were numerous turnarounds that delivered a profit from a negative situation, and overall, the house edge was almost 2.0% gross, confirming that more hands went south than north, so to speak.

The NET AV was +2.79%, demonstrating once again that properly-applied doubles/splits really do deliver a player advantage. We already knew that a 3-2 pay-off is better for the bottom line than a 1-1 pay-off!

Real math (as opposed to mythematics) is reassuringly predictable when it comes to data from games of chance. An analysis of recovered series will invariably show that one third contained fewer wins than losses, one third had an equal number of wins and losses, and one third had fewer losses than wins. Surprise!

The bigger the sample, the more precise the distribution becomes. This set (the outcomes from 090309) made a liar out of me, temporarily, with 45 positive series, 18 negatives, and 21 break-evens, but that's not the norm. The current trial sample (all bets against Ken Smith's BST app) are also out of whack (547/369/315) but the distribution will settle down eventually!

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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