_
Don't worry, this is not going to be a post about how dead people can help you win at baccarat (see the first blog entry, archived at left!).
But it is something of an experiment as I adjust to the process of allowing target betting to evolve day by day under public scrutiny.
As I have said many times, baccarat has always seemed to me about as exciting as watching grass grow next to blackjack, but now and then I feel obligated to revisit the game because of its huge international status.
As I drifted off to sleep last night, I was noodling the notion that since Banker always wins more hands than Player over the long run, target betting should be able to exploit that advantage by compensating for "The Gouge."
The gouge, of course, is the so-called 5% commission that, in my test, trimmed a $3.3 million funny-money win all the way down to barely $500,000.
My baccarat partner's long-ago suggestion that chips gobbled up by the gouge could be recovered with a post-EOS bet before NB reverts to the minimum did not at the time strike me as workable, and I still have my doubts.
But what if the potential EOS bet itself incorporated commission paid out during the current series, so that the NB equation would be something like NB=1.05*(LTD+Tgt+Comm)?
The effect might be disastrous, pushing bet values and overall action into the stratosphere and risk along with them.
But because Banker always has a solid edge over Player, it might just work.
The experimental aspect here is that I have never before speculated on the effectiveness of a modification ahead of actually applying it.
Given that I have 315,000 verifiable baccarat outcomes to work with, courtesy of Mr. Rodriguez and Mr. Jones, I think it's worth the effort to give it a try.
Once again, the spreadsheet platform rules! Running the test will be straightforward enough, and of course I will post the results here as soon as I am done.
The hard part will be figuring out the conditional formula to make the test accurate and effective!
Watch this space...
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.
_
Showing posts with label spreads. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spreads. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
A test of backing Banker all the way at baccarat, and how the "5%" gouge makes it a very bad idea!
_
Baccarat may not be my favorite casino table game, but target betting certainly likes it!
Running queries for data on the effect of backing Player only, Banker only and WBL has in effect turned the Rodriguez and Jones combined data sets of 315,000 outcomes into a monster sample of 945,000, so it was well worth the effort.
Now the job's done, I am relieved to be able to confirm that there are no big surprises.
Many baccarat veterans recommend ignoring the Player option entirely, and my test indicates that if winning more often than you lose floats your boat, then that is the way to go.
But brace yourself for a very large "5%" commission tab that will slash your overall winnings by more than 80% (repeat, 80%, not 5%) and leave you with profits that pale against those achieved by the guy at the same table who used target betting to back just Player every time.
My baccarat buddy (the one who suggested cranking up the EOS bet to recover commission fees after a recovery) insisted from day one that the gouge or "vig" or whatever else it might be called was a non-issue.
I'd say that a penalty that slashes a $3.3 million win by more than four fifths is definitely an issue, but I don't play baccarat much so I will leave it to readers to decide.
I have known for a long time that target betting will prevail even if the outcome of individual rounds is reversed (win to loss, red to black, odd to even or whatever) but have never given it a whole lot of thought because blackjack does not offer that option.
It may be possible to apply the Wobble (WBL or win before last) method to 21, but I figure I have enough stuff to keep in my head when I am playing blackjack, and adding more might cause a gray-matter meltdown! So, I have never tried it. And I am hoping that having said that, I won't be tempted to investigate further.
In the chart and summary below, avoiding commission is confirmed as the right way to tackle baccarat, as long as target betting is the primary ingredient.
"Banker Only" sailed through the test with barely a speed bump, but that's not a surprise because (as we all knew before we got into this) Banker wins more often than Player.
I am still in touch with my former baccarat partner, who steadfastly refuses to do the smart thing and step up to blackjack, and he tells me that in Macao and other exotic gambling locations, commission has been replaced by a rule that gives the house a win on a 6-6 tie.
That change might be better for target betting, but somehow I doubt it. Let's face it, casinos very rarely make rules changes that benefit the player!
One of these days I might be able to evaluate the switch, but I have never bothered to record ties, let alone recommend putting money on them, so that is not on my to-do list for the current decade at least.
To me, baccarat is like dancing in deep treacle compared to blackjack, but I know there are millions of aficionados out there and I recommend that they give disciplined target betting a try.
Here's the promised data...
(Click on the image to enlarge it)
I get a kick out of the fact that, commission aside, target betting kicked butt three ways.
But I am not surprised.
The method did encounter a "bust" backing Player only, and it is true to say that the crash 'n burn could have come along in the very first series. However, given 55,000 successful recoveries and just one fatal downturn, we can conclude that "coulda, woulda, shoulda" the three most pointless words in the gambling glossary, do not apply here.
It makes more sense to speculate about what would have happened if the house spike that cost target betting a million bucks in funny-money had been subjected to the damage control that most players instinctively apply in various ways when the going gets extra tough.
It's moot in any case, because most players would prefer odds of 55,000 to 1 in their favor to odds of 49.33 to 50.67 (-1.35%) against them. I am excluding those gamblers who bet as if losing is fun, of course!
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.
_
Baccarat may not be my favorite casino table game, but target betting certainly likes it!
Running queries for data on the effect of backing Player only, Banker only and WBL has in effect turned the Rodriguez and Jones combined data sets of 315,000 outcomes into a monster sample of 945,000, so it was well worth the effort.
Now the job's done, I am relieved to be able to confirm that there are no big surprises.
Many baccarat veterans recommend ignoring the Player option entirely, and my test indicates that if winning more often than you lose floats your boat, then that is the way to go.
But brace yourself for a very large "5%" commission tab that will slash your overall winnings by more than 80% (repeat, 80%, not 5%) and leave you with profits that pale against those achieved by the guy at the same table who used target betting to back just Player every time.
My baccarat buddy (the one who suggested cranking up the EOS bet to recover commission fees after a recovery) insisted from day one that the gouge or "vig" or whatever else it might be called was a non-issue.
I'd say that a penalty that slashes a $3.3 million win by more than four fifths is definitely an issue, but I don't play baccarat much so I will leave it to readers to decide.
I have known for a long time that target betting will prevail even if the outcome of individual rounds is reversed (win to loss, red to black, odd to even or whatever) but have never given it a whole lot of thought because blackjack does not offer that option.
It may be possible to apply the Wobble (WBL or win before last) method to 21, but I figure I have enough stuff to keep in my head when I am playing blackjack, and adding more might cause a gray-matter meltdown! So, I have never tried it. And I am hoping that having said that, I won't be tempted to investigate further.
In the chart and summary below, avoiding commission is confirmed as the right way to tackle baccarat, as long as target betting is the primary ingredient.
"Banker Only" sailed through the test with barely a speed bump, but that's not a surprise because (as we all knew before we got into this) Banker wins more often than Player.
I am still in touch with my former baccarat partner, who steadfastly refuses to do the smart thing and step up to blackjack, and he tells me that in Macao and other exotic gambling locations, commission has been replaced by a rule that gives the house a win on a 6-6 tie.
That change might be better for target betting, but somehow I doubt it. Let's face it, casinos very rarely make rules changes that benefit the player!
One of these days I might be able to evaluate the switch, but I have never bothered to record ties, let alone recommend putting money on them, so that is not on my to-do list for the current decade at least.
To me, baccarat is like dancing in deep treacle compared to blackjack, but I know there are millions of aficionados out there and I recommend that they give disciplined target betting a try.
Here's the promised data...
I get a kick out of the fact that, commission aside, target betting kicked butt three ways.
But I am not surprised.
The method did encounter a "bust" backing Player only, and it is true to say that the crash 'n burn could have come along in the very first series. However, given 55,000 successful recoveries and just one fatal downturn, we can conclude that "coulda, woulda, shoulda" the three most pointless words in the gambling glossary, do not apply here.
It makes more sense to speculate about what would have happened if the house spike that cost target betting a million bucks in funny-money had been subjected to the damage control that most players instinctively apply in various ways when the going gets extra tough.
It's moot in any case, because most players would prefer odds of 55,000 to 1 in their favor to odds of 49.33 to 50.67 (-1.35%) against them. I am excluding those gamblers who bet as if losing is fun, of course!
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.
_
Friday, April 10, 2009
The conventional wisdom says a million wins don't matter and losses are all that counts. True, but false at the same time!
_
A mathematician arguing for the YCW (you can't win) philosophy will tell you with a straight face that progressive betting can never be profitable because more bets lost than won must always result in more money lost than won.
No amount of evidence to the contrary will be considered acceptable, in the same way that for centuries, the conventional wisdom dismissed data showing that Planet Earth was not flat.
It is of course completely rational to warn against a betting strategy that will occasionally suffer a catastrophic loss that will always wipe out all prior profits and bankrupt the player.
But progressive betting will only match that caveat if the method is applied the way the casinos and their house-trained experts want it to be, in real play or in computer simulations.
That means that the player must keep on betting through prolonged downturns, and meekly throw in the towel whenever his next bet is prohibited by the prevailing table limit.
The ideal gambler is, in the view of all casino operators and the mythematicians who promote the gambling industry's ordained right to the contents of all our wallets, an impetuous spendthrift who comes to the table with an inadequate bankroll. He then bets a very narrow spread, and sheds first his inhibitions under the influence of "free" booze, then his stash.
It is theoretically reasonable to suggest that since target betting my way lost just once in some 70,000 recoveries, that loss might have occurred in the very first session, and therefore the method is potentially too hazardous to merit consideration.
It is theoretically equally reasonable to argue that since 1 in 70,000 American motorists will be killed or seriously injured in a road accident on any given day, the car in your garage is potentially unsafe at any speed and you would therefore be ill-advised to drive it ever again.
I cannot refute a statistically supported recommendation that the only certain way to win in a casino is to keep all your money in your pocket and, better yet, never step across the threshold.
But short of an outright ban on gambling, the evidence shows that progressive betting is a better way to win than any of the alternatives.
Those of you who come to agree with me after a few hundred hours of cautious exploration and practice (I certainly do not expect you to take my word for anything!) will learn that target betting can be modified in all sorts of ways to suit your gambling personality and your resources.
In fact, the more modifications you develop, mixing and matching them as you see fit, the less likely you are to be identified by casino pit personnel as a player who wins "too often" and should be stopped.
Elsewhere in this blog is data that show that even the much-derided Martingale or double-up betting method (-1, -2, -4, +8 etc.) demolishes the house advantage in the almost 400,000 real-time, real-play outcomes that are the subject of the current trial.
Played right, double-up can be a powerful antidote to the house edge. If the casino you have selected allows you to play it at all, that is.
Target betting with my rules applied is far harder to spot, and the modifications that I recommend or that individual players will develop for themselves make it even more effective in the real world.
Here's the latest BST data set:
(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.
_
A mathematician arguing for the YCW (you can't win) philosophy will tell you with a straight face that progressive betting can never be profitable because more bets lost than won must always result in more money lost than won.
No amount of evidence to the contrary will be considered acceptable, in the same way that for centuries, the conventional wisdom dismissed data showing that Planet Earth was not flat.
It is of course completely rational to warn against a betting strategy that will occasionally suffer a catastrophic loss that will always wipe out all prior profits and bankrupt the player.
But progressive betting will only match that caveat if the method is applied the way the casinos and their house-trained experts want it to be, in real play or in computer simulations.
That means that the player must keep on betting through prolonged downturns, and meekly throw in the towel whenever his next bet is prohibited by the prevailing table limit.
The ideal gambler is, in the view of all casino operators and the mythematicians who promote the gambling industry's ordained right to the contents of all our wallets, an impetuous spendthrift who comes to the table with an inadequate bankroll. He then bets a very narrow spread, and sheds first his inhibitions under the influence of "free" booze, then his stash.
It is theoretically reasonable to suggest that since target betting my way lost just once in some 70,000 recoveries, that loss might have occurred in the very first session, and therefore the method is potentially too hazardous to merit consideration.
It is theoretically equally reasonable to argue that since 1 in 70,000 American motorists will be killed or seriously injured in a road accident on any given day, the car in your garage is potentially unsafe at any speed and you would therefore be ill-advised to drive it ever again.
I cannot refute a statistically supported recommendation that the only certain way to win in a casino is to keep all your money in your pocket and, better yet, never step across the threshold.
But short of an outright ban on gambling, the evidence shows that progressive betting is a better way to win than any of the alternatives.
Those of you who come to agree with me after a few hundred hours of cautious exploration and practice (I certainly do not expect you to take my word for anything!) will learn that target betting can be modified in all sorts of ways to suit your gambling personality and your resources.
In fact, the more modifications you develop, mixing and matching them as you see fit, the less likely you are to be identified by casino pit personnel as a player who wins "too often" and should be stopped.
Elsewhere in this blog is data that show that even the much-derided Martingale or double-up betting method (-1, -2, -4, +8 etc.) demolishes the house advantage in the almost 400,000 real-time, real-play outcomes that are the subject of the current trial.
Played right, double-up can be a powerful antidote to the house edge. If the casino you have selected allows you to play it at all, that is.
Target betting with my rules applied is far harder to spot, and the modifications that I recommend or that individual players will develop for themselves make it even more effective in the real world.
Here's the latest BST data set:
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.
_
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Confession time. As the latest BST set wraps up, an error is flagged. Target betting still reigns supreme, but tight spreads get a modest boost!
_
When I launched this new online venture, I chose to let it evolve in chronological order, with my (occasional, but inevitable!) mistakes doing their part to comply with the warts-and-all nature of blogs.
The problem arose in the batch of BST blackjack sessions that just concluded because compliance with the BST 1-200 ($5-$1,000) table limit was not tracked as fairly as it should have been.
One of the big differences between target betting and tight-spread play (accepting that for many people, a 1-200 spread is far from tight!) is that the strategy player betting in real time will never abandon a series before recovery.
He will often suspend play in mid-series, but EOS is always required before the bet value can fall back to the minimum to signal a new contest against the house edge.
My models are all set up to "play" the same way, and that caused a problem for BST limit tracking because with a low table limit, recoveries took forever.
That, of course, is the whole purpose of house-mandated spread limits. The idea is that maximum bets should be kept low so that a player is likely to get into trouble sooner, and then after a while, it will be impossible for him to get "out of the hole" if bets are maintained at that level.
In BST #15, for example, the $1,000 limit player slipped deep into the red at round 323 and did not get out of it for 1,950 bets (about 13 hours of play!). The recovery was a minor miracle in itself, but the good times did not roll for long: at round 3,300, trouble returned, and when the set wrapped up at round 7,834, BST TL was more than 163 maximum bets behind.
It would take more than a minor miracle for recovery to be achieved again under those circumstances.
I corrected the anomaly by permitting BST TL to call it quits at the end of each session, win or lose, just as a hamstrung limit player would have to do in real play (if Peter Punter gets his clock cleaned to the tune of say $20,000, he goes home and licks his wounds, then starts afresh the next time he's dumb enough to go back to the casino for a repeat thrashing).
The effect of the correction was to make BST TL a less dramatic loser than before:-
(Click on the image to enlarge it)
Thanks to target betting, the $1,000 limit bettor (let's call him Max Grand) came out of the series of blackjack sessions with a loss that was just 0.19% of his total action, improving considerably on the net house edge of 2.0%.
Max had to make 1,989 bets of $1,000 plus ("plus" being acceptable because of splits and double-downs) vs. high-limit target betting's 398. In other words, the BST table limit did its job and forced Max to risk more overall before his inescapable end-of-session loss.
Max's total action was fractionally less than TB's, indicating that although TB ventured into high-roller territory only one fifth as often as Max, when he did so, his bets were bigger on average.
The critical information from the above summary is that Max lost a little more than $5,000. TB won $148,000, or 5.25% of his total action vs. Max's -0.19%.
The summary below explains how TB was able to win while Max tanked:-
(Click on the image to enlarge it)
According to gross negative expectation of -5.82%, TB "should have" suffered a loss of $164,000. Net AV was a hair worse than -2.0% indicating a best result for target betting of -2.01% x action of $2,817,105 or a LOSS pretty much equal to Max's: -$5,665.
Didn't happen. And the reason it didn't happen is that TB's lesser number of wins (3,357) had an average value of $442 while his greater number of losses (3,813) had an average value of $350.
The whole point of target betting, as you know, is to Win more when you win than you lose when you lose so that losing more bets than you win won't hurt you.
TB's average win value exceeded his average loss value by +26% vs. a gross house edge of 5.82% and a net house edge of 2.01%.
I think we can all agree that 26% greatly exceeds both 5.82% and 2.01%.
Result, happiness for TB and misery for poor old Max.
As always, skeptics will point to those average bet values and scream blue bloody murder about the "big" numbers. None of the "experts" out there seem to have heard that in a casino (as in the rest of the world) it takes money to make money.
What's the best fiscal policy: risk less and lose almost every time, or venture a little more up front and win every time? You decide!
I am not about to apply the BST TL revision to all the other BST blackjack sessions (1-14) because the job has to be done manually and all I will end up with is a repeat of what we saw at the end of Batch #15.
The spread summaries remain fair and accurate because their purpose was to explore what would happen at different spread limits, starting with Peter Punter's standard 1-5 and working up the ladder.
Here's the #15 summary:-
(Click on the image to enlarge it)
Again we see that a spread range of less than 1-1,000 is doomed to fail in the long run.
Casinos know that, which is why no layout exists that permits bets from $5 to $5,000.
It is certainly possible to spread that wide if a player is willing to start out with a minimum bet in one place and hop up the ladder by as many rungs as recovery requires, switching games as needed.
Very few gamblers do that.
A prolonged negative turn will bring out a stubborn streak in most players that glues them in place, when the smart thing to do would be to turn tail and RUN.
It will be a while before I have all of the baccarat spread data, but right now, my hope that baccarat's lack of doubles and splits might make it a little less of a challenge than blackjack is NOT being borne out (with just 5 of the 45 baccarat sets processed, 1-1,000 remains the magic number).
In light of all of the data I have collected and analyzed in 30+ years of target betting, I don't see how self-styled gambling experts can pretend objective honesty when they claim that progressive betting cannot win in the end.
Never mind that no other betting method (fixed or random betting being the only alternatives!) has a prayer against the house advantage.
Here's how an old-fashioned Martingale would have done against the #15 outcomes:-
(Click on the image to enlarge it)
In case this is your first visit to the TB blog, I will say again that I do not recommend double-up as a long term antidote to the house advantage, primarily because casino pit staff will always spot it quickly and step in to interfere with its use.
That does not mean that the method is sure to lose. Far from it. My SM+ variation boosts the EOS profit from a single $5 unit to multiples that, er, multiply as a slow recovery drags on. The rule is -5, -10, -25 (not -20), -50, -100, -250, and so on.
As you can see, neither Martingale version comes close to achieving target betting's win rate.
Finally, the all-bets-to-date summary at the end of #15:-
(Click on the image to enlarge it)
The data above are self-explanatory, I hope, but I will pick out some highlights:
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.
_
When I launched this new online venture, I chose to let it evolve in chronological order, with my (occasional, but inevitable!) mistakes doing their part to comply with the warts-and-all nature of blogs.
The problem arose in the batch of BST blackjack sessions that just concluded because compliance with the BST 1-200 ($5-$1,000) table limit was not tracked as fairly as it should have been.
One of the big differences between target betting and tight-spread play (accepting that for many people, a 1-200 spread is far from tight!) is that the strategy player betting in real time will never abandon a series before recovery.
He will often suspend play in mid-series, but EOS is always required before the bet value can fall back to the minimum to signal a new contest against the house edge.
My models are all set up to "play" the same way, and that caused a problem for BST limit tracking because with a low table limit, recoveries took forever.
That, of course, is the whole purpose of house-mandated spread limits. The idea is that maximum bets should be kept low so that a player is likely to get into trouble sooner, and then after a while, it will be impossible for him to get "out of the hole" if bets are maintained at that level.
In BST #15, for example, the $1,000 limit player slipped deep into the red at round 323 and did not get out of it for 1,950 bets (about 13 hours of play!). The recovery was a minor miracle in itself, but the good times did not roll for long: at round 3,300, trouble returned, and when the set wrapped up at round 7,834, BST TL was more than 163 maximum bets behind.
It would take more than a minor miracle for recovery to be achieved again under those circumstances.
I corrected the anomaly by permitting BST TL to call it quits at the end of each session, win or lose, just as a hamstrung limit player would have to do in real play (if Peter Punter gets his clock cleaned to the tune of say $20,000, he goes home and licks his wounds, then starts afresh the next time he's dumb enough to go back to the casino for a repeat thrashing).
The effect of the correction was to make BST TL a less dramatic loser than before:-
Thanks to target betting, the $1,000 limit bettor (let's call him Max Grand) came out of the series of blackjack sessions with a loss that was just 0.19% of his total action, improving considerably on the net house edge of 2.0%.
Max had to make 1,989 bets of $1,000 plus ("plus" being acceptable because of splits and double-downs) vs. high-limit target betting's 398. In other words, the BST table limit did its job and forced Max to risk more overall before his inescapable end-of-session loss.
Max's total action was fractionally less than TB's, indicating that although TB ventured into high-roller territory only one fifth as often as Max, when he did so, his bets were bigger on average.
The critical information from the above summary is that Max lost a little more than $5,000. TB won $148,000, or 5.25% of his total action vs. Max's -0.19%.
The summary below explains how TB was able to win while Max tanked:-
According to gross negative expectation of -5.82%, TB "should have" suffered a loss of $164,000. Net AV was a hair worse than -2.0% indicating a best result for target betting of -2.01% x action of $2,817,105 or a LOSS pretty much equal to Max's: -$5,665.
Didn't happen. And the reason it didn't happen is that TB's lesser number of wins (3,357) had an average value of $442 while his greater number of losses (3,813) had an average value of $350.
The whole point of target betting, as you know, is to Win more when you win than you lose when you lose so that losing more bets than you win won't hurt you.
TB's average win value exceeded his average loss value by +26% vs. a gross house edge of 5.82% and a net house edge of 2.01%.
I think we can all agree that 26% greatly exceeds both 5.82% and 2.01%.
Result, happiness for TB and misery for poor old Max.
As always, skeptics will point to those average bet values and scream blue bloody murder about the "big" numbers. None of the "experts" out there seem to have heard that in a casino (as in the rest of the world) it takes money to make money.
What's the best fiscal policy: risk less and lose almost every time, or venture a little more up front and win every time? You decide!
I am not about to apply the BST TL revision to all the other BST blackjack sessions (1-14) because the job has to be done manually and all I will end up with is a repeat of what we saw at the end of Batch #15.
The spread summaries remain fair and accurate because their purpose was to explore what would happen at different spread limits, starting with Peter Punter's standard 1-5 and working up the ladder.
Here's the #15 summary:-
Again we see that a spread range of less than 1-1,000 is doomed to fail in the long run.
Casinos know that, which is why no layout exists that permits bets from $5 to $5,000.
It is certainly possible to spread that wide if a player is willing to start out with a minimum bet in one place and hop up the ladder by as many rungs as recovery requires, switching games as needed.
Very few gamblers do that.
A prolonged negative turn will bring out a stubborn streak in most players that glues them in place, when the smart thing to do would be to turn tail and RUN.
It will be a while before I have all of the baccarat spread data, but right now, my hope that baccarat's lack of doubles and splits might make it a little less of a challenge than blackjack is NOT being borne out (with just 5 of the 45 baccarat sets processed, 1-1,000 remains the magic number).
In light of all of the data I have collected and analyzed in 30+ years of target betting, I don't see how self-styled gambling experts can pretend objective honesty when they claim that progressive betting cannot win in the end.
Never mind that no other betting method (fixed or random betting being the only alternatives!) has a prayer against the house advantage.
Here's how an old-fashioned Martingale would have done against the #15 outcomes:-
In case this is your first visit to the TB blog, I will say again that I do not recommend double-up as a long term antidote to the house advantage, primarily because casino pit staff will always spot it quickly and step in to interfere with its use.
That does not mean that the method is sure to lose. Far from it. My SM+ variation boosts the EOS profit from a single $5 unit to multiples that, er, multiply as a slow recovery drags on. The rule is -5, -10, -25 (not -20), -50, -100, -250, and so on.
As you can see, neither Martingale version comes close to achieving target betting's win rate.
Finally, the all-bets-to-date summary at the end of #15:-
The data above are self-explanatory, I hope, but I will pick out some highlights:
- Target betting won a total of $1.78 million or 5.12% of total action.
- The gross AV for 78,000 rounds of blackjack was -5.33% and the net AV was -0.78%
- Given the AV numbers show, target betting "should have" lost between $270,755 and $1.85 million. It didn't.
- Target betting's average bet throughout was $445.
- The strategy's average win value was $518 and its average loss value was $402, achieving its goal to "win more when you win than you lose when you lose."
- Target betting had a funny-money bankroll of $1 million that was less than 20% exposed.
- The strategy made 28,328 attempted recovery, EOS or turnaround bets, and LOST them 50.7% of the time, in keeping with the house edge for the game.
- EOS was achieved with a single win more than 65% of the time (mostly thanks to the OSL and MSL rules, but sometimes because of well-timed naturals, double-downs and splits).
- Bets of $1,000 or more were necessary less than 4.5% of the time through 78,000 rounds of betting.
- Target betting rocks...
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.
_
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Confidence, consistency, cold cash and commitment: The keys to winning at table games can be summed up in two letters, P & S, Progression and Spread.
_
Years ago, a Las Vegas resident who promoted himself as the world's #1 expert on casinos and gambling told me that no betting method ever devised could beat the games in his city.
"Even if it could be done, the casinos would find a way to stop it," he said. "All they would have to do is limit spreads."
He was right. The casinos have the edge against 99.9% of all players, reporting a win percentage that is several multiples of the negative expectation at the toughest table game, roulette (5.26%).
Meaning that most players make such dumb choices when they are in a casino having "fun" that they guarantee that they will go home with a lighter wallet.
But the house advantage and the billions in easy money it brings in every year is not enough for the gambling industry.
Whenever casino personnel identify a player who they believe is winning "too often" they first satisfy themselves that he's not cheating...then treat him as if he is.
When mathematician Ed Thorp published his card-counting best seller, Beat the Dealer more than 40 years ago, Las Vegas casinos over-reacted by changing the rules of blackjack to block counters, prompting howls of protest from customers who didn't know how to count cards and didn't care to learn.
Double-downs and splits were cut back, and most annoying of all, shuffles were increased, slowing the game to a crawl.
Pretty soon, the gambling industry realized it had used a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
Players willing to study how the game could be beaten and able to apply their new knowledge with skill and consistency were in a tiny minority, and blocking them meant losing revenue from everyone else.
Perhaps more than anywhere else in the world, time is money in Las Vegas, and the faster hands are dealt, the more chips are raked into the dealer's tray.
In a matter of months, blackjack's rules returned to normal, and the crisis that wasn't a crisis at all was over.
Running a game is for the most part a passive process that permits the casino to provide the layout (the rope) and let the players do the work (hang themselves).
The house's influence is subtle, limiting the ratio of the highest permitted bet to the table minimum, to reduce the players' ability to recover prior losses while knowing that most punters limit themselves far more severely.
Spread limits are effective only against players who believe that the only way to combat a downturn in a given game is to keep on betting in the same location, hoping that sometime soon the tide will turn.
But a surprising number of gamblers play that way. Badly, in other word.
Players with a plan know where there's a table limit, there is a higher one not far away. If the next bet needed exceeds the table limit, there is a simple solution: Go play somewhere else.
It is an indisputable fact that both flat and random betting must eventually fall foul of the house edge at all games of chance.
It is also true that most players who are "in the hole" will fall into a pattern of robotic fixed betting, or will randomly hurl good money after bad by cranking up their wagers.
The hole will get deeper and deeper and the ladder (the bankroll) will get shorter and shorter, until eventually there is no way out.
Haphazard betting won't work. Flat betting won't either.
That makes progressive betting the only alternative.
And the realities of gambling also ensure that progressive betting will be relentlessly targeted for derision by anyone whose livelihood depends on promulgating the conventional wisdom that in the end, you can't win.
Blind luck can make you a winner for a while, but as we all know, luck never stays around for long.
Never forget that losing is a progressive process, because with each loss, the amount you are "behind" gets larger.
Betting the same amount each round against a negative trend will not enable you to recover, unless of course the win-loss pattern (WLP) changes and you are able to win more bets than you lose.
Betting less won't help either because even a prolonged winning streak will not get you out of trouble.
Again: Progressive betting is the only viable alternative. And the irony is that as long as you apply a disciplined, consistent plan, progressive betting is also less risky than any other option.
Say what?
It's like this: The vast majority of players tackle casino table games with far less money than arithmetic indicates is necessary to prevail against the house edge.
So in spite of the fact that the house advantage has to be relatively tiny in order to make occasional overall wins by players possible (without them there would soon be no customers) its relentless grind against an inadequate bankroll almost always proves fatal.
"Underfunded" players lose. Again and again. And losing is a very expensive way to have fun.
Progressive betting demands more up-front money, for sure.
But it very quickly builds the bankroll with recovery after recovery.
And as time goes by, ruin becomes a rapidly-diminishing threat.
Look at it this way: If you can't afford to win, you shouldn't play. Why even think about taking on the house if you know you probably don't have enough money to get the job done?
All of the BST logs posted here demonstrate that table limits serve the house, not the player.
No big surprise to some of you, but many people do not think about the fact that the quicker you get to your green ceiling, the more likely you are to be a victim of the house edge.
In blackjack session after session, playing up to the table limit and never beyond resulted in up to twenty times the number of high-value bets that unrestricted target betting required, and in consequence, far higher average bet and overall action values.
More action always means more risk. That's a gambling given.
Here are data from the current BST blackjack set (#15):
(Click on the image to enlarge it)
What we see here is that a betting spread tighter than 1-1,000 (the BST limit is 1-200) is certain to lose, over the long haul.
The two optimum spread ratios are $10-$25,000 (1-2,500) and $5-$25,000 (1-5,000).
$25,000 bets? That's madness! No, it's not.
It was never my hope, or my intention, to come up with a betting method that would permit a weekend punter on a shoestring budget to go home with his pockets bulging with casino cash.
That just is not possible, unless blind luck intervenes.
A successful player (not a gambler) has to think like the house, with big bucks up front and complete confidence that disciplined betting and The Math between them will make him a winner.
Look at the action numbers in the summary above and you will see far higher action/average bet figures for narrower spreads than 1-5,000, with a 1-500 spread losing after requiring risk that was almost ten times greater than the bet levels that optimum target betting needed to WIN!
A fluke, say the skeptics. A sample of just 7,300 hands is "not representative"! The data shown are anecdotal, meaning that they apply to this set of outcomes and have no relevance to future bets.
OK, so let's look at the summary for more than ten times as many outcomes (all the data sets in the current BST trial).
(Click on the image to enlarge it)
Bigger numbers, same story.
In coming posts, I will provide data from the two extended baccarat trials of target betting, the Jones outcomes and the Rodriguez sets covering more than 315,000 rounds over which I had no control, and that are verifiable at their independent sources.
Not representative? Of course not! One thing you learn when you challenge the status quo is that any sample of data, however large, that upends the YCW (you can't win) conventional wisdom is always non-representative and anecdotal.
Here's more BST fun and games...
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.
_
Years ago, a Las Vegas resident who promoted himself as the world's #1 expert on casinos and gambling told me that no betting method ever devised could beat the games in his city.
"Even if it could be done, the casinos would find a way to stop it," he said. "All they would have to do is limit spreads."
He was right. The casinos have the edge against 99.9% of all players, reporting a win percentage that is several multiples of the negative expectation at the toughest table game, roulette (5.26%).
Meaning that most players make such dumb choices when they are in a casino having "fun" that they guarantee that they will go home with a lighter wallet.
But the house advantage and the billions in easy money it brings in every year is not enough for the gambling industry.
Whenever casino personnel identify a player who they believe is winning "too often" they first satisfy themselves that he's not cheating...then treat him as if he is.
When mathematician Ed Thorp published his card-counting best seller, Beat the Dealer more than 40 years ago, Las Vegas casinos over-reacted by changing the rules of blackjack to block counters, prompting howls of protest from customers who didn't know how to count cards and didn't care to learn.
Double-downs and splits were cut back, and most annoying of all, shuffles were increased, slowing the game to a crawl.
Pretty soon, the gambling industry realized it had used a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
Players willing to study how the game could be beaten and able to apply their new knowledge with skill and consistency were in a tiny minority, and blocking them meant losing revenue from everyone else.
Perhaps more than anywhere else in the world, time is money in Las Vegas, and the faster hands are dealt, the more chips are raked into the dealer's tray.
In a matter of months, blackjack's rules returned to normal, and the crisis that wasn't a crisis at all was over.
Running a game is for the most part a passive process that permits the casino to provide the layout (the rope) and let the players do the work (hang themselves).
The house's influence is subtle, limiting the ratio of the highest permitted bet to the table minimum, to reduce the players' ability to recover prior losses while knowing that most punters limit themselves far more severely.
Spread limits are effective only against players who believe that the only way to combat a downturn in a given game is to keep on betting in the same location, hoping that sometime soon the tide will turn.
But a surprising number of gamblers play that way. Badly, in other word.
Players with a plan know where there's a table limit, there is a higher one not far away. If the next bet needed exceeds the table limit, there is a simple solution: Go play somewhere else.
It is an indisputable fact that both flat and random betting must eventually fall foul of the house edge at all games of chance.
It is also true that most players who are "in the hole" will fall into a pattern of robotic fixed betting, or will randomly hurl good money after bad by cranking up their wagers.
The hole will get deeper and deeper and the ladder (the bankroll) will get shorter and shorter, until eventually there is no way out.
Haphazard betting won't work. Flat betting won't either.
That makes progressive betting the only alternative.
And the realities of gambling also ensure that progressive betting will be relentlessly targeted for derision by anyone whose livelihood depends on promulgating the conventional wisdom that in the end, you can't win.
Blind luck can make you a winner for a while, but as we all know, luck never stays around for long.
Never forget that losing is a progressive process, because with each loss, the amount you are "behind" gets larger.
Betting the same amount each round against a negative trend will not enable you to recover, unless of course the win-loss pattern (WLP) changes and you are able to win more bets than you lose.
Betting less won't help either because even a prolonged winning streak will not get you out of trouble.
Again: Progressive betting is the only viable alternative. And the irony is that as long as you apply a disciplined, consistent plan, progressive betting is also less risky than any other option.
Say what?
It's like this: The vast majority of players tackle casino table games with far less money than arithmetic indicates is necessary to prevail against the house edge.
So in spite of the fact that the house advantage has to be relatively tiny in order to make occasional overall wins by players possible (without them there would soon be no customers) its relentless grind against an inadequate bankroll almost always proves fatal.
"Underfunded" players lose. Again and again. And losing is a very expensive way to have fun.
Progressive betting demands more up-front money, for sure.
But it very quickly builds the bankroll with recovery after recovery.
And as time goes by, ruin becomes a rapidly-diminishing threat.
Look at it this way: If you can't afford to win, you shouldn't play. Why even think about taking on the house if you know you probably don't have enough money to get the job done?
All of the BST logs posted here demonstrate that table limits serve the house, not the player.
No big surprise to some of you, but many people do not think about the fact that the quicker you get to your green ceiling, the more likely you are to be a victim of the house edge.
In blackjack session after session, playing up to the table limit and never beyond resulted in up to twenty times the number of high-value bets that unrestricted target betting required, and in consequence, far higher average bet and overall action values.
More action always means more risk. That's a gambling given.
Here are data from the current BST blackjack set (#15):
What we see here is that a betting spread tighter than 1-1,000 (the BST limit is 1-200) is certain to lose, over the long haul.
The two optimum spread ratios are $10-$25,000 (1-2,500) and $5-$25,000 (1-5,000).
$25,000 bets? That's madness! No, it's not.
It was never my hope, or my intention, to come up with a betting method that would permit a weekend punter on a shoestring budget to go home with his pockets bulging with casino cash.
That just is not possible, unless blind luck intervenes.
A successful player (not a gambler) has to think like the house, with big bucks up front and complete confidence that disciplined betting and The Math between them will make him a winner.
Look at the action numbers in the summary above and you will see far higher action/average bet figures for narrower spreads than 1-5,000, with a 1-500 spread losing after requiring risk that was almost ten times greater than the bet levels that optimum target betting needed to WIN!
A fluke, say the skeptics. A sample of just 7,300 hands is "not representative"! The data shown are anecdotal, meaning that they apply to this set of outcomes and have no relevance to future bets.
OK, so let's look at the summary for more than ten times as many outcomes (all the data sets in the current BST trial).
Bigger numbers, same story.
In coming posts, I will provide data from the two extended baccarat trials of target betting, the Jones outcomes and the Rodriguez sets covering more than 315,000 rounds over which I had no control, and that are verifiable at their independent sources.
Not representative? Of course not! One thing you learn when you challenge the status quo is that any sample of data, however large, that upends the YCW (you can't win) conventional wisdom is always non-representative and anecdotal.
Here's more BST fun and games...
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.
_
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Beating the house is like safe driving. You have to pay attention, be alert, and steer, brake or accelerate as conditions require.
_
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.
_
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...
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.
_
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)