Oscar's Grind? My success! You?

#1
I just returned from a cruise and won $2330 playing Oscar's Grind with $5 units.

I bought 20 reds to start, played 14 sessions totalling 12 hours, winning between $110 and $270 per session. Never lost.

I did make a couple of changes to the grind. If my bet only took me to even I added one unit. For example, when losing the first hand, I bet 2 units on the second. Also, if my bet did not get me back to even I only bet half of the deficit. Example: Down 8 with a bet of six I only bet 4. However, if I lost that reduced bet, I would increase to what my bet would have been.

The most I went down was 84 units once and 76 units another time. In those situations I shifted to a $25 unit when I got back to less than 30 units down.

This is the third time I've used the grind. The first trip I played 8 hours and won $720, the second 5 hours and won $240, and this one 12 hours and won $2330.

So it works for me.
 

EasyRhino

Well-Known Member
#2
I've never understood Oscar. Too complicated for me.

tedwards said:
The most I went down was 84 units once and 76 units another time.
I'm not sure what a unit means to you, but over the weekend I lost about 80 units, and I was nearly moved to tears. How dangerous of a drawdown was that?

Also, I'm pretty sure you're breaking the grind if you change your unit size.
 

shadroch

Well-Known Member
#3
Let me see if I got this. You claim that you won $2330 using OG with a $5 unit bet in 12 hours. That means you won an average of 38 units an hour.
Assuming you played around than 100 hands an hour, you'd need to win around 67% of hands played to achieve these results.
Something is seriosly wrong here. I may be the biggest advocate of Oscars Grind on these boards but I've never seen results anywhere near these.
There is a very good reason it's called a grind. Winning 38 units an hour would be Several SDs above the expected results. Several,with a capital S
 
#6
Shadroch,

I agree it was an incredible streak, but I did not need to win 67% of the hands. Remember, with the progression your winning hands are generally for higher units than your losing. Also, I had a several times when I was down 5,6,7 units and bet 6,7,8 unit, and won doubles. So those were bonuses.

As well, on three occasions, I was the only player and was probably playing closer to 200 hands an hour. Very seldom did I sit at a crowded table because I have no patience for the average cruise ship player. (I saw a guy double a 14 against a 6 and take down the whole table.)

Also, note I modified the grind by increasing my bets when betting to even. So when I lost the first unit I bet 2. So 72% of the time I was up 1 unit after 2 hands. If I lost the second hand I bet 1 down 3. If I won that I bet 3 down 2.

I would doubt I won more than the normal amount of hands, I was just lucky to avoid a grind that went too deep, forcing me to bail with a loss.
 

Kasi

Well-Known Member
#9
shadroch said:
you won $2330 using OG with a $5 unit bet in 12 hours. That means you won an average of 38 units an hour.
Assuming you played around than 100 hands an hour, you'd need to win around 67% of hands played to achieve these results.
Something is seriosly wrong here. I may be the biggest advocate of Oscars Grind on these boards but I've never seen results anywhere near these.
There is a very good reason it's called a grind. Winning 38 units an hour would be Several SDs above the expected results. Several,with a capital S
Well, not really.

Aside from the fact the OP is not playing Oscar's grind, which he stated, since, first, BJ is not an even-money game and second he was varying the system anyway making it a different system lol.

You just can't conclude his results are way abnormal since you don't know what his avg bet/hand was and how many hands he played.

A flat-betting player couldn't possibly net 460 units in 2400 trials like you say.

Apparently sometimes he went with a $25 unit in an effort to make up for a bunch of $5 units lost. Doing that does not change the liklihood of finishing that one unit ahead.

Much more likely is that his W/L/T results were as expected but varying bets in some voodoo yet Oscar-like fashion accounts for his winnings.

Just as I doubt if the success I think you may have had utilizing Oscar at craps has changed the number of times a "pass" bet wins at craps.

In any case, whatever he has done up until now, apparently he is up 700 $5units or so at this point. Imagine how long he could last from this point forward and still show a profit should he choose to only flat-bet $5 from this point forward before he loses his 700 units.

He has already bought himself longevity, good to go for a couple hundred thousand hands, if his goal is simply not losing.
 

Kasi

Well-Known Member
#11
EasyRhino said:
I'm not sure what a unit means to you, but over the weekend I lost about 80 units, and I was nearly moved to tears. How dangerous of a drawdown was that?

Also, I'm pretty sure you're breaking the grind if you change your unit size.
Maybe in a way I guess.

But so what if you have a 95% chance of winning one unit with a 100 unit roll with Oscar. You still have that chance of winning $5 with $500 as you do of winning $25 with $2500.

Numbers completely made up just to make the point lol.

But, heck, even a flat-betting BS player with a 12 unit roll might make 1 unit
90% of the time.


Not that it belongs here in voodoo but I assume you meant you lost 80 (min?)units over a weekend card-counting?? You found it extremely painful and wonder how "dangerous", maybe how "likely"?, that is? Is that what you are asking?

I really hope not.
 

Thunder

Well-Known Member
#12
How do you implement this grind with BJ?

I would think it would be silly to do this progression with BJ since you only win about 47% of your hands accounting for pushes. It wouldn't be long I'd think before you had a sequence of something like W L L W L L L W W L L L L L L W L W L W L W L and ended up getting murdered as a result. Assuming you were starting out at $10, and then raised by $10 each time you had a w after a l, I count that you would be down -$240 in this scenario vs being down $80 if flat betting. Now if it accounted for BJ's, splits and DD's, I think it would be better but then it gets much more complicated. Thoughts?
 

sagefr0g

Well-Known Member
#13
lost as usual

guess i'll never understand this progression stuff.
kind of i get the idea of what a martingale is.
then i guess there are negative progressions, positive progression and maybe a mix of the two?
and i looked at oscar's grind and promptly forgot it's structure. i think it's supposed to be a 'slow' progression. how so or why so i dunno.
but is maybe the essence of a betting progression the idea that one takes a gamble on making up units lost, or maybe getting ahead some units in the first place sort of thing? :confused:
maybe i'm off base about progressions but it seems one problem with them is they are so recursive and set in stone as if they don't offer freedom of choice or allowing for thought and judgement.
is there some theory behind what one would expect for a given type of progression? i know a betting system can't overcome the house advantage so i just wonder what the theory of what a progression could do for one would be? i think i sort of get the idea of what Kasi's saying here:
http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showpost.php?p=101399&postcount=13
 

shadroch

Well-Known Member
#14
Thunder said:
I would think it would be silly to do this progression with BJ since you only win about 47% of your hands accounting for pushes. It wouldn't be long I'd think before you had a sequence of something like W L L W L L L W W L L L L L L W L W L W L W L and ended up getting murdered as a result. Assuming you were starting out at $10, and then raised by $10 each time you had a w after a l, I count that you would be down -$240 in this scenario vs being down $80 if flat betting. Now if it accounted for BJ's, splits and DD's, I think it would be better but then it gets much more complicated. Thoughts?
Your math is off,or you are not betting properly.
W-up 10
L-even
L-down 10
W- even
L- down 10
L-down 20
L-down 30
W- down 20
W- even( you raised your bet to 20)
Now you lose 6 $10 bets in a row and are down $60
W- down 50
L- down 70( betting 20)
W- down 50
L- down 80( betting 30)
W- down 50
L-down 90( betting 40)
W-down 50
L- down 110( betting 60)

Heres where OG is a thing of beauty. If you were flat betting,you'd be down less, but you would need 8 wins in a row to break even. Using OG,two wins and you are ahead.
W- down 50( now you don't raise your bet because a $60 bet is all you need.)
W- up $10.
Flatbetting,you'd still need 6 more wins in a row to be even. Don't forget that in this sequence,we had a number of green chip bets out, earning us extra comps as well.
Still think its silly?
 

Kasi

Well-Known Member
#15
sagefr0g said:
maybe i'm off base about progressions but it seems one problem with them is they are so recursive and set in stone as if they don't offer freedom of choice or allowing for thought and judgement.
is there some theory behind what one would expect for a given type of progression? i know a betting system can't overcome the house advantage so i just wonder what the theory of what a progression could do for one would be? ]
I don't really understand them either - a progression to me is just one betting "system". A "system" is, like you say defined in advance in every detail as to when you bet this or that - something a programmer could program.

Almost no one who thinks they are using a "system" actually is by the time you get done with all the modifications - like probably they really are not doing exactly the same thing all the time after all.

Not that it matters - they're likely just betting what they want when they feel like it given how far down they may be, how much they want to win, etc. Nothing wrong with that.

Once one varies bet sizes, maybe whatever they do is its own unique betting system yet to be defined or needing hundreds of "rules" to define.

And most of this stuff doesn't seem to fit well with BJ anyway with 3-2 payoffs, possibility of winning or losing 8 units in one round, etc. What does raising $10 after a win after a loss mean - you lose $80 with a $10 initial bet, win $10, are you going to bet $20 now?

The theory of progressions, I think, is simply that varying bet size can achieve a win goal much more frequently than never varying bet size. That's what they do. That's who they are. They can achieve a winning goal more often than by not varying bet size. It cannot be otherwise. Math rules them just like it does the AP guys.

You have a 500 unit roll and want to win 10 units why not use the cancellation system at craps and achieve your 10 unit win 97.5% of the time.
That's probably more often than you would achieve that goal flat-betting 1 unit. You can afford 10 losses in a row and want to win 1 unit, why not Martingdale it and win that unit 1999 times out of 2000. (I think that's about right but don't take it as gospel).

Ultimately, all these different proposed betting "systems" can't really be analyzed unless a programmer can program the "system" and sim it. I'd guess. But, the common ones, have already been done.

I never used a "system" in the sense I did the same thing every time. I just wanted to break even. But here's some anecdotal evidence I stumbled across nonetheless.

I played 61,122 hands on the internet at a particular game. The min was $2. I never bet more than $100. If I had flat bet $2/hand, I would have won $1470 and wagered $130,400. I actually wagered $342,500 and won $7640. I won $6170 more dollars than if I would have flat-bet. I'm now up 3085 $2 flat-units. Basically I could play forever from that point forward at $2/hand if I wanted. 97.4% of my hands were at less than a $20 bet. 99.4% of my hands were at $50 or less. My average initial bet per hand was $5.60.

Sure, I can tell you in the 200 hands my bet was $100 I had 9 BJs, 89 wins, 82 losses and 20 pushes. So, I won 49% of my hands but, if I ever got to the point where I had to bet that much, if I won I'm pretty sure I dropped down to a lower level.

Yes, these were 61,122 hands with Lady Luck on my side since the flat-bet results were pushing 3 SD to the good. And yes, it's just a combined result of many different sessions with many different playing rolls. But this is with conservative goals per session of merely breaking even ("even" for me being defined as buy-in + bonuses lol). The $7640 above is based on just my own actual play - it doesn't count the $15K in bonuses also received over those hands but the bonuses did count for the unit roll I had on hand and could bet to.

I guess my only point is that, to me, it doesn't seem like it takes much to prolong one's existence in a -EV BJ environment with a break-even goal.

Anyway, in such fires was born my interest in voodoo crap lol.
 

Thunder

Well-Known Member
#17
shadroch said:
Your math is off,or you are not betting properly.
W-up 10
L-even
L-down 10
W- even
L- down 10
L-down 20
L-down 30
W- down 20
W- even( you raised your bet to 20)
Now you lose 6 $10 bets in a row and are down $60
W- down 50
L- down 70( betting 20)
W- down 50
L- down 80( betting 30)
W- down 50
L-down 90( betting 40)
W-down 50
L- down 110( betting 60)

Heres where OG is a thing of beauty. If you were flat betting,you'd be down less, but you would need 8 wins in a row to break even. Using OG,two wins and you are ahead.
W- down 50( now you don't raise your bet because a $60 bet is all you need.)
W- up $10.
Flatbetting,you'd still need 6 more wins in a row to be even. Don't forget that in this sequence,we had a number of green chip bets out, earning us extra comps as well.
Still think its silly?
Sorry,
When I read up on it, it said to bet 1 unit higher after a win until you were up 1 unit for that sequence. It seems you stopped the sequence once you broke even. That, I think is what accounts for the difference in numbers.
 

Kasi

Well-Known Member
#18
zengrifter said:
There we have the thesis -
Oscar's Grind... Don't do it!

And the antithesis -
Oscar's Grind? My success! You?

Opposite tails of a bell curve. zg

LMAO - that bout does summarize it doesn't it.

No rights or wrongs.

Have a roll. Set a goal. Choose your risk of achieving it. Even put a time limit on achieving it or not if you want.

That almost makes it sound like voodoo bettors are doing exactly the same thing as AP guys lol.

With the added luxury of having no worries at all about spreading from 100-1 or 1000-1. Like they'd care playing craps or a $1 BJ machine.
 
#19
Kasi said:
LMAO - that bout does summarize it doesn't it.

No rights or wrongs.

Have a roll. Set a goal. Choose your risk of achieving it. Even put a time limit on achieving it or not if you want.

That almost makes it sound like voodoo bettors are doing exactly the same thing as AP guys lol.

With the added luxury of having no worries at all about spreading from 100-1 or 1000-1. Like they'd care playing craps or a $1 BJ machine.
Exactly right! As I am well aware over time you lose based on the expectation of the table. All I have shared is the incredible luck I have had thus far with my "hybrid Oscar." If I play enough (which I will) the odds are against me!
 
#20
Kasi said:
Well, not really.

Aside from the fact the OP is not playing Oscar's grind, which he stated, since, first, BJ is not an even-money game and second he was varying the system anyway making it a different system lol.

You just can't conclude his results are way abnormal since you don't know what his avg bet/hand was and how many hands he played.

A flat-betting player couldn't possibly net 460 units in 2400 trials like you say.

Apparently sometimes he went with a $25 unit in an effort to make up for a bunch of $5 units lost. Doing that does not change the liklihood of finishing that one unit ahead.

Much more likely is that his W/L/T results were as expected but varying bets in some voodoo yet Oscar-like fashion accounts for his winnings.

Just as I doubt if the success I think you may have had utilizing Oscar at craps has changed the number of times a "pass" bet wins at craps.

In any case, whatever he has done up until now, apparently he is up 700 $5units or so at this point. Imagine how long he could last from this point forward and still show a profit should he choose to only flat-bet $5 from this point forward before he loses his 700 units.

He has already bought himself longevity, good to go for a couple hundred thousand hands, if his goal is simply not losing.
Exactly! I only play for fun, with my income (500k/yr) $5 units are for play. I do have a fear of losing....so I keep it in perspective...if I have fun and break even I'd be more than happy!
 
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