OK, tear this system apart

[Eternal]

I'm sure someone has come up with a voodoo system similar to this, but I haven't seen it.

Assume a standard eastern US 8 deck game. 1.5 decks cutoff, none to 2 other players in any given shoe.
With the average win % being 42% of hands played, you would increase your bet when your win percentage was way below that amount. You would flat bet on the first 10 hands of the shoe, keeping track of your win % along the way. At or beyond the 10th hand, if your win % is below 30%, you would increase by a half unit, if it drops to 25% or below, you would increase to 2 units (or whatever the bankroll can safely handle) until you reached winning above 35% of hands within that shoe. The logic here is that you would be taking advantage of the inevitable upswing that would occur if your win % is way below the 40% area.
Conversely, if you were to start out a shoe, lets say 3 decks in and you are up 5 (or more) units you would leave the table, letting others finish out the shoe. The logic there is of course that there will be a downturn.
I'm not suggesting this is as good as counting, but it seems to me that it would be a way of recognizing when a profitable run may be approaching-or going away-which is essentially what card counting does.

 

[Sonny]

The logic here is that you would be taking advantage of the inevitable upswing that would occur if your win % is way below the 40% area.

It sounds a lot like this old system:

http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showthread.php?t=9093

The problem is that you can't expect an inevitable upswing to "fix" your percentages. That is the basis of the Gambler's Fallacy, which most progression systems are based on. The link above should explain it in more detail.

-Sonny-

 

[Thunder]

Sonny,
I played around with a system sort of like that where if I were down 10 bets, I would raise my bet, then if I were down another 10 bets, I would raise my bet again with the thought being that I would eventually get back up to even. Then if I was ahead say 10 bets, I would lower my bet and etc with the expectation that I would start losing. The only difference is I was more focused on the long term where as you are focused on the individual shoe. Call me crazy but I think more often than not if the shoe is starting out badly where people keep getting stiff hands like 10,4 10,5 instead of 4,5 2,7 and etc, then the shoe is going to continue to be bad. Also I found that once you're on a losing streak where you're down more than 10 units after 2 shoes (assuming flat betting with bs) more often than not you tend to keep losing. I know that seems like a hogwash theory but that's just something I've noticed over many many hours of having played.

 

[ihate17]

It will turn, it will turn but will you have any money left when it does?

I first became a cardcounter in the mid 1970's and as a fairly heavy playing partimer it has been an excellent investment. One of the things I have experienced nearly every year are streaks, including streaks that eventually appear to be endless. The math tells us that we will lose more hands than win, so it is understanable that your longest losing streaks will be longer than your best winning streaks.

Whatever kind of progression you possibly come up that is based upon your winning the next hand because you lost the previous X number of hands, is seriously flawed. Basing a large bet based upon your knowing that there is a better chance of getting a blackjack or that if you double or split you have a better chance of winning than usual or if the dealer shows a stiff there is a better chance of her busting than usual or advanced knowledge (tracking) of upcoming cards are the ways to do this and most of this is cardcounting.

Betting big because you have lost 10,15, or 20 hands in a row is foolish and correctly labeled as steaming by the casinos. Your chance of winning that 21st hand after losing 20 in a row is still about 42%.

Eventually you might hit a winning streak that puts the percentages in order or perhaps you will just win about 50% of the time for a long enough period of time to put the percentages about right but that is of no use to you because no flashing light goes off signaling an upcoming winning streak and during that streak you will always be an underdog on the next hand.

People come up with these kind of ideas all the time and casinos say thank you by comping them very well.

ihate17

 

[josh3623]

This is not anything like card counting

I'm sure someone has come up with a voodoo system similar to this, but I haven't seen it.

Assume a standard eastern US 8 deck game. 1.5 decks cutoff, none to 2 other players in any given shoe.
With the average win % being 42% of hands played, you would increase your bet when your win percentage was way below that amount. You would flat bet on the first 10 hands of the shoe, keeping track of your win % along the way. At or beyond the 10th hand, if your win % is below 30%, you would increase by a half unit, if it drops to 25% or below, you would increase to 2 units (or whatever the bankroll can safely handle) until you reached winning above 35% of hands within that shoe. The logic here is that you would be taking advantage of the inevitable upswing that would occur if your win % is way below the 40% area.
Conversely, if you were to start out a shoe, lets say 3 decks in and you are up 5 (or more) units you would leave the table, letting others finish out the shoe. The logic there is of course that there will be a downturn.
I'm not suggesting this is as good as counting, but it seems to me that it would be a way of recognizing when a profitable run may be approaching-or going away-which is essentially what card counting does.

This is not anything like card counting. with card counting you determine your advantage by knowing which cards have left the shoe. from this you can deduce which cards are left in the shoe, primarily, how many of them are ten value cards, knowing this you can determine if you have an advantage, and increase your bet accordingly. In my experience, upswings are not inevitable, at least not in the space of 10 or 20 hands.
Bad shoes tend to stay bad; for quite some time, because of the nature of shuffling, much longer than 10 or 20 hands.

 

[meandi]

You can't predict when streaks will come and go. I remember a poker author, maybe Mike Caro, once wrote that you never know when you're in the middle of a hot or cold streak. You can only evaluate a streak once it has ended. (Something along those lines, anyways... I wish I could remember where I read that.)

 

[Ferretnparrot]

Sonny,
more often than not you tend to keep losing.

Behold!! the source of the casinos margins and the reason these systems fail



There is no inevitable upswing, you could play your hole life and only win 39% of all hands while sombody else wins 45%

 

[Kasi]

you could play your whole life and only win 39% of all hands

Not really possible - unless it's a short life or a crooked game lol.

Like you and others point out, there are no inevitable upswings.

That assumption is the cornerstone of all voodoo play and what voodoo relies on to predict it's own success rates of achieving a goal with so much roll.

 

[davidpom]

blackjack simulations are worked out on millions of hands played. That's where those long term percentages come from. Sure, there will be streaks of wins and losses - but how long will they be, and when will they occur? No-one knows. when I play I typically get 1-2 wins followed by 1-2 losses, that's pretty standard. But my best winning streak was 21 hands in a row, and my worst losing streak was 24 hands in a row - so anything can happen.

If upswings were inevitable, we'd all be millionaires as we'd only play on the upswing. Sadly, that's not the case....