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.