Midsummer
just went by in a UK heatwave and a few flashes of lightning, and I decided it
was time for me to bring the Target Betting blog up to date.
The
response to the last post in January didn’t bowl me over, but it’s probably
just as well, because I have had my hands (a card game reference!) full with
the Practice Makes Profit gambling channel on YouTube.
I first
ventured into video territory almost exactly two years ago with the Pattern
Betting channel, and to date the most views I have had for a single post is
around 3,500.
LINK: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDgiBe3I2xfS93Bg7nHW9EA/
If I were a
sensitive sort, that number should make me feel pretty darn small, since the premier
gambling channel “content creator” Vegas Matt has more than a million
subscribers and there are several challengers for the top spot in the field,
all of them measuring daily clicks in the mid five figures and higher.
But before
I started this adventure, I knew I’d be swimming upstream and cheerfully accepted
(as I always have) that not more than one punter in a thousand gives a tinker’s
toss about what it takes to consistently beat table games in a casino.
The
conventional wisdom—the “axiom” that decrees that no game with a negative
expectation can be beaten in the long run—is consistently and expensively promoted
by gambling operators everywhere, and Vegas Matt and his ilk are very much a
part of the on-going disinformation campaign.
If you have
read any of my posts since this blog was launched back in the age of dinosaurs
(OK, 2010!) you will know that proving again and again that “any amount bet
against a negative expectation must have a negative result” is a load of
bollocks, to use a bit of British slang, is what I am all about.
Long-term
loss is certainly axiomatic if you bet flat or randomly, because you can be sure that over time playing any “house game” you will lose more bets than
you win.
With flat
betting a fixed sum every time, it is safe to predict that against a 2% house
edge, you will lose 51 bets in every 100, on average, although sometimes in any
block of a hundred wagers, you will win more bets than you lose, and in others
you will encounter far worse than a 2% disadvantage.
Progressive
betting changes the arithmetic dramatically, and that’s why table betting
limits exist--$25 to $2,500 or $500 to $10,000, for example.
Even the
well-respected guru of gambling, the Wizard of Odds (Mike Shackleford) stoops
to peddling casino disinformation that table limits exist for the comfort of
players of varying resources and not to protect casino profits from players who
use their brains to determine bet values at any given time.
The lie
says that players on a limited budget feel small if they are shoulder to
shoulder with high-rollers, and fat cats get their fur in a fizz if
inexperienced punters with a tin-pot bankroll sit down beside them.
Codswallop!
The
explosion of gambling channels on YouTube has provided casinos in the USA with
the best advertising medium they have ever had.
Once limited to just a few seconds of conventional airtime on those ancient platforms known as TV and radio, now casinos are the settings for countless hours of intense exposure
every day.
They also now have an opportunity to promote versions of traditional table games—blackjack
and baccarat, mainly—that tighten the screws a twist or two in the wrong direction, making them even harder to beat.
(I have posted videos about what I call 'Snatch 22', the odious corruptions of blackjack that blow smoke at ignorant players with 'exciting new features' to obscure the damage done by making a dealer 22 a push if the player's winning hand is less than a natural. And then there's 'no commission' baccarat, which skips the traditional 5% house rake and collects a whole lot more by saying that a Banker win with a 3-card 7 is a push. And then...6-5 on a blackjack natural instead of 3-2. Casinos have clearly bet big on the proposition that we're all idiots, and mostly, they're on a winner there!).
Along the
way, Vegas Matt (Morrow) and Mr. Hand
Pay (Jason Boehlke) and countless others dipping into the shallow end of the
same pool of gambling-as-a-spectator-sport fans, do their duty and sneer at
progressive betting as a winning strategy whenever they can.
In the last
couple of years, I have produced hundreds of narrated bet-by-bet demos showing
my handful of followers that controlled, strategic progressive betting is not
just the best way to beat casino games of chance time and time again—it is the
ONLY way.
The YouTube
gambling gods have feet of clay for sure!
They are
professional losers, pitching reckless and irresponsible random betting in
every new video, making casinos seem like an exciting and entertaining scene of
expensive thrills while safe in the certainty that one way or another, they at
least will get their money back and then some.
I have no
evidence to claim that Vegas Matt and his punting peers get refunds from the
casinos that they promote, but all of them boast about the freebies and “promotional
chips” that come their way every day, and monthly cheques from Google in the
ten$ of thou$and$ sweeten the pot still further.
Vegas Matt
in particular insists that he is not promoting gambling or leading lambs to
slaughter, but quite obviously that is a disingenuous falsehood, and his
constant banging on about “valuable player points” makes him look even more like a
hypocrite!
And of
course, every one of the casinos that permits table-side filming of their
logo-laden layouts would shut content creators down in a heartbeat if they
believed a word of Vegas Matt’s nonsense!
Adam
Wiesberg, general manager at (Shhhhh) in Las Vegas, was the first to recognise
and exploit the boundless advertising potential of YouTube coverage, and he
hovers over almost every one of the multiple daily filming sessions on his
casino floor, perhaps to offer friendly support but more likely to make sure that
his tame shills are not showcasing ways to beat the house.
That would
not do at all.
So, if you tune
into any of the YT gambling channels, don’t expect to see anyone making serious
money—unless, once in a while, they happen to win more bets than they lose.
Above all, don't expect to see an honest summary of all the wins and losses experienced by any "content creator".
Cherry-picking is the rule in this unique gambling showcase in which losses have to be shown in order to make the process seem real and relevant, but over time they will always be outnumbered by wins.
Videos are also posted out of chronological order, giving the impression that the most prolific public punters, most of them US-based, can be in Nevada today, Florida tomorrow, California or New Jersey the day after, and out on the high seas on a cruise-ship in between.
As for losing sessions, Jason Hand Pay told me once that he often loses $100,000 or more in a day--but you won't find a six-figure disaster anywhere on his channel, maybe because he forgot to film the bad times but more likely because he knows winning sessions get more "views" than losing ones.
All of the YT sinfluencers (a nod to an old name for Las Vegas, Sin City!) sprinkle losing sessions in with the big wins, and if you have to stomach to sit through any of them, you might find yourself wondering if they are taking a beating on purpose.
I say that because they bet so stupidly, and somehow never learn from their mistakes.
My primary
focus since last summer has been on my spin-off YouTube channel, Practice Makes
Profit:
LINK: https://www.youtube.com/@seththeobeau310
(Content on this channel offers endless demos with real-time sessions of baccarat and blackjack with the pattern betting rules strictly applied as well as a flawed human being is able, with each bet explained. I strive for perfection but never get there, and that's a good thing because then no one would ever come near me! Comments are always appreciated, except from people who are paid to trash any suggestion that casino table games can be consistently beaten!).
Even the
lowliest of the losers in the YouTube gambling arena has at least a thousand times
more subscribers than I do—but unlike them, I’m not promoting reckless random
betting with money that may or may not belong to the person who’s putting it
into play!
I’m the killjoy
grinch who says over and over again that if you behave the way these content
creators do, be ready to go home broke.
So I’m not
even an also-ran in their race to the top of the YouTube popularity charts!
My message
has always been, if you can’t afford to win, you shouldn’t put your money at
risk, and there is no malice or mockery in that.
My years as
a regular gambler in Nevada, living just a few miles from casinos in Reno and
Stateline, came with constant reminders that a high percentage of punters are
risking money that they can’t afford to lose and—worse!—are flushing away cash that isn’t
theirs to put at risk.
I lost
count of the number of times I saw players wiped out by downturns that did not
last long, but hit just hard enough to suck all the chips they had into the dealer’s
tray.
Tears,
tantrums, threats, and tables overturned…I got to see it all, and I’d wonder
what sort of reaction those losers would get at home when they had to confess
that money needed for food and clothing, shelter and other necessities of life had
been fruitlessly “fired in there” on slots and table games.
In Nevada
in particular, casinos not only make it possible for players to cash their
paychecks on their premises but offer rewards to encourage it.
And of course there are cash
machines at every turn offering what I used to call “ATM-tation” to players who
decide their lost wages might be recovered with also-doomed folding green reinforcements.
There is no
other business in the civilised world whose success depends on its customers’
failure and misery, while local and national governments keep on bending over
backwards to further enable the damage casinos do.
Yes, the
gambling business and hotels, restaurants and other associated commercial activities
generate tens of thousands of jobs and pump multi-millions into local economies.
But it’s not casinos who cover the cost of crime, suicides, health problems and
broken or lost homes that are the downside of the deal, it’s the rest of us.
Can you imagine how "the authorities" would react if KFC or McDonald's or any other worldwide service business were to offer meals with the warning, "What you are about to eat might make you sick, and not just you but your family too so eat responsibly"?
How long would their doors stay open?
Casino operators like to remind us that they don't hold a gun to anyone's head and they don't tell their customers whether or not to bet, or when and where or how much.
Theirs is an honest and upright service business, they say, and they are simply giving people what they want.
Drug dealers whose clients can make themselves very sick, and even die, when they get what they want rely on the very same argument.
Whenever I utter
any of these readily demonstrable truths, there is always someone out there
eager to conclude that I am a failed, defeated gambler who’s out for revenge
against the sources of the sickness that brought him down.
It’s a tidy
explanation, but it ain’t so: I quit gambling and switched instead to disciplined,
controlled playing almost 50 years ago, around the time I first visited
Las Vegas.
I had great
help, firstly from a woman who knew blackjack inside out and was happy to spend
a couple of hours teaching me the difference between the most popular casino
table game, and Pontoon, a card game I started playing when I was barely ten
years old.
(Pontoon
is an English corruption of vingt-et-un, which is French for 21; in my school
games, real pocket-money was at stake, and when you caught a 2-card 21, you
took over the “bank” and raked in profits from you pals' losses until another player qualified for
the job with what we now call a natural).
Then I fell
in with a mathematical genius from Thailand who played baccarat and blackjack
in Nevada on most weekends and was "comped" every step of the way. He’d arrive on a Thursday night and sometimes
wouldn’t go near a table until Sunday, when the weekend rush was over, and he was well rested and sharp as a tack.
He taught
me a lot about betting, but the most important thing he had to say covered the
need to be at your best before you tackle games that require alert
concentration and what he translated as “right attitude”.
It’s from
him that I got the GAG concept, short for get up and go, and describing the
need to back away from a game that for whatever reason makes you uncomfortable.
Similarly,
the DBO rule—“Don’t Bend Over!”—reminds us that prolonged downturns should not
be endured longer than is absolutely necessary.
The
professional losers on YouTube who focus on table games are self-flagellators to a man (so far, very few women
are in the frame at table games) and they all bet as if they just got off the bus from Beyond
the Black Stump and have never before seen a blackjack or baccarat layout.
As I said,
that’s how it has to be: Adam from Shhhhhh wouldn’t like it one bit if his
puppets started playing like serious consistent winners.
It would not be enough for me to simply say that the pro punters on YouTube bet badly on purpose--I have to prove it, and to do that, I regularly take every outcome from a table game session posted by Vegas Matt or whoever, and run the same wins and losses in the same order through the pattern betting algorithm in a verifiable worksheet.
I have transcribed dozens of sessions bet-by-bet over the last year or so, and "Algy" (the pattern betting formula) routinely turns a profit when the YT punter in question took an expensive bath against the very same sequence of wins and losses.
It's all proof that random betting is, to put it bluntly, a stupid idea, even dumber than suggestions that I routinely tweak the algorithm to get the results I want (I may be obsessive or even anal, but I am not an idiot!).
Vegas Matt just put up another YouTube "short" to pour scorn on progressive betting, and every time one of these pampered shills does that, they lose a little more credibility as they build their bank balance.
(LINK: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jWVMuAJiU0s)
There's no doubt that if you apply progressive betting the way casino bosses and their performng seals describe it, you will get into trouble pretty quickly, and that is why the strategy I have developed stresses control and discipline along with logic and common sense.
It also emphasises the need for a very large bankroll, with my demos reminding my enormous (OK, tiny) audience that if you can't afford to win, you should stay away from casino table games.
To put it another way, if your bankroll is so small that it needs "protection", then it's not big enough to get a tough job done.
Big bucks alone will not make a winner out of a high-roller in spite of the White lies some "whales" tell their friends, and a brilliant betting strategy without substantial backing is equally doomed in the long run.
In the never-ending war against the odds, you have to be fully armed, and that comes down to brains, balls, and a bloody big bankroll!
Pattern Betting
is just another name for Turnaround (meaning recovery of prior losses plus a
modest profit), aka Target Betting (ditto) and it simply exploits the fact that
even when losses far outnumber wins, there is an ebb and flow, a ping and pong
and a to and fro tick and tock that make long-term profit possible if you know
what you’re doing.
At the root
of it all is what I call 3-Play: suffer three consecutive losses, and if you
are playing blackjack and the next bet required by the strategy exceeds $1,000
fall back to a fifth of that value, rounded up, and wait for a win before resuming
with a full value wager.
At baccarat,
get ready to HOP from Player to Banker or vice versa, wait for a win, then
repeat the bet, doubling twice before repeating the process.
It takes a
lot of words to explain this very simple strategy in detail, and that’s why I
decided to jump into YouTube with a long succession of demos covering both
blackjack and baccarat, with each bet fully explained.
You have to
know that from time to time, you will break the rules and do something really
stupid.
I am
definitely not immune from inexcusable stupidity, and you will find a few
examples of that on my channel—but even on my worst days, I don’t play as
recklessly and irresponsibly as Vegas Matt or Mr. Hand Pay or any of their imitating
(and irritating) fellow sinfluencers.
At the end
of the day, they get their losses back.
I don’t.
So I try
extra hard not to lose!
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. One more piece of friendly advice: If you are inclined to use target betting with real money against online "casinos", spend a few minutes and save a lot of money by reading this.
