Why not use a bet progression?

[somtum]

And every shoe has a trend because of the flow of different value cards and the rate of change of the count, so basing your bet soley on the count can hurt (for example a high count tanking to fast so you end up losing most of your large bets).

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Well.. a tanking high count while having your large bets out is exactly what you want.. which would be a high ratio of high cards being dealt.

[Three]

Well.. a tanking high count while having your large bets out is exactly what you want.. which would be a high ratio of high cards being dealt.

I was thinking the same thing when he said it but the dealer and the player have the same chance of getting them. Your advantage is in how you play your stiffs versus how the dealer must play his and in your doubles, splits and the bonus payout on your blackjacks. All three of the latter come with high frequency in this situation.

[Aslan]

If you are seeking advice, then bet optimally with a pre-set bet spread. If you are trying to convince competent counters about a positive betting progress on a feeling, its not going to happen. I do applaud your desire to create greater returns with current systems that you are using, but understand the direction you initially spoke on about betting progression will not give you what you are seeking.

Totally agree. What is meant by an optimal betting spread is just that. Any deviation from the optimal bet is a money loser in the long run, whether it be a negative or positive progression, or just a different wager.

[Nogumby]

WOW, Thank you for your explanation Tthree. You have a very strong responce to my ramblings. My play results have been good (still), and it is human nature to resist change, but you and this forum have me thinking...

[iCountNTrack]

It was easy back in the 80s. You could afford to give up some EV with silly ideas and still play a winning game. These days are different. The edge you get is much smaller. Little room to take chances betting against the count if you still want to be an AP. Betting schemes not based on the count can be alluring because sometimes they work and with the worst ones most of the time they work. But they are neagative EV unless they correlate to the count. If you are interested in making money overall not just in one session it is folly to follow your idea.

As for me, I am constantly improving my game. Every day there is learning and each cycle of your N0 is a learning experience. I don't think this will ever change. I learned long ago not to be seduced by progression betting. You want to improve learn risk averse strategies, a more advanced count, more indices, side counting aces and other cards that make your weak indices weak since they are key cards that are neutral or weighted totally wrong for certain match ups. Learn floating advantage for the rare deep deep penetration. Learn the right strategy to maximize your options on dealer error. Learn the way to select the games that are most advantageous and how never to burn them out. As the situation for the AP continues to gets harder these are the skills that will allow to continue to make money and control variance as much as possible.

Sorry that is the bad advice. I dont know how else to say it, but more complicated counting strategies that include side counting do not give you any additional significant edge in Modern Blackjack games. I will repost something i posted in theory and math

I am just saddened by the number of keystrokes wasted in this thread when the answer is so simple and has been figured over 3 decades ago. I will try again using simple math and combinatorial analysis and not conclusions based on empirical data.
I will look at another more popular and illustrative example. A player 10,4 vs a dealer's 10. We know that a seven is a very important card for this hand because it allows us to get a 21, so a deck/shoe that is poor in sevens, will dictate a playing strategy variation and we will have to stand instead of hitting the hand.

Now how many sevens must be removed from the deck/shoe until standing becomes the better play? It obviously depends on the number of the decks, for a single deck you need to remove 2 sevens, while for an 8 deck we need to remove 14 sevens before standing becomes better than hitting. Now lets look at the probability of removing 14 sevens after 32 cards were dealt and removed, it is 2.238x10^-7 % that is ridiculously small. If we compare it with a single deck, the probability of removing 2 sevens after 4 cards were dealt is 2.49%!!!!

This is just an example, there are many others examples just as Insurance but the take home message is that departure from deck distributions that require playing strategy adjustments is just too infrequent as the number of decks increases and is really only significant for deeply dealt pitch games. So did i just make a marvelous discovery? I wish, this has been studied several decades especially by the late Peter Griffins in Theory of blackjack. Quoting him "From the card counter's viewpoint another important difference
between one and many decks is the slowness with which the deck's original condition changes." See page 118 in Theory of BJ

What I am trying to say is that side counting is useless in modern blackjack games because situations that require playing strategy adjustments are just too infrequent to be really useful. So unless you have a time machine or your daddy owns a casino and decided to throw a private single deck game dealt to the last card with full BJ bonus to your card counter friends.

[bejammin075]

I'm doing this from my phone right now, so it's a little bit difficult to find and paste the link. Maybe someone can hookup Nogumby with that. It was around december, Norm showed us sim results of what I think you would call mini-martingales as cover betting. My recollection was they all hurt, though some schemes are less disasterous than others.

The bottom line is that you bet more when you have the advantage, and less/none when you don't. Deviating from that costs money.

[bejammin075]

http://www.qfit.com/blackjackblog/?p=337

The best way to use a martingale as cover (aside from not using it) would be to do a 1-4 martingale in negative counts, and then proper/optimal betting in positive counts. This cuts your hourly win rate by 52%. If you prefer to martingale in positive counts, and flat bet in the negative counts, martingales like 2-16 and 1-8 will cut your win rate by 86% to 99.7%.

[21gunsalute]

A winning or losing streak can only be quantified after it is over. You can never predict when it is over. However, if you agree streaks are always happening, you can net out a positive outcome if you respect them.

So respect is the magic fairy dust that makes progressions work. I'll try to remember that and bow, kneel and pray to the magic fairy dust progression god the next time I play a progression.

[Nogumby]

Hey I did it last night but I used pixi dust and clicked my heels. Only Kidding 21gunsalute, but I think card counting and mm is only part of the solution .

[alwayssplitaces]

I don't even notice winning or losing streaks like most gamblers would. I can lose 5 hands in a row and not notice that I lost 5 in a row.

[bigplayer]

With keeping an open mind does anybody else with knowledge of this game agree with any of this.

No and is that you Octavio Puiu

[Player21]

Has anyone ever used "Blackjack Bet and Play Simulator" to test a progression system?
Any good results?
I'm thinking about buying it to test out a few systems.

[Three]

The progression I always found to work is bet more at a higher count and less or nothing at low and negative counts. It might not organize wins and losses the way other systems do but it outperforms the other systems in the long run.