I think this might be a decent method for disguising a 1-16 spread without drawing too much attention or giving up too much EV, but I wonder what more experienced players think about the idea.

For example, playing a 10 dollar minimum shoe game, during neutral or negative counts (not substantially negative, I'd leave a table at -2 TC), I'd run a 4-step martingale, so on losing hands I'd double my bet from 10-20-40-80. If I lost the 80 hand I'd drop back down to 10 for the next hand. Assuming a house edge of around .5% at TC 0, how much EV would I be giving up doing this?

When the count goes positive, it'd be easy to say something like "I'm gonna let it ride!" or some-such. Then, when putting 160 dollar bets on the table at +5 TC, it won't look out of place to a pit critter who'd have you pegged as just another progression bettor.

So the benefit would be 1) hopefully, pit will see you sit down and start playing a progression betting system, which should immediately deflect heat. 2) At high counts no one will balk at 16x base unit bets.

The drawback of course is giving up EV by occasionally putting out inappropriately large bets in non-advantage situations.

What do you think? Could this be a winning strategy? (Assuming perfect counting + basic strategy + index plays)