Baccarat Flat bet vs Progressions

This thread might be interesting for players wondering what's better between flat betting and progressions.

There was a book written 20 years ago by Philip Koetsch titled ''conquer the casino's''.
Koetsch was an electrics engineer with an interest in gambling who decided to run some in-depth studies to find out for himself if there was any type of advantage to progressive betting over flat.

I will share his findings on an ad hoc basis as time permits. Koetsch knew that in the long term, the casino's hold the advantage and so he wondered what would happen over what he called 'short run gambling'. Short run gambling to Koetsch consisted of 100 hands of cards / spins of the wheel / rolls of the dice. He added a 1.4% house edge to the studies that I am going to share and so it's comparable with the house edge at baccarat.

Each table I will present consists of 100 hands x 600 rounds which equals 60,0000 hands and so represents a fair assessment in my opinion.

The first table regards flat betting.



Obviously the worst possible scenario is a loss of all 100 bets (according to some experts, yes, this is possible) but the actual worst loss in the 600 rounds of 100 hands was -34 units.

The average peak loss within a round was -8.13 units.
Average loss at end of round -1.38 units.
Average peak gain within a round +6.8 units.
Actual peak gain in 600 rounds +28.
Best possible gain at end of round +100. (yes please)

And so that's the way the charts are formulated with an extra one telling us how many times percentage wise we can expect to have a net gain of either 10, 20 or 30 units.

For flat betting, it is as follows.



So only 1 in 4 of the 600 rounds produced a net gain of +10 units.
1 in 50 of the 600 rounds produced a net gain of +20 units.
As for +30 units net gain, forget it and so what it shows regarding flat betting, don't get greedy and if you get ahead around 7 units or so, you might want to consider exiting the game with your profits.

A lot more to come guys and like I say, I hope some of you find it interesting because some of the results are a bit of an eye opener.

 

Linear bets.

For the second table, Koetsch added a chip to the previous bet every time he won (up to an arbitrary limit) and always bet 1 chip after a loss.

His sequence here was 1,2,3,4. This is a linear bet, the bets increase linearly, in winning situations.

Steady losses would reduce the sequence to 1,1,1,1 etc which is then just the same as a flat bet.



What I have done is to show the difference side by side of the flat bet and linear bet for an easy comparison.

There is still only a risk of -100 units, but now a potential gain of +250. (of course, I wouldn't expect to see this)
The actual peak gain has risen to +63 units, compared to the +28 units of flat betting.
The average peak gain is now +14 units compared to the +7 units with flat betting.



The potential net gains of either 10, 20 or 30 units has now also improved. More rounds achieve a +20 unit net gain than the flat bet does for +10 units and whereas no flat bet round exceeded a +30 unit net gain, you can see that 9 out of a 100 rounds do so for the Linear x3 bet.

 

Geometric bets.

For the third table, Koetsch is using a Geometric sequence.

The sequence is 1,2,4,8. Again he goes back to 1 unit on any loss.



Still a risk of only -100 units with now a potential gain of +375 units (dream on!)
The average peak gain is now three times what it was with the flat bet.



The number of rounds producing either +10, +20 or +30 unit net gains are are consistently better than either flat betting or linear strategies. In 64% of the rounds, you can now quit with a +10 unit gain compared to just 25% with the flat bets.

 

Reversals.

This is one of the more important things Koetsch talks about.

What typically happens when you gamble? Of course, you win and you lose. But it's rarely a one way ride. Koetsch wanted to find out in 100 game round how often will a net loss reverse and does it always reverse? Koetsch only considers a reversal to mean when a net loss situation reverses to become a net gain.

Let's consider the flat betting example above in the first table. The worst case would be no reversals. But in fact there were only 17% of the rounds that had no reversals. That means at least 83% of the time at least one reversal will occur. If you quit after that occurrence, you are walking out the door with the casino's money.

Here is a little chart to go with the flat betting table above.



So you can continue to play in a losing round with the statistical knowledge that on the average there will be more than 3 reversals. On the other hand, if one or more reversals have already occurred, you could consider exiting because to continue could be statistically risky.

 

Let's now compare the reversals for all the three tables above (flat bet, linear and geometric)



So you still get on average at least 2 reversals using either flat, linear or geometric.

 

I will wrap this up with telling you what's my particular favourite from the book.

It's betting for three wins in a row and if you should lose at anytime trying to achieve those three wins you tack on a two unit bet to the end of it still looking to gain a one unit profit.

examples:

W
W
W +7

W
W
L
W +1

W
L
W +1

L
L -3

W
W
L
L -3

W
L
L -3

Here are the tables for my preference.










It offers just about the best of everything looking through all the tables and has served me very well in both Baccarat and Roulette over several years when I choose to employ it.

For anyone reading who is interested in any of this, I suggest buying the book. There are still a good few copies floating about. There is a lot more info in the book than what I have posted and a good few more charts exploring more geometric and martingale scenarios.

 

Thanks great effort, much appreciated.
You leave members like gullywin effortlessly for dead regarding content and thought provoking information.
Man versus compulsive pissing dog, no contest at all . You win hands down baccarou.
Great effort. Cheers

 

Thanks mate, it's good to share some interesting stuff. I often find I learn more and think of some new ideas to explore when I write a bit more and so it's a win-win situation.

Thanks.

 

Thank you,@baccarou!
...and the million $ question is:
What is the best betting selection for G3M1 progression?

 

Well, I don't know about the best, but what works for me in Bac is to write down B or P as they are coming out.

so as an example...

B
P
P
B
B
P

Then I will run a W/L registry (forget the ties) with B having the W as that has a slight advantage.

so...

B W
P L
P L
B W
B W
P L

I will navigate my way through the shoe using what are called 'waiting times'

What are waiting times? There is plenty of info regarding them on the net but basically using coin tosses as an example.

HHT
HTT
THH
TTH all have waiting times of 8.

HTH
THT all have waiting times of 10.

HHH
TTT all have waiting times of 14.

You can convert any binary decision be that B/P, W/L or S/O (same/opposite) to these waiting times.

Look at the above again...

B
P
P waiting time of 8
B waiting time of 8
B waiting time of 8
P waiting time of 8

Look at the W/L registry..

W
L
L waiting time of 8
W waiting time of 8
W waiting time of 8
L waiting time of 8

Hopefully you get the idea and see that you can run it all spin by spin.

Now of course you are not always going to get the 8.

W
L
W 10
L 10
W 10
L 10

L
L
L 14
L 14
L 14

The 10's and 14's are less frequent but do cluster and the beauty of the 8 and the G3M1 is that well you do get plenty of straight runs picking up the +7, you get a lot of single losses where you still pick up the +1 using the back end martingale element of the G3M1.

I hope the info helps and at least gives a little bit of encouragement for anybody to look into the above. If you do delve into it, you might find a few gold nuggets.

 

Thank you so much, baccarou!!!
My best regards

 

No problem, thank you!

A game I played recently at a B+M Casino using G3M1 with the basic 8,10,14 waiting time concept as mentioned above.

P L
B W
P L 10
P L 8 +1
P L 14
B W 8 +1 (+2)
P L 10
P L 8 +1 (+3)
P L 14
B W 8 +1 (+4)
B W 8
B W 14
P L 8 +1 (+5)
P L 8
B W 8
B W 8 +7 (+12)
P L 8
B W 10
B W 8 +1 (+13)
P L 8
B W 10
B W 8 +1 (+14)


As you can see the 2 unit Martingale element of the G3M1 kept picking up those one unit gains until I hit a nice seven unit win.
This was an easy session really, but it serves as a good example to follow along.

If you play around with it a bit, you can develop more strategic concepts to suit yourself.

 

If you have time and the inclination could you expand more information on waiting times? How are they configured? Etc. thanks once again for this good thread . Cheers

 

Bacarou, disregard that post , I tracked it down already, thanks

 

Just a food for thought...
In order to increase the succession rate, how this progression could be applied with double dozens?

(Apologies for posting this on baccarat section)

Regards

 

I don't think that worth it...
Apologies once again

 

G3M1 progression..
How to play ?

bet 1 lose
bet 1 lose
bet 1 lose
bet 1 lose
bet 1 win
bet 2 win
bet 4 win

like this ?

 

It's ok mate, I don't think that there would be an easy configurable way to approach double dozens with the G3M1.

 

bet 1 lose (when you lose here, you bet 2 units on the next bet)
bet 2 lose -3
bet 1 lose
bet 2 lose -3 (-6)
bet 1 win
bet 2 win
bet 4 win +7 (+1)

What you are doing is looking to win 3 bets in a row for +7 units, but should you lose any of those three bets, the next bet is 2 units because you are still looking to get out of it with a 1 unit gain. If you lose the 2 unit bet like you did twice in the example above then you lose a total of 3 units for that particular attempt.

So.....

bet 1 w
bet 2 w
bet 4 l
bet 2 w you still come out here with a 1 unit gain.

bet 1 w
bet 2 w
bet 4 l
bet 2 l here you lost 3 units.

bet 1 l
bet 2 l a loss of 3 units.

bet 1 w
bet 2 l
bet 2 w a win of 1 unit.

 

1-3-9 ?