The Arsenal

It has been said that in order to defeat the casino, one should have an arsenal of weapons. I like this concept but would say that, at best, we can win the battles and should not concern ourselves too much with the "war."

I'll take a weekend of won battles any day. And I'll take a proportionally appropriate number of lost battles as the "cost of doing business" that they are. As the "war" is ongoing, I like to believe that winning is being ahead, staying ahead, and increasing the gap.

But what is in your arsenal? What weapons do you bring to the table? When do you change weapons and why?

I thought I'd begin a thread dedicated to the theory of effective system play focusing on the change or switching of favorite systems. My plan is to add to or edit this thread over time.

I have suggested in another thread, the idea of playing in a "cycle" and "going for half" of the "cycle." My present thought is that if you had (for example) a system that should perform 63 to 1 (see my O/L/6 system for an example) the cycle is 64 decisions. If you played this system successfully for 32 decisions, you should stop because you have reached the half-way point. My thought is that you would avoid "pushing your luck" by not going past the half-way point. But suppose you want to continue playing, what would you switch to? Which weapon would you retrieve from your arsenal?

It was suggested on a message board (Gamblers Glen), that you might want to switch to betting the opposite of what you were betting. For example, using the O/L/6, you are betting that the most recent 6 decisions will not repeat exactly as they just appeared, after a successful run of half of the cycle, you may want to start betting the opposite of what you are betting (simply switch each bet to the opposite, now betting the same as the 6th prior bet). The idea is that you now begin a new journey where you can expect to win 63 decisions for every loss again going for half of the cycle.

Conservative/Aggressive

A more conservative approach might be to switch systems when you have reached a point in the cycle less than half-way. Like one-third of the way for example, and why not? If you have several weapons in your arsenal and you understand the cycle of expectation and you are "lucky" enough to change regularly, it doesn't seem like it is too much to ask for the casino gods to bless you with a series of victories.

A Simple Example

Think of it this way: In dice, we know that "12 the hard way" (or boxcars) has a likelihood of showing up once in 36 rolls of the dice and that 2 the hard way (snake eyes) is equally unlikely. Suppose we had a scheme to bet against boxcars (betting that boxcars would not show) and we placed this bet successfully 12 times (one third of the expected cycle) then we switched to a scheme to bet against snake eyes for 12 rolls of the dice. We would really get ahead of the game if we were "lucky enough" to see the boxcars appear while we where betting against snake eyes and vice-versa (if we were lucky enough to see snake eyes appear while we were betting against boxcars). Keep in mind that one regular appearance of the nemesis only brings you back to zero (or zero less the house edge). Could you cheat death by switching horses? Would this give you a "better" shot at ending up ahead for the session? For the weekend? For the year?

Please keep in mind that all of this is in theory. Actual play might involve 6 different weapons instead of 2 and each of those 6 may be stronger than my simple O/L/6. And you might find that you can go back and forth between weapons more often than waiting for one-third of the cycle or half. It would make sense that the more weapons you mastered, the more often you could make effective changes.

Recovery

What happens when you lose? I believe that when you are betting against an event that has a 1 in 64 chance of appearing and you lose, you should consider increasing your next series of bets to try to recover some of your losses. However, this can be very expensive.

Here's an example: If you are betting against a 1 in 64 occurrence (like my O/L/6) and you play one third of the cycle, or 21 decisions and suffer a loss, you will find yourself down about 42 units. I would be inclined to bet the same way two or three times with double the basic bet. Three successful runs would recover 6 units and you would be on the road to recovery. I would then revert to my original basic bet and continue with the system to try to recover the rest (instead of switching). At this point I would be betting that a 1 in 64 event would not repeat within a few decisions.

Which Weapons??

I think this is the big question. Which weapons to you bring to the Baccarat table, the roulette wheel, the craps table? and when do you switch weapons?

More Later . . .