THE CYCLE
Part I
Lately I've been focusing my work on a concept I call the "Cycle."
I have posted elsewhere my idea of "going for half" and these two concepts work well together.
I have also written about mathematical expectancy and this is a good place to begin an explanation of the cycle.
All gambling propositions have a probability which can be described in the form of mathematical expectancy. A very simple example would be betting one number, 17 for example, straight up on an American roulette wheel. Since there are 38 numbers on an American roulette wheel, it is said that the probability of the number 17 hitting on the next spin is 1 in 38. The mathematical expectation is that we can "expect" a hit on the number 17 once in 38 spins. The "cycle" for this proposition therefore is 38 spins.
The simple example above is provided merely to illustrate the terminology. The concept becomes a little more complicated when we look at more complex bets, like betting 2 dozens and 2 columns for example, or using progressions.
We all know that the so-called even-money outside bets (like red/black for example) are close to 50/50 propositions. We also know that when you factor in the house edge, your chances of winning any particular "even-money" bet is a little less than 50%. In short, the "odds" are against you or in other words, you are more likely to lose this bet than to win this bet.
We also know that you can place bets that you are more likely to win but that the payoff is less than one to one. For example: Playing 2 columns gives you 24 of 38 chances to win, however the payoff is 1 to 2, you will be wagering two units in hopes of netting one.
My theory about "maximum coverage bets" (and I hope to come up with a better term than that) is that when you employ a progression, your chances of losing your series is drastically reduced.
NONE of this defeats the house edge I remind you. But, I accept that cold fact with all systems.
What I hope to develop here is a way of looking at cycles and maximum coverage bets to allow us to chose bets that will produce small but steady gains with rare losses (which will necessarily be large).
More later . . . .
The Cycle Within a Cycle
Using multiple levels of progression, leads to bigger cycles containing smaller cycles. For example: Suppose your bet was a three step martingale. You are betting on Red and you bet one unit on your first bet, then double after a loss, and again. Your progression is 1 2 4. Each winning series results in a gain of 1 unit. Each losing series results in a loss of 7 units. We know that you can expect to lose a series about once in 8 series. Assuming for this discussion that you are playing a true 50/50 game, a wheel with no house numbers, a wheel with exactly half of the numbers being red. Under these circumstances, you can expect to win 7 series and lose one. This is the first level of progression.
Now suppose you decide to add another level of martingale. After a losing series, your first bet will be 2 and your progression will be 2 4 8. After a win, you will return to your original series.
Now look at the cycle. Y0u have a cycle of 8 series where you can expect to win 7 series and lose one to break even for the cycle. This cycle can be expected to take 24 spins or decisions. By adding the 2nd level martingale, you are increasing your net by +1. IF you experience the mathematical expectancy of a typical cycle, you will end your 24 spins up one unit instead of break even.
OF COURSE, there is another mathematical expectancy of losing back to back series. This other expectancy has another point in a larger cycle where you can expect to be brought back to zero or even (or to a negative amount equal to the house edge) . In the original progression we saw that we can expect to lose one series out of eight. We then added a second level of progression gambling that we would not encounter our one in eight losses back-to-back. How often will that happen? [I have notes elsewhere and I'll return to fill in this gap] This would be the bigger cycle. Eventually, you can expect to be brought back to even (or zero) when the bigger cycle runs its course. By adding yet greater levels of progression you are increasing the size of the cycle and it is my theory that you are increasing the amount of time you can expect to be ahead of the game before being brought back to zero. AND MAYBE - if you have several tactics for stretching out the cycle of expectancy, then you can quit while ahead more often OR change strategies while ahead in the cycle.
More later . . .
The "No Lose" Expectancy
(Which, of course WILL Lose as expected)
As a general illustration of the discussion so far, I offer this example:
For this example, we are playing a wheel which produces 60 decisions an hour. We know that we can develop a system that has an expected loss of one time in 60 decisions. This one loss would be expected to eliminate all winnings from the cycle of 59 wins. If we play this game for only 30 minutes and IF we are ahead at 30 minutes, then we can quit under my notion of "going of half." The question then becomes, of all the 30 minutes sessions that we will play, how many will include the dreaded losing decision. Math would probably tell us half. Real play may show us something different. We know that IF we have one more winning 30 minute session than losing 30 minute session, then we'd be ahead in the big cycle. And if the sessions were kind enough to come evenly spread out, you'd always be only 30 minutes away from being ahead.
If we strip this theory down to it's simplest form, it becomes WAY less attractive. Yet there is something about the more complicated version that I find appealing.
Here is the stripped down version: Suppose we are playing a true 50/50 game and the game produced its mathematically expected results with regularity in the short run. So that if you flat-bet and you encountered a win/loss series like this: W L W L W L W L W L, you would always be just one or two decisions away from a profit. Following through with our example above, you could always quit while ahead and it would be easy to do so.
We find this to be unappealing because we know that Roulette and Baccarat and other near 50/50 games do not produce reliable results in the short run. We know that the 50/50 game is very volatile and that it takes THOUSANDS of spins or decisions for the results to approach the expected 50/50 mark.
My theory is that the smaller the cycle, the more volatile and unpredictable the game. BUT on the other hand, the larger the cycle, the more predictable the game becomes.
I found an Excellent article and example of a No Lose Expectancy System, I'll post a link here when i get my hands on it again.
More Later . . .
