Any successful Progression Players?

eandre said:

ZG... That's the stuff I'm always looking for to improve my game. Not the fact that you can make money with scavenger play but to try to work the entire table and get everyone to submit. I love it and I'm going to try it. Thanks that is good stuff.

P.S. Progession betting is not a long term winner but is very useful during a 6/8 deck shoe as the count climbs...the pit loves progression bets. It's good cover and will not normally hurt your bankroll even during nuetral/negative counts. Just keep the progression small and play tight.

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How do you know the count is climbing until after the fact? I'm not being smart--it's just something I've wrestled with and the only answer I've come up with is, "You don't!" Not to mention the fact that your chances of winning money are greater when the count is falling (i.e., when big cards are falling).

aslan said:

How do you know the count is climbing until after the fact? I'm not being smart--it's just something I've wrestled with and the only answer I've come up with is, "You don't!" Not to mention the fact that your chances of winning money are greater when the count is falling (i.e., when big cards are falling).

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I'm not tracking your question. Who said I knew the count was climbing? As the shoe plays and the count bounces below the pivot point of uping your bet... to use a small progression is great cover so when the right time to pounce it looks a bit more normal. And I'm not suggesting that your mention of winning is greater as the count drops is not correct...that is why a small progression can be profitable during neutral/waiting bets. Hey, I don't mess with slide rules or sims, I believe that real playing skills are more valuable then all the technical information available. Maybe my terminology isn't right. Let me ask you if you knew all the baseball stats, all the math surrounding ball velocity and batting information and watched the game for decades, but never played, could you compete in the major league?

eandre said:

I'm not tracking your question. Who said I knew the count was climbing? As the shoe plays and the count bounces below the pivot point of uping your bet... to use a small progression is great cover so when the right time to pounce it looks a bit more normal. And I'm not suggesting that your mention of winning is greater as the count drops is not correct...that is why a small progression can be profitable during neutral/waiting bets. Hey, I don't mess with slide rules or sims, I believe that real playing skills are more valuable then all the technical information available. Maybe my terminology isn't right. Let me ask you if you knew all the baseball stats, all the math surrounding ball velocity and batting information and watched the game for decades, but never played, could you compete in the major league?

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O thought you were saying it:

Progession betting is not a long term winner but is very useful during a 6/8 deck shoe as the count climbs ...[emphasis added]

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I must have misunderstood what you were saying. I don't know of any way to figure out when is a good time to do a progression, or when it is a "neutral" situation. When you do them, and I have done some modified ones, there is always the chance of losing (the less you modify a progression, the more chance of losing big time). It is good masking, but occasionally it can end in disaster. As a masking technique it is only good to the extent that it all evens out, which as we know, usually is the case, but sometimes can and will get us in trouble. If a progression starts to go wrong, I get off it in a New York second. The value of masking has to be balanced against the very small percentage edge of the AP. It doesn't take much to throw the edge back to the house side.

Of course, I'd hit a home run every time I stepped to the plate....in my dreams! :laugh:

aslan said:

....in my dreams! :laugh:

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i sure don't know. just was wondering.
say the table min is low enough and your really unit large enough and the table max high enough.......
to where in negative counts you could bet a progression to where your unit would be the mid-point of the progression.
could you work that to be the same as flat betting your unit in a negative count? but still no really advantage to do that, just maybe luck or lack there of?
really no point to it i guess. probably even pointless as camo.

sagefr0g said:

i sure don't know. just was wondering.
say the table min is low enough and your really unit large enough and the table max high enough.......
to where in negative counts you could bet a progression to where your unit would be the mid-point of the progression.
could you work that to be the same as flat betting your unit in a negative count? but still no really advantage to do that, just maybe luck or lack there of?
really no point to it i guess. probably even pointless as camo.

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View attachment 398
Well, you talked yourself out of that one! Lol Isn't is strange that the house always seems to have the table limit set right at that point where you can't get away with progression betting? You don't think they study this stuff, do you? Lol It's their livelihood. It's just like I know every part of my yard where a bone is buried. It's survival!

aslan said:

O thought you were saying it:



I must have misunderstood what you were saying. I don't know of any way to figure out when is a good time to do a progression, or when it is a "neutral" situation. When you do them, and I have done some modified ones, there is always the chance of losing (the less you modify a progression, the more chance of losing big time). It is good masking, but occasionally it can end in disaster. As a masking technique it is only good to the extent that it all evens out, which as we know, usually is the case, but sometimes can and will get us in trouble. If a progression starts to go wrong, I get off it in a New York second. The value of masking has to be balanced against the very small percentage edge of the AP. It doesn't take much to throw the edge back to the house side.

Of course, I'd hit a home run every time I stepped to the plate....in my dreams! :laugh:

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aslan said:

I don't know of any way to figure out when is a good time to do a progression, or when it is a "neutral" situation.

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Ya, know Im confident that if there ever was a good time to use one. It would be a Negative Progression in Positive counts(Since your betting your own money WITH an advantage) and a Positive progression in Negative counts(Since your betting with the houses money)

Im still working on the 1,3,5,7(- counts)

and the 2,4,6 in (+counts)

jack said:

Ya, know Im confident that if there ever was a good time to use one. It would be a Negative Progression in Positive counts(Since your betting your own money WITH an advantage) and a Positive progression in Negative counts(Since your betting with the houses money)

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maybe so for the negative counts cause heck your gambling when your playing a negative count anyway. lol
guess however the progression was structured i want it to average out to no more than a flat one unit (or hopefully less) bet overall for the negative counts.

Let me try it one more time explaining it a tad more clearly. If you play all(and I do) then most of your bets are normally minimal while you wait for the count to improve. Have you noticed that you win many of these bets or you go through the entire shoe never reaching the pivot point but actually win a couple of hundred dollars? If not, I must be different. So, if you toy around with your minimum bet based on compositional situations I have found that it raises my winnings. I don't track my individual sessions but track my trips regardless of length. This technique has added to my winnings. If the pure thoerist that never play say "oh it's the short run deviation"...I say God bless you since I've been successfully using it for years. You are the same people who don't believe ZG Gambit that spreading to 2-3 hands during negative counts make sense. So what. I'm trying to help the forum become better winners.

zengrifter said:

Scavenger play, from Hole-carding + Scavenger play

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Ah yes, good old scavenger plays. I used a few of them last weekend with interesting results. There’s also a link to Grosjean’s article in the list that I mentioned in the Advanced Strategies thread. Scavenger plays and couponomy are probably the two easiest ways to increase your advantage, even for a BS player. There are also a few good trick in Wong's Blackjack Secrets.

-Sonny-

eandre said:

P.S. Progession betting is not a long term winner but is very useful during a 6/8 deck shoe as the count climbs...the pit loves progression bets. It's good cover and will not normally hurt your bankroll even during nuetral/negative counts. Just keep the progression small and play tight.

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Using a small progression can be great for cover, but you have to be very careful. It can increase your variance (and therefore risk) much more than you might think. If you are doing it in neutral/negative situations then you are expecting to lose money anyway, so increasing your bets will only hurt you. Here's an old link to a similar discussion on another website:

http://www.blackjackinstitute.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=552&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30

-Sonny-

I can honestly say from a few yrs of online play that Martingale (the system I trialled first and found easiest) doesn't work on an ongoing basis - yes it can get you back where you started quick as a flash but that assumes fairly consistent variance swings and I've come across too many occasions where (on a £5/$5 starting bet) I'd be 7 hands in the hole and expected to stake £320/$320+ to win £5..After some very punishing sessions I came to the conclusion that just doesn't make sense - you wouldn't bet £320 on a horse if the odds were 1.5:100, you'd be laying it instead.

Sure if you had unlimited bankroll and no table max then eventually you'd make a hand but I'm sure anyone who's 'martingaled' consistently has hit a run where table max means all of a sudden you need 2wins in a row or possibly more.

Now I tend to played a self-derived variant that I'm more comfortable ( and hasn't got a 100% RoR). eg where 1,2,4,8 result in no win, rather than go to 16 I go back to 1 and reassess where I'm going in terms of new bankroll and future unit size.

My general style of play is grind to a win goal then hail mary in an attempt to get a leg up - e.g start at 250 and aim for £275-£280, then when you get to win goal aim to double the profit with a hail mary. If it comes off set a new target and begin grinding and if it doesn't you haven't lost any original bankroll so you can start the session over.

It doesn't always work but on occasion variance will smile and you can make great progress.

Yesterday I lost my current bankroll of £250 putting me back to 'break-even' for June. I replenished the bankroll from my own funds @ £300 then played again.

In no time I'd made my £250 back with £5 and £10 bets and then I went hot winning maybe 20 hands on the bounce. Including a couple of naturals, doubles and splits, I'd got to £775.

I decided to hail mary 'the' £75 at 3* £25 and won those too so now I was £850.

I was buzzing and decided to keep £800 and play £50 on roulette 'for a laugh'. 5 numbers per spin/straight up at £1 each.

I went backwards to 800 in no time and then shortly after i found myself at 700 by pushing for more - ohoh

I reset my loss limit at £650 which still left me £100 up for the session and £350 up for the month.

Luckily at £695 I caught 2 on the bounce -£767, then I decided to cover 0 for £5 because it hadn't been out yet. I caught one 2 spins later. Keeping it covered i caught another after a few more spins and a little while later it popped up again.

I know you shouldn't play roulette but I went from £300 to £850 with BJ and after a quick detour to £695 the roulette gods smiled at me and I cashed out at £1100 - up £800 net for the month in less than 1.5 hours.

And tonight I went $300 to $500 at a well known online Gibraltar establishment.

I know it won't continue long-term but just for today I've enjoyed riding the short-term wave.

Sounds entertaining! Many of my gambler friends play all games with the thought of making a large and "meaningful" score. They say they don't care if they lose their original $500 or whatever, but that they will not be happy to just double it--they want to parlay it into thousands, tens of thousands. They try a lot of different progressions, all designed to make a large profit quickly. I know one fellow who always tries to get his bet up to the table max in a few bets by doubling up. Occasionally these guys hit and when they do, "Bobalu!" It's party time!

One friend of mine plays poker at Taj Mahal. He usually wins at $15/$30, $20/$40, and $50/$100 stud. But as he wins he invariably moves to higher and higher limit games until he taps out with a few unlucky hands. I hope I'm around when he beats the $150/$300 or $200/$400, or even $500/$1,000 limit games! I wonder what limit would satisfy his hunger for action and what amount of winnings would make him say, "That's it!" You know, he may not have a top end, in which case, isn't it impossible for him to win in the end?

aslan said:

Sounds entertaining! Many of my gambler friends play all games with the thought of making a large and "meaningful" score. They say they don't care if they lose their original $500 or whatever, but that they will not be happy to just double it--they want to parlay it into thousands, tens of thousands. They try a lot of different progressions, all designed to make a large profit quickly. I know one fellow who always tries to get his bet up to the table max in a few bets by doubling up. Occasionally these guys hit and when they do, "Bobalu!" It's party time!

One friend of mine plays poker at Taj Mahal. He usually wins at $15/$30, $20/$40, and $50/$100 stud. But as he wins he invariably moves to higher and higher limit games until he taps out with a few unlucky hands. I hope I'm around when he beats the $150/$300 or $200/$400, or even $500/$1,000 limit games! I wonder what limit would satisfy his hunger for action and what amount of winnings would make him say, "That's it!" You know, he may not have a top end, in which case, isn't it impossible for him to win in the end?

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You're right - if he hasn't got a session goal in mind he'll just keep going til the 'edge' gets him. As for high limit poker he's probably coming up against more skilled players on the bigger tables? Players who are comfortable coming to the casino and going straight for the big table because they aren't looking to earn their right to play there first.

If I was him I'd play on the highest table I could regularly beat as he'll be amongst a group of players with a skillset a bit less than his own?

Richard Pugh said:

You're right - if he hasn't got a session goal in mind he'll just keep going til the 'edge' gets him. As for high limit poker he's probably coming up against more skilled players on the bigger tables? Players who are comfortable coming to the casino and going straight for the big table because they aren't looking to earn their right to play there first.

If I was him I'd play on the highest table I could regularly beat as he'll be amongst a group of players with a skillset a bit less than his own?

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The problem with the higher limit tables is that he doesn't have enough bankroll even with his winnings to sustain large losses. The players are not necessarily better, but they do have lots of cash.