Oscars Grind? Considering givin it a shot

[eatenbyalgae]

Maybe i wasnt too clear.

when i said i set 2 stop losses... one stop loss(-20) would end a sequence

the other -200 dollars on the night would end my night.

Is it a good idea to take the small 100 dollar ding(5$ units) when i dont have a bankroll of thousands to back a incredibly long grind?

 

[eatenbyalgae]

wow, it works again.

if it works again next time im gonna bump up to 10 dollar units

 

[Dyepaintball12]

The best choice is the only bet in the house that wins more than 50% of the time. That is the "BANK" bet at a mini-baccarat table You will pay a 5% commission on winning BANK bets but you will not often wind up "tapped-out", as winning about 52% of BANK bets is your expectation. The commissions will add up and may actually cancel out some wins - but the important short term goal is simply not going "broke" as you grind-out some modest wins.

Forewarned is Forearmed.

Wait, there is a game in the house where you have a 50/50 shot over the long run?

 

[sagefr0g]

tryed OG

i tryed OG on the Wiz of Odds craps game, $1,000 bankroll, five dollar min.
i tapped out the grand once and came out ahead (i forget how much) about four times or so.
thing is i just wanted to say was, wow you can sure drop down pretty low, pretty quick.
and like it can be pretty quick you end up finding your self betting $100 a shot or more, whew, kind of scary in my book.:cat::whip:

 

[shadroch]

i tryed OG on the Wiz of Odds craps game, $1,000 bankroll, five dollar min.
i tapped out the grand once and came out ahead (i forget how much) about four times or so.
thing is i just wanted to say was, wow you can sure drop down pretty low, pretty quick.
and like it can be pretty quick you end up finding your self betting $100 a shot or more, whew, kind of scary in my book.:cat::whip:

Are you sure you are doing it correctly? You should rarely get to the point where you are betting 20 units a pop. From personal observation, I'd guesstimate I make 20 unit bets less than 1-2 percent of the time. In fact, my last week of live play never saw me making a 20 unit bet.

 

[sagefr0g]

Are you sure you are doing it correctly? You should rarely get to the point where you are betting 20 units a pop. From personal observation, I'd guesstimate I make 20 unit bets less than 1-2 percent of the time. In fact, my last week of live play never saw me making a 20 unit bet.

well, i think i was doing it correctly. but it's new to me so if i may lemme give an example:

unit = $5
craps game just betting passline

1st bet 1U and i lose (down $5)
2nd bet 1U and i lose (down $10)
3rd bet 1U and i lose (down $15)
4th bet 1U and i win (down $10)
5th bet 2U and i lose (down $20)
6st bet 2U and i lose (down $30)
7th bet 2U and i win (down $20)
8th bet 3U and i lose (down $35)
9th bet 3U and i lose (down $50)
10th bet 3U and i win (down $35)
11th bet 4U and i win (down $15)
12th bet 5U and lose (down $40) <<==edit: is this wrong? should i have bet 4U again here???
13th bet 5U and lose (down $65)
14th bet 5U and lose (down $90)
15th bet 5U and win (down $65)
16th bet 6U and win (down $35)
17th bet 7U and lose (down $70)
18th bet 7U and lose (down $105)
19th bet 7U and lose (down $140)
20th bet 7U and lose (down $175)
21st bet 7U and win (down $140)
22nd bet 8U and win (down $100)
23rd bet 9U and lose (down $145) .........like here i'm up to betting $45 a shot and if i win again i'm gonna be betting $50 a shot sorta thing....
and on and on that sorta thing.
that sound about the way i should be betting for OG?
edit: ===>>> oh and this would still be just one sequence, right, cause i haven't gotten up 1 unit yet, right.

 

[Baseball John]

Oscar's grind

Sagefrog

Your betting sequence is correct except for bet #12.
That bet should have been 4 units.

Re: Shadroch comment about about making a bet over 20 units 1-2% of the time.

My results show that # to be 4-5%.

 

[shadroch]

As I've said before, I play with a slight modification. In order to reduce volitility,I am willing to break even on a sequence rather than win a unit, once the sequence gets prolonged. This reduces my wins a good bit, but also keeps my exposure limited. Say I'm down 11 units, betting 6. I win and am now down 5. I'll now bet 5,rather than the 6 I would under the original.
A winning bet gets me even,meaning I've played X amount of time with no results. But a loss puts me down 10 units,rather than 11. It doesn't sound like much but if I lose the next 3 rounds, I need one less win to break even.
Thats why I rarely get into the 20 unit bet range.

 

[sagefr0g]

As I've said before, I play with a slight modification. In order to reduce volitility,I am willing to break even on a sequence rather than win a unit, once the sequence gets prolonged. This reduces my wins a good bit, but also keeps my exposure limited. Say I'm down 11 units, betting 6. I win and am now down 5. I'll now bet 5,rather than the 6 I would under the original.
A winning bet gets me even,meaning I've played X amount of time with no results. But a loss puts me down 10 units,rather than 11. It doesn't sound like much but if I lose the next 3 rounds, I need one less win to break even.
Thats why I rarely get into the 20 unit bet range.

point taken.
i'm curious shad, do you agree with Baseball John's analysis of my example for a rigorous treatment of OG?
http://www.blackjackinfo.com/bb/showpost.php?p=109921&postcount=46

quote:Baseball John
Sagefrog

Your betting sequence is correct except for bet #12.
That bet should have been 4 units.

 

[shadroch]

Yes, your 12th bet should have been 4 units because that was all you needed to make the sequence a winner.Go back to that point and rework the sequence. You are now down $35, betting 4 units. After you lose the 13th bet, you are down $55, betting 4. After 14, you are down $75 betting 4.
your 15th bet you win$20 and are down $55. Your 16th you bet 5, win and are down $30.Now on your 17th bet you have a chance of breaking even with a win.
Suppose your 17th hand is a winner. Assuming you are playing on a semi-full table, averaging 60 hands an hour. While you haven't won a dime, you should get credited with about twenty minutes worth of multi-unit action for comp purposes.

 

[sagefr0g]

Yes, your 12th bet should have been 4 units because that was all you needed to make the sequence a winner.Go back to that point and rework the sequence. You are now down $35, betting 4 units. After you lose the 13th bet, you are down $55, betting 4. After 14, you are down $75 betting 4.
your 15th bet you win$20 and are down $55. Your 16th you bet 5, win and are down $30.Now on your 17th bet you have a chance of breaking even with a win.
Suppose your 17th hand is a winner. Assuming you are playing on a semi-full table, averaging 60 hands an hour. While you haven't won a dime, you should get credited with about twenty minutes worth of multi-unit action for comp purposes.

thank you much for looking that over.
so now i reword my paraphrasing of the rules of OG: (lol, it's just easier for me when i put something in my own words)

for any given sequence if you are up a unit then the sequence is over.

you start a sequence by betting one unit.

within any given sequence if you lose a bet you just continue betting what you bet the time before.
and
within any given sequence if you win a bet the yield of which does not put you up one unit for the sequence then your next bet is the same as the winning bet plus one unit unless not needed to still gain one unit.

once a bet puts you one unit up for the sequence then the sequence is complete.

and i do get your point, about how you can adjust what you do according to your own goals, sorta of thing.
thanks, again.

 

[shadroch]

Whats really nice is when you are in a really long sequence where you are down ten units, betting six and along comes that beautiful BJ for a nine unit payout. Better yet, after forty hands or so and you are down five units, with a five unit bet out.You get a BJ and just won the equivilant of several sequences in one swoop.

 

[sagefr0g]

Whats really nice is when you are in a really long sequence where you are down ten units, betting six and along comes that beautiful BJ for a nine unit payout. Better yet, after forty hands or so and you are down five units, with a five unit bet out.You get a BJ and just won the equivilant of several sequences in one swoop.

yeah!

 

[Kasi]

yeah!

Not to detract from anything you guys are saying or anything.

OG only applies to even-money games. It has 5 betting rules, as you stated. Anything else is not OG.

Pass-line bets, Odd-even, High-Low, Black-red. Fine. Please not BJ.

Maybe I should apply OG to the lottery too so it gets a really really crappy reputation?

You win the first bet of a "SEQUENCE" with a BJ, you've won one and a half units. There are no 1.5 units wins in OG. No half-unit wins. No 2-8 unit wins in one trial.

Don't make the guy roll over in his grave.

Martingdale, Anti-Martingdale, Labouchere, Fibbonacci, OG, etc, all have capital letters for a reason. They apply to one set of rules.

One may as well say one is still playing "BS" yet with another rule of hitting 17vs 10 on Tuesdays and still call it "BS".

You may as well still call 6-5 BJ, "BJ". I guess it's legal to do so but is it? To me, it's an abomination, a desecration, a bastardisation and defiling of such an extreme magnitude, how can anyone even still call it "BJ"? I can't. I call it crap. Whatever you call it, it ain't BJ.

Likewise, any results attributed to OG by playing BJ are so extremely different than the results applied to the games it defines, it just ain't OG.

 

[Kasi]

i tryed OG on the Wiz of Odds craps game, $1,000 bankroll, five dollar min.
i tapped out the grand once and came out ahead (i forget how much) about four times or so.
thing is i just wanted to say was, wow you can sure drop down pretty low, pretty quick.
and like it can be pretty quick you end up finding your self betting $100 a shot or more, whew, kind of scary in my book.:cat::whip:

I'd be interested in the raw results of your rolls.

Like, for the fun of it today, I used 516 spins of single-zero roulette from the Wiz's site, http://wizardofodds.com/roulette/10000spins-singlezero.html
always betting on "Odds" with a 100 unit roll and won 100 "SEQUENCES" in 516 spins of the wheel without a loss.

Total units bet=1500. Avg length of "session", 2.9 spins. 86% of bets=4 units or less. Max unit bet = 22. Longest "SEQUENCE" = 65 spins. Happened on the 3rd sequence as it happened while betting 651 units in those 65 spins.

Might have made some betting mistakes, as maybe you did. Betting was manual, the roulette results computer-generated.

While a 100 unit roll has covered the results so far, I'm assuming a 500 unit roll.

Also, for the 516 spins, 251 "Odds" bet would have been expected but 273 actually occurred.

So, sure, a little "lucky", but, what the heck, I doubled my original 100 units in 516 spins as it happens

If I had chosen to bet on "Even", I'm sure the results would have varied somewhat.

But even 516 spins could be almost 15 hours spent at a full roulette table.

Not that it means that much. But, from what I can gather, I don't find it in the least bit surprising either.

 

[Thunder]

I just did Oscar's grind at a joint for a long time at a BJ table and left up $250. The way I do it varies a bit from the way some others do it. I always up my bet after a win even if I only need say $10 to come out ahead for the sequence when I was betting $25. It can get quite scary as I got 5 8's in a row and as a result had a 4 split hands with one 16 and two double downs on two of the split for a total of 13 on each of those double downs. This was after I was just about at my stop loss point so I had $45 riding on each hand and $90 on the dd hands. Luckily for me the dealer broke so I won a nice amount after that. It's a lot less taxing than counting cards and actually can help you out a lot when the shoes aren't going so great. I counted about 8 people who got wiped out at my table but because Oscar's grind allows you to lose more than the expected amount of times in a sequence and still come out ahead, it helped in that regard.

 

[Baseball John]

OSCAR'S GRIND....... Even money bets only????

Kasi
I question your theory on even money bets only. If OG was designed for even money bets then it should and does work better for Blackjack. Placement of your bets are made without anticipation of a blackjack which pays 3-2 and winning splits and double downs.
Blackjacks, splits and double downs when played properly win more than 50% of the time.
This will only help!

 

[shadroch]

Kasi
I question your theory on even money bets only. If OG was designed for even money bets then it should and does work better for Blackjack. Placement of your bets are made without anticipation of a blackjack which pays 3-2 and winning splits and double downs.
Blackjacks, splits and double downs when played properly win more than 50% of the time.
This will only help!

Exactly, the paayout on a BJ is a bonus, I have no idea why some one would think it hurts the system. Why would anyone think Oscar was dead? The 60s weren't all that long ago. I'd imagine there are several posters on this board that gambled in Vegas in the mid-60s. The earliest reference I've found is from 1965. Even if Oskar( as he was then known) was in his forties, there is still a decent chance he's alive today.

 

[shadroch]

I'd be interested in the raw results of your rolls.

Like, for the fun of it today, I used 516 spins of single-zero roulette from the Wiz's site, http://wizardofodds.com/roulette/10000spins-singlezero.html
always betting on "Odds" with a 100 unit roll and won 100 "SEQUENCES" in 516 spins of the wheel without a loss.

Total units bet=1500. Avg length of "session", 2.9 spins. 86% of bets=4 units or less. Max unit bet = 22. Longest "SEQUENCE" = 65 spins. Happened on the 3rd sequence as it happened while betting 651 units in those 65 spins.

Might have made some betting mistakes, as maybe you did. Betting was manual, the roulette results computer-generated.

While a 100 unit roll has covered the results so far, I'm assuming a 500 unit roll.

Also, for the 516 spins, 251 "Odds" bet would have been expected but 273 actually occurred.

So, sure, a little "lucky", but, what the heck, I doubled my original 100 units in 516 spins as it happens

If I had chosen to bet on "Even", I'm sure the results would have varied somewhat.

But even 516 spins could be almost 15 hours spent at a full roulette table.

Not that it means that much. But, from what I can gather, I don't find it in the least bit surprising either.

The interesting thing is when you bet both odds and even. It's possible to end up ahead on what is a 50-50 bet at best.

 

[FLASH1296]

Why BJ is NOT to be used with "Oscar's Grind"

With Basic Strategy you will win, on average just 43% of your hands (9% pushes and 48% losses)
Discounting pushes you are MUCH more likely to experience LOSING streaks than you are to experience WINNING streaks.
At higher true counts you are still not going to WIN 50% of the time.

All progression players live in fear of elongated losing streaks.
That is what causes the progressions to fail so abysmally.
With BJ you are enhancing your chances of going belly-up.

Think about it.