Hopefully, most people on this forum understand that progression systems are not winning systems. Fine, that's what this subforum is for, no objections here. But I think a point is being missed regarding stop-losses. When you use a progression with a stop loss, the idea is to increase the amount of wins while limiting the amount loss to a comfortable minimum—sounds reasonable, right? Wrong! Here's why:
When you use a progression, you don't change the expectation of the game, which stays exactly the same, but you do increase your overall variance, since you'll be varying your bets and, thus, your wins and losses won't be evenly distributed. This is why progressions appear to work because you'll eventually hit a big win that puts you back in the black from an otherwise negative session.
That's all well and good, but what if you set caps on your losses but not your wins? What you're doing is not limiting your losses, but rather limiting your playing time. You'll still eat the same negative expectation, but you'll hit you loss far quicker than you'll how long you'll play when you're winning. This can actually make progressions worse than flat-betting because by artificially limiting your sessions due to a stop-loss, you're losing comps, which has a tangible effect when adding up travel/time expense. Consider:
$50 average bet, 100 hands/hour, house edge 0.5%. Your expectation per hour is -$25/hr. If you get 40% back in comps, you adjusted expectation is more like -$15/hr. Since you'll be gambling either way, you're essentially gaining $10/hr in comps (flawed logic, I know, but hey—we're gambling here!).
Say you're a flat bettor and you always play 8 hours per session. Your expenses to drive each way, plus estimated opportunity cost (ie. you're not making money by doing something productive) totals about $30. If you add a stop-loss, you'll be calling off sessions way before the 8 hour mark pretty frequently, but you'll still be spending the $30 every time you go on a gambling trip. This means fewer comps, but you'll still be spending the same amount on travel/opportunity cost. Higher expenses, drinks, entertainment, etc. can also magnify this effect.
So again, I know the post is a little long, tedious, and probably redundant, but the point here is that progressions with a stop-loss not only don't save you money, they can cost you more money, albeit in a slightly oblique way. A stop-loss works the same way that all other voodoo system elements work—by creating the illusion of safety or positive expectation. Progressions with or without a stop-loss provide neither, and a stop-loss in no way ensures that you'll lose less.
