Now the indictments come.

From the comments section, to the point, factual and never ending:  "If money is involved people will always figure out a way to cheat."

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v__1GlOXsNs

Any symmetrical (S) pattern needs two hands in a row to be equally distributed as the previous pattern.
If cards are really randomly distributed, it's a simple task to ascertain how many clustered S patterns will show up as isolated or (more unlikely) as clustered.

No one serious bac player can miss the profitable spots a real random distribution (random.org, for example) will provide up to the point that a multilayered betting plan will be able to destroy every possible distribution in the world.
This fact counterfeits the idea that every hand is totally independent from the previous ones, thus if our plan is based upon S isolated events, we'll be in very good shape to get more wins than losses, especially if we wait for some fictional losses to happen.

Actually let the house to hope that S clustered events will happen for long but they can't as whatever the cards are arranged a kind of asymmetry will take the lead over the counterpart.

Since just one hand will break a more likely asymmetrical distribution (so producing a less likely S pattern), we need to restrict our field of intervention so waiting for a S pattern to stop independently of its consecutiveness.

Therefore once a S-S pattern shows up at the shoe we're playing at and knowing that more often than not long successions of S isolated events are more probable to come out, we might infer that S clustered patterns will be slight more likely followed by another S cluster. Especially when shoes are unrandomly distributed (machine shufflers, for example).

On the other end, S clusters will slight make more probable A clusters so in the end the only successions we should fear are A-SS...-A-SS... sequences.
And such situations aren't going to come out so often and whenever they'll show up they'll constitute an astounding trigger to get our future bets affected by a huge EV+.

Suppose we have four distinct a-b-c-d fictional players betting for us:

a) player will bet toward A-A just one time;

b) player will bet toward A one time after any single S;

c) player will bet toward A-A after any S clustered event;

d) player will bet to get a A-A-A (or longer) situation.

Our long term data told us that in the vast majority of the times isolated A (so negating an A-A sequence) aren't coming out by a level suprassing the 3-level.
Therefore way more often than not negating a fourth A isolated appearance.

Isolated S patterns are affected by a very low volatility, meaning that isolated S events are more likely to show up clustered than followed by a S cluster.

Once a S clustered event happens (S-S or S-S-S and so on) it'll be slight more likely to face an A cluster.

Clusters of A getting the exact two value (S-A-A-S) aren't going to get many back to back sequences without getting a more natural superior A succession.

Overall we won't face many situations getting ALL four players to lose for long.
Actually it's very likely that at least one or two (or more) players will get the fair amount of positive situations they're entitled to get.
It's just a matter of time and actula deviations, way better to be resolved by a strong diluted bet selection.

as.

Everything 1 billion % true providing the outcomes are really randomly produced.

Differently than roulette where only biased wheels will provide unrandom results (modern wheels aren't supposed to be biased), at baccarat there's a lot to investigate about the real randomness of the production and anyway 416 cards cannot produce infinite patterns once we want to classify them by endless random walk successions.

as.

Taking a break the other night and talking with a few BAC friends at the casino, we wound up discussing new dealers placed on the BAC tables. And we simply do not prefer them in most any way over the regular dealers that we have built a rapport with.

There are just simply no connections, or understanding(s) and certainly no harmony between dealer/player with the new dealers. Most all regular dealers we know, there is a special kind of dealer/player camaraderie. I don't know about you guys but after years of playing BAC, that camaraderie has grown into a bond with players like myself and many others I know personally. In fact, it has helped us countless times with either leaving the table or continuing to great wins.

New dealers do not know what I prefer in chip denominations when I buy-in.  I have to explain it and at times I get a bit of resistance until the floor person is called over.  The regular dealers know and automatically cut it out.

When it's slow or one on one the small talk starts. The regular Dealers, pick up the conversations where they generally last left off and are heads and tails over the new dealers in every way. 

A lot of the new dealers have that fast losing chip sweep that absolutely sucks and so many people detest. Yes the money is going to go away, however that fast sweep is absolutely insulting and ultra negative in my opinion.

Regular dealers have that gentle losing hand chip sweep. Not much more to say about it, but they know how to handle losing hands a lot better than the new dealers do.

Tips.  At least myself, I have a certain strange rapport with all my regular dealers, whereupon my tips are paid and rather than the dealer quickly snatching them up, I stack them and slide them up to the dealer, kinda skirting then across the table somewhat.  The new dealers will quickly pay them and snatch them up without any class whatsoever, IMO.

When I buy-in the new dealers will repetitively ask for my players card when every regular dealer already knows the routine and will just say it is Glen's and point to me and nothing else is said. I have to explain to the new dealer I don't have a card in my pocket and the floor person already knows who I am and sometimes that new dealer even rolls their eyes. Again another uncomfortable feeling.

The ending, so important when a player loses. The new dealer will have that standardized, "thanks for playing, better luck next time". Yeah the regular dealers just don't say anything, they are quiet, give me a quick nod of their head, which means will see you next time and you'll get everything back, type of secret code talk, LOL. But personally I detest and so does everyone else that standardized, "thanks for playing and better luck next time" pure made up trash!

And one final one is a few of my hand gestures that I use throughout the game.  Either for a very brief waiting period before dealing the hand, or I'm not gonna play this hand, or I'm gonna get up and go use my phone and many other ones. The new dealers have no clue and I'm not gonna explain it to them, when the regular dealers make it so comfortable.

Absolutely correct in many many aspects.  Most will never understand the simplicity of it.

Gambling Science: Why the house will always win in the long run

Undoubtedly you have heard the phrase "the house always wins" when it comes to casino gambling. But what does that actually mean?  And why is that said?

After all, people do hit jackpots, people have great runs at table games, people win repeatedly in the sport books, people win at the other games.  And casino games are supposed to be fair – so what guarantees the casino still comes out ahead?

The answer lies in a simple but powerful mathematical idea called "the house edge": a small, systematic statistical advantage built into every single casino game. It's the invisible force that ensures the numbers will always tilt toward the house in the long run.

So, let's unpack and quickly take apart the science behind that edge: how it's constructed, and how it plays out over repeated bets.

Roulette: the clearest place to see the house edge at work

Roulette looks like one of the fairest games in the casino. A spinning wheel with numbered pockets, half colored red and half colored black, and a single ball sent spinning around the outside to eventually land in one pocket at random. If you bet the ball will land in a red pocket (or a black one), it feels like a 50–50 gamble.

But the real odds are a little bit different. In most Australian casinos you'll find 38 pockets on the roulette wheel: 18 red, 18 black, and two "zero" pockets marked 0 and 00. (In Europe roulette wheels have 37 pockets, with only a single 0.)

The zero pockets are what creates the house edge. The casino pays out as if the odds were 50–50, however if you get the color right, you get back the same amount you bet. Which most believe that is a 50-50 chance, but in reality, on a wheel with two zero pockets your chance of winning is 47.37%.

When you bet on a color, the house has a 5.26% edge – meaning gamblers lose about five cents per dollar on average. A single-zero wheel is slightly kinder to the gambler at 2.7%.

You don't see the house edge in the course of a few spins, one-two or three shoes of cards, a few hours at a slot machine, etc. But casinos don't rely on a few spins, a few shoes or a few hours at a machine. Over thousands of bets, the law of large numbers takes over. This is a fundamental idea in probability that implies the more times you repeat a game with fixed odds, the closer your results get to the true mathematical average. The short-term ups and downs flatten out, and the house edge asserts itself with near certainty.

The law of large numbers is why casinos aren't bothered by who wins this spin or that shoe of cards, or even tonight, or win for several nights or even more. They care about what happens over the next million bets. They don't care about the winners (unless they are obviously cheating), they only care that there are enough losers.  Please read the Wiki for a great detailed run down of 'the law of large numbers', that will help you understand this super important info as to what I just mentioned. 

CLICK ON THE WIKI:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers

Simply a great detailed explanation.  OPENING:  "In probability theory, the law of large numbers is a mathematical law that states that the average of the results obtained from a large number of independent random samples converges to the true value, if it exists. More formally, the law of large numbers states that given a sample of independent and identically distributed values, the sample mean converges to the true mean."

And once you understand that, you will be able to adjust your play, gain advantages and use a Money Management Method that benefits you whether you are winning or losing. 

The Gamblers' Ruin problem

Another way to see why the house always wins is through the so-called Gambler's Ruin problem.

The problem asks what happens if a player with a limited bankroll keeps betting against an opponent with effectively unlimited money (even in a fair game).  Say baccarat with 50-50 banker-player wagering with no commission or side bets. 

The mathematical answer is blunt: the gambler will eventually go broke if he continually wagers every hand or a large number of hands per shoe, plays everyday or nearly everyday.  Period, with absolute certainty. 

In other words, even if the odds are perfectly even, the side with finite resources loses in the long run simply because random fluctuations will push them to zero at some point. Once you hit zero, the game stops, while the house is still standing.

You have to fully understand the following without any doubts, "In statistics, gambler's ruin is the fact that a gambler playing a game with non-positive expected value will eventually go bankrupt, regardless of their betting system.  The concept was initially stated: A persistent gambler who raises his bet to a fixed fraction of the gambler's bankroll after a win, but does not reduce it after a loss, will eventually and inevitably go broke, even if each bet has a positive expected value."

Casinos, of course, stack the odds even further by giving themselves a small edge on every bet. That tiny disadvantage, combined with the fact the house never runs out of money, makes ruin mathematically inevitable.

The more bets you make, the worse your chances

Say you walk into a casino with a simple goal. You want to win $100, and you plan to quit as soon as you hit that target.

Your approach is to play roulette, betting $1 at a time on either red or black.

How much money do you need to bring to have a decent chance of reaching your $100 goal? A thousand dollars? A million? A billion?

Here's the surprising truth: no amount of money is enough.

If you keep making $1 bets in a game with a house edge, you are practically certain to go broke before getting $100 ahead of where you started, even if you arrive with a fortune.

In fact, the probability of gaining $100 before losing $100 million with this strategy is less than 1 in 37,000.

You could walk in with life-changing wealth and still almost certainly never hit your modest $100 goal. (The full mathematical explanation is spelled out in, 'the law of large numbers', I referred to above.

Betting bigger may give you a fighting chance

So how do you create a real chance of success? You must either lower your target or change your strategy entirely.

If your target were only $10, you'd suddenly have over a 50% chance of going home happy, even if you started with just $25. A smaller goal means fewer bets, which means less opportunity for the house edge to grind you down.

Or you can flip the logic of Gambler's Ruin: instead of making hundreds of small, disadvantageous bets, you can make one big bet.  Or several depending on your knowledge and bankroll in regards to what you are attempting. 

If you put $100 on red all at once, your chance of success jumps to roughly 47%. This is far higher than the near-zero chance of trying to grind your way up with $1 bets.

The long-run strategy is mathematically doomed, while the short-run strategy at least gives you a fighting chance.

A small house edge adds up

Roulette is the clearest place to see the house edge, but the same structure runs through every casino game. Each one builds in a varying degree of statistical tilt or bias.

Some games, like roulette, have fixed, rule-based house edges that don't change from one player to the next. But others, like blackjack, have a variable house edge that depends on how the game is played. But no game is exempt from the underlying structure.

Small edges don't stay small when you expose yourself to hundreds or thousands of bets. In the long run, the variance fades, and the outcome converges to the house's advantage with almost certainty.  Again, maybe not in a session or two or three or even five.  But the house's advantage will always outweigh yours, always.

That's why the house always wins. Because mathematics never takes a night off.  Never ever.

Win you win, there is no charge to color up and leave.  By the way, you can opt-out anytime.

A few details about what was written and pending, it's not over yet:

A new tax law goes into effect on Thursday that is likely to have massive ramifications for gamblers.

Starting on Jan. 1, 2026, only 90% of gambling losses will be able to be deducted on taxes at the end of each year.

Meanwhile, 100% of winnings will still be taxed as income, meaning that even if you break even while gambling, you could still be on the hook for a significant tax bill.

For example, if you record $100,000 in gambling losses throughout 2026, but also record $100,000 in gambling winnings, you would still owe $10,000 in taxable income, despite earning no net income.

Those with modest annual net income gains could also see their gambling winnings completely erased in taxes if a significant amount of offsetting losing wagers are placed throughout the year.

The change comes as part of the Big Beautiful Bill, which was signed into law in July. All 50 states will be affected, and the changes will apply to all sports bets and casino games that are played, both online and in person.

However, the change will not affect previous wagers placed throughout 2025, with old tax rules still applicable for the last time this spring as tax season gets underway.

Only federal taxes to the IRS will be impacted. State tax rules on gambling winnings and losses will not be affected.

Already, the new tax rule is generating significant backlash among the gambling community, with some warning that wagers placed on sports bets and in casinos are likely to decrease as a result of the change.

A push is underway to repeal the provision of the bill, led by Las Vegas-area Rep. Dina Titus of Nevada. However, the bill, titled the Fair Bet Act, was introduced in July, and has not progressed in the House since.

Regarding your second question, KFB:

It depends.
For example a shoe per shoe registration will make plenty of opportunities to exploit an expectation/actual deviation ratio especially at the very first pattern happening at each shoe as being complete randomly determined.

Suppose we're constantly betting that the very first pattern will be an asymmetrical pattern (so not followed by a same quality second pattern and according to the guidelines decribed in my pages).
Obviously we'll expect a fair amount of AS first patterns or, at least, that S counterparts will be somewhat restricted in their back-to-back appearance. The AS/S pattern ratio (utilizing a 0.75 p) is 3:1 but even though it could be slight lesser than that (2,92:1 or so), itlr such ratio will approach the expected value, especially after having assessed the consecutiveness of the results.

But more importantly and besides the real numbers, it's the quality of such first patterns as single S or double S-S will be easily followed by an AS pattern and of course ranges of AS clusters will be particularly probable.
Obviously this first-pattern distribution translates into a permutation issue more insensitive of a possible symmetrical distribution bias of the entire shoe.

To get a better idea of that, let's try to adopt the reverse strategy, that is wagering toward first S patterns and everyone will see very soon that it's impractical to say the least.

Once we want to bet into an entire shoe, things will change a lot because the boundary between expectation and actual distribution becomes more subtle (yet more profitable with some experience).
I'm sorry but by now I have no time, see you next time.

as.

Hi KFB!

Q: Approximately how many events(i.e., Betting Spots) do you consider in most shoes?

This depends a lot about the actual texture of the shoe, sometimes we need a lot of hands before approximating at best the prediction.
So if the shoe is getting too many weird situations (mainly from an 'hand results' point of view) we prefer to stay put or wagering very few spots.
We think that it's slight more likely to cross a WW situation by diluting the betting than getting the same WW by a consecutive betting approach.
More or less the same about a LL sequence,  anyway those considerations are strongly linked to our specific approach.
Recently we have implemented a kind of additional (very diluted) strategy based just on this: so betting the very next hand toward a L after a single W and betting the very next hand toward a L after a single L.

Once WW and LL patterns had formed we take care of the actual and expected deviations basically by running two different lines:

1) W and L patterns (so "events") seem to get a 1-2 distribution (1 or 2 gaps);

2) W and L patterns seem to provide 3/3+ streaks and few 1 or 2 gaps.

Notice that I'm talking about W/L sub sequences coming out from a selected plan and not necessarily about B/P hands.
If we implement the asym/sym factor on such sub successions, more often than not we are not going to face 'many' symmetrical situations, meaning that WWW/LLL or WW/LL, etc won't be common findings.

It's now that "expected" values will help us to define whether the 1 or 2 line will be predominant at which level of apparition and the idea that per every shoe dealt a perfect balancement between two opposite situation patterns widely intended is out of order.

Q:What is your typical deviation-from-expectation requirement for betting into that spot? For example do you look for events that lets say occur four times per shoe. Then after say 60% penetration (with -0- occurrence) in the shoe you start wagering for that event to occur  after the first stages of said event have shown?
    OR
Are you more likely to only wager on events that lets say only occur every 3.5 shoes?

I'll answer this later.

as.

Hi Asym.

"...Obviously when in doubt betting towards the deviations will be a minor mistake than wagering to have that deviation to stop..."

    I think this is the optimum approach for most events. 


Q: Approximately how many events(i.e., Betting Spots) do you consider in most shoes?


Q:What is your typical deviation-from-expectation requirement for betting into that spot? For example do you look for events that lets say occur four times per shoe. Then after say 60% penetration (with -0- occurrence) in the shoe you start wagering for that event to occur  after the first stages of said event have shown?
    OR 
Are you more likely to only wager on events that lets say only occur every 3.5 shoes?


Thx in advance.