A card counting system

Card counting doesn't work at baccarat, right?
Not necessarily.

Some time ago I've picked up this interesting method involving a card counting technique along with simple math features that gave us some valuable hints. After innumerable tests, we've modified it in such a way:

9 = +12
8 = +10
7 = +7
6 = +5
5 = +8
4 = +8
3 = +2.5
2 = +2.5
A = +1
10s and Paints = 0

Differently to any other card counting method where the sum is 0, here card values only add up giving some totals.
Our range of interest considers a cutoff point after 2/3 of hands are dealt (ties included of course).

Thus we assume that 50 hands dealt are a fair way to take such 2/3 percentage trigger.

Rules

1) We'll consider to bet only whether after 50 hands dealt the total sum is restricted within the 952-1180 range.

2) In the previous 50 hands shoe sample, Player results had to come out more by even winning points than odd winning points.
In the relatively unlikely situation that P even winning points = P odd winning points, we may still consider to bet if the total sum approaches the low end of the 952-1180 range (average point is 1066)

3) The initial burnt card must be counted.

4) For obvious reasons, lower the initial burnt card is more reliable will be our counting.

Naturally it's a wise move not to play at those casinos which like to cut down from the play many cards, anyway as long as less than one deck is unplayable we're doing good.

What to bet if all of the above conditions are fulfilled.

In the remaining 25 or so hands, there's a substantial math propensity to get Banker side not forming heavy negative outliers, meaning that at this 25 hands 'conditioned' sample Banker side will get a fair number of winning hands over the possible total outcomes.

Notice that this doesn't mean the Banker will get more winning hands than losing hands, just that sd values will be way more restricted than expected.

This is the only exception to step away from a strict flat betting scheme as now we have reasons to adopt a kind of progressive plan (multilayered multiple step schemes).

Disadvantages of such a system

1) Shoes fulfilling all the above parameters are rare to happen.

Even if the maximum limit of total sum range stays around an average value, best opportunities come out at the lower end of such range and they are quite unlikely to happen. 

Think that at baccarat more odd points than even points are made and we need a sort of inversion distribution to show up at Player side.

2) Possible numerous ties happening at this 25 hands segment could dilute a favourable conditional probability up to a point where we may find ourselves to be stuck without the room to get a fair number of winning hands.
We've found out that this is the very threat of such a system.

3) The indispensable tool to observe the shoe right at the start of it.


An opposite line of thought could orient us to think that whenever such conditions aren't fulfilled (it happens on the majority of the times) Player side will be more likely to get the same opposite propensity but our tests have clearly shown that this kind of reasonment is untrue.
Mostly for the odd/even points math nature of bac outcomes.

as.

Best baccarat player in the world (again)

The best bac player in the world is one capable to be ahead after 7-10 shoes played, meaning that in the vast majority of the times the 7-10 shoes probability range will happen by ascertained values not likely reaching outliers that of course could be astoundingly good or terribly bad.
Therefore under normal situations and providing a fair number of hands bet per shoe, recreational players and 'I'm the new genius in town' players will get a very slim probability to be ahead after such 10 shoes sample.

As sayed many times here, progressive plans do not solve such a problem, they just dilute it.
So without any doubt, a flat betting scheme or a very slow multilayered wagering (as brilliantly proposed by KFB in his section) is the answer to know if we're really doing good or just getting a fluke.

No room to false illusions.

After a 10 shoe sample, in the vast majority of the times we must be ahead of something by flat betting (or any strategy very close to it).
If not we're fooling ourselves.

This statement is so true that even by betting just 5-6 hands per shoe and after a 10 shoe sample, probability to be eventually ahead will be strongly shifted toward the negative territory. And by percentages well surpassing the math negative edge.

If this weren't true, baccarat wouldn't exist.
Transforming the issue, there are times when we should follow average clustered situations and other times where the 'clustering effect' on average is less likely to happen.

Lesser the number of bets we'll make per shoe, higher will be our probability of success.

as.

See you next week

as.

   

As long as an asymmetrical game provides not perfect random but dependent and finite successions we can't lose

Providing we can bet whenever we wish.

This statement may be set in stone by a 100% accuracy.

Besides the key assumptions made by R. Von Mises on randomness and M. v. Smoluchoswki studies we took decisive hints from, a shuffled deck makes more probable than not and at various degrees some events than others.
Diaconis and Bloom (and others) made extensive works on the subject, obviously not specifically considering baccarat.

Shuffle thoroughly a single deck of cards and itlr you'll get precise values of some events happening (for example red/black card apparition in streaks or 'chops'). By increasing the number of decks employed, such features will approximate but tending to proportionally deviate in relationship of the number of decks utilized (for the impact of variance).

It's obvious that at baccarat red or black cards distribution doesn't matter, so the process is more complicated to be grasped and naturally it should be assessed toward the 'average' key card concentration/dilution.

Since we do know that an average number of rows and columns will be formed, we may infer that at some points such key card distribution will make more probable some events than others.

Fortunately no need to track cards, average patterns and other tools will make the job for us.

See you in a couple of days.

as.

What many players may think is a simple event is in reality a "Complex" event. Meaning many things have to line up for it to present.

+1 KFB!!

We humans are shaped to look for patterns and ancestors looked for patterns coming out by 'clumps'.

More interestingly, a lot of studies proved our inability to detect random and unrandom patterns, in the sense that most subjects wrongly assigned the proper 'random' and 'unrandom' feature at the tasks examined.
(See Muller, 2001) for example.

So it's not surprising that most baccarat players like to detect patterns knowing or thinking the distribution to be random (so unbeatable) whereas on the contrary manufactured unrandom patterns are considered as 'undetectable' for possibly showing 'too low' concentrated clumps to take advantage from.
That's why the 'complexity' factor will be one of the keys helping us to solve the puzzle as acting both at random and unrandom shuffled shoes.

Actually perfect randomly shuffled shoes do not exist or at least the 'random' feature cannot be proportionally distributed along a 416 cards shoe.
This is a different statement than accepting a sure dependence of the results that solely taken cannot lead to nowhere.

Thus in the real world some (or many) unrandom segments will happen per every shoe dealt, so the complexity parameter might take a different role whether applied to a random model or to a unrandom model, in the sense that the previous patterns and the number of hands dealt so far constitute a decisive parameter to look for.


More on that later.

as.

Thanks KFB!!

Average card distribution

Don't make the mistake to consider baccarat as a game where everything could happen per every shoe dealt; but do not make the more fatal error of thinking that a method could get the best of it at every shoe dealt.

For example, we know that a given amount of rows and columns will be filled per every shoe no matter how weird is the actual card distribution.

Since we are not interested to guess every hand or most hands dealt per shoe, we instead should be inclined to understand what's the actual patterns flow in relationship of the general average findings.
And this is a strict card distribution issue obviously depending upon the possible unrandomness as outliers (strong deviations) are more likely to show up when the unrandomness level is quite high.

Naturally such unrandomness is symmetrical, in the sense that we can hugely benefit from it or giving us harsh times when it doesn't go in our favor.
Most of the times unrandom levels are low or very low, so they do not constitute a sort of 'stop' or 'sky's the limit' situations affecting our strategy, yet itlr it's more likely to get strong deviations when the distribution is unrandom rather than attributing it to normal fluctuations a random model exhibits. In a word unrandom distributions get a slight than expected probability to form clusters. 

Example.

Our targeted complex pattern will come out, on average, 4 times per shoe.
Since we've tested that generally we could get a huge control of its dispersion values, we number the general probabilities of such event coming out (Y) or not (N) at the actual shoe we're playing at:

YYYY
YYYN
YYNY
YYNN
YNYY
YNNY
YNYN
YNNN
NNNN
NNNY
NNYN
NNYY
NYNN
NYYN
NYNY
NYYY

Now we're not interested to hope that Y>N as Y=N, let alone to 'follow' seemingly univocal patterns (e.g. betting Y after YY or N after NN), just to get at least one symbol of each category to show up clustered at some point, obviously knowing that the 'average' 4 apparitions could fail, (it may be 3 or 5 or other).
Thus the position of such complex apparition along the shoe does make a huge impact over our strategy.

The expected probability to get any YY or NN pattern in a 4-betting trial applied to an independent random model is 14/16 (87.5%); naturally the remaining 12.5% YNYN and NYNY symmetrical occurences will proportionally cancel any advantage.
But baccarat is not an independent random model, especially while taking complex events as 'triggers'.
It's like that the 87.5% probability increases to 89% or more. Now we get an advantage.

But another pivotal effect of baccarat distributions is that complex events show itlr a minor than expected propensity to produce YYYY and NNNN patterns so increasing the apparition of the other more likely 12 patterns not forming an 'alternating' process (YNYN and NYNY).

Therefore less likely events showing up are NNNN, YYYY, YNYN and NYNY.

Remember again that we're not talking about B and P hands but about 'complex' events.
So in any instance B or P do correspond to Y or N.

The 4 average event apparition per shoe is just an example.
There are infinite 'complex' patterns to look for. I've chosen a decent average event's rate, a kind of 5.33% trigger considering 75 resolved hands per shoe.

The important thing to know, imo, is to never chase a situation to be clustered unless deriving from some kind of a 'complexity'.
Complexity tends to get rid of short term variance (platykurtic distribution), the actual distribution casinos make a lot of money from.

as.

Another nice post Al!
Best part imo Is Influence Is Huge

as.

Thanks Al and KFB for your replies.

@Alrelax: yep, the 'whole' shoe picture is defined at the end of it, yet imo there are costant 'average' probabilities that something will stay or turn into an opposite direction so strong 'educated' guesses must be made upon such 'averages'.
Obviously your 'sections' point of view is of utmost importance.

@KFB: spot on! When we think as baccarat as a game of 'ranges' we can't fail. By any means.

Baccarat is a game of numbers #2

Exhaustive long term observations made on a large live shoes sample let us to think that baccarat patterns move around 'ranges' not corresponding to an infinite 0.5068/0.4932 model, the very thing literature has taught us for years.

Nobody is arguing about the long term B and P probability, just that shoe per shoe certain betting 'ranges' assume more detectable shapes measured by sd values different to a still general probability model.

Technically our WL results put into a graphic will take a leptokurtic distribution, that is a distribution where elements are concentrated around the mean and where the variance is minimal.

Thus as long as our betting scheme moves into this restricted field we can't fear anything 'strongly' bad or 'strongly' good and of course winning and losing processes will be affected too.

Naturally a leptokurtic distribution doesn't favor one side or another, it just remains symmetrically concentrated around the 0 point.
In another words, our betting 'random walk' makes shorter steps than expected and surely crossing several times the 0 point. (We named it a 'limited' random walk)

How to make our betting scheme to form a leptokurtic distribution touching several times the 0 point

1) getting rid of many B/P hands confusing the whole picture;

2) knowing the average general probability to get some 'complex' patterns more likely crossing the 0 point;

3) taking for grant that each class of positive or negative steps must be be equal itlr;

4) comparing the general probability with the actual probability in terms of more likely clusters.

5) evaluating the unrandomness level of every shoe dealt. 


Point #1 was touched many times here.
Only id.i.ots could think to beat the game by betting every hand or most hands dealt.
The very exact players' class casinos are very happy to get at their tables.
Probability such players will get a leptokurtic curve results is zero.

Point #2 is the decisive factor to look for. It's the most serious duty any serious player should be inclined to find out.

Point #3 is very important too.
Positive or negative step classes are surely going to be balanced itlr or more likely partially balanced in the same shoe: this last occurence happens around 70% of the times.
A wonderful 'average' probability to rely upon.

Point #4 is another decisive factor to look for, so i'll make an example.
Along each shoe dealt there's a probability to get an average number of 1-2 patterns and an average lenght going along.
We know that per every shoe dealt the probability NOT to get a 1-2 cluster of any lenght is 0, yet this probability is related to the actual streaks lenght.
Since the shoe is finite, particularly very long streaks put a serious threat about such probability in the sense that long streaks make less probable to get a proper average number of 1-2 clusters.
So even if we're deadly sure that 1-2 will come out clustered at least once per every shoe dealt,  we must know that in very rare occurences singled 1-2 situations may show up even for 5 or 6 steps (Yes, this is a very strong and very very unlikely scenario but it could happen).

Point #5 is probably the factor why we're constantly beating this game (the other option is because we're geniuses deserving a baccarat Nobel prize, lol).
We'll see it in a couple of days.

as. 

5) Baccarat is a game of numbers

At gambling games when you provide numbers you look smarter, especially if numbers derive from complicated math formulas where 99.9% of common people won't know a bit about.

On the other end, without numbers we can't estimate whether our method may get a decent chance to win itlr, but for obvious reasons 'the long run' is shorter than the infinite field where math formulas apply.

Simplyfing the subject, either a given method/approach works or it doesn't and we do not need millions of shoes tested to verify this.
And imo the only way to ascertain this is to assess if our method will get more wins than losses that in another way means that wins and losses are restricted within 'ranges' getting lower sd values than expected.

Say we have two possible events A and B (having a nearly 50/50 probability to appear) spreading into finite distinct successions of 75 or so propositions.
We do not know which A or B side will get a constant or volatile edge over the other one, but given the kind of 'coin flip' premise we may infer that A and B patterns will be distributed by a kind of binomial probability that constitutes our 'control group'.
Such control group is opposed to our method oriented to somewhat negating such unbeatable binomial probability (moreover knowing the game is burdened by a constant EV-).

At the end, the more our method 'numbers' deviates from a kind of binomial probability 'numbers', greater will be the probability to think that our method is really successful.

Baccarat literature is based too much (or only) about classical probability not caring a bit about the frequentist approach.
This last one is the only tool we have at our disposal to evaluate 'complex' patterns distribution by 'ranges' (so numbers), patterns that are made first by the actual card distribution and then by math instrinsic features.
 
Putting things into another perspective, single B or P hands (let alone mere Banker advantaged situations) do not mean nothing to us as it's the whole shoe picture that matters.

In fact complex patterns need a way greater amount of hands to get univocal results standing for long as they must fight against a strong asymmetrical production happening for the entire shoe and/or math features belonging to an average key card distribution (a finite and dependent process!)

In a word, complex patterns tend to exhibit manageable and detectable values capable to easily erase and invert to our favor the HE.

And of course complex patterns move around measurable numbers moving around strong limited ranges, the real thing we should be happy to know.

But what's a 'complex' pattern?
 
as.

Thanks KFB!
I agree you are not the exact person every casino would be glad to get at their bac tables.

A lot of stuff to be digested, I need some time to possibly make some questions.

Cheers

as.

-NO SIDE: any card having a value of 1, 2 or 3

-TWO SIDE: any card having a value of 4 or 5.

-THREE SIDE: any card having a value of 6, 7 or 8.

- FOUR SIDE: any 9 or 10.

Good thread!

ITLR= in the long run

BR= big road

BYB= big eye boy road

SR= small road

CR= cockroach road

BP= bead plate road

T= tie

AS= asymmetrical hand (favoring Banker side)

S= symmetrical hand (no third card affecting Banker options)

HS= high stakes

L6= Lucky 6

Monkey= any picture card or 10 card value

as.

Happy Festivities to every forum member!!!

as.

Hi KFB!!

IMO most patterns follow an average number of more likely math situations that dynamically change over the course of the actual shoe. Notice I'm not talking about REAL outcomes, just about math occurences.
So, yes, your point is well taken, imo.

Just to make a conclusive and simplified statement, shoes exhibiting strong key card concentrations (so forming long key card dilutions at the remaining segments) are by far the best shoes to play at. This has nothing to share with the appearance of long streaks or long univocal patterns just about 'peaks' and 'flat' situations.

(Actually there are evidences that strong 'balanced' key card distributions will make the player a huge favor, but since those opportunities are not coming out by a decent frequency we simply ignore them).

as.

Thanks KFB!!!
It's nice to see we have many common ideas about bac.

4) Baccarat is a game of ranges, that is about how much key cards are concentrated or diluted to mathematically provide some more likely results, so forming more likely patterns.

In probability theory and statistics basically there are three kind of probability:
a) classical, b) frequentist and c) subjective.

Subjective probability here is not of interest.

Classical probability is based on the assumption that possible events are symmetrical in their appearance, for example a dice has six possible symmetrical outcomes so the probability to toss a 5 in one attempt is 1/6 = 16.66%

Frequentist probability is based upon long observations (the longer the better) of events where either we do not know anything about the real probability of their occurrence or because we suspect 'flaws' about the classical probability values whether applicable in the field of interest.

At gambling games we can't argue about classical probability values, providing each event is independent from the previous one and the source of results is random.
In this instance we're talking about a perfect symmetry/symmetry, that is an unbeatable proposition.
(Obviously black jack constitutes an exception and in fact is beatable mathematically)

At baccarat things are much more confused even if long term values converge more and more into the old 50.68%/49.32% B/P proposition dictated by the classical probability.

Why I use the term 'confused'?
Because at bac we can't extract other 'more complex' probabilities (patterns) than B/P by simply multiplicating single probabilities in various ways (the basic operation to get many events probability by the classical point of view). For each shoe being a world apart, having its card distribution and its asymmetrical features mentioned above.
Not mentioning an almost sure unrandom card distribution happening at every shoe dealt.

Actually every baccarat shoe is a single huge 'dynamic' asymmetrical model affecting the patterns way more than what classical probability dictates, mainly as 99.9% of what may happen or not wasn't investigated by a proper procedure (fortunately totally unknown by math pundits of our a$$).

It's obvious that when taking into account long series of shoes the 'mixing of apples with oranges' factor will apply but it's altogether obvious that only a strict frequentist point of view could help us to define the boundaries of the game possibilities.
So only long term observations made at real shoes dealt (best whether coming from a univocal source) might help us to assess whether our method is really good or to be just a fluke. And in that effort the flat betting scheme is by far the best random walk to realize it. 

We could think the strong asymmetrical nature of the game (that, again, has nothing to share with the B/P ratio) as a finite succession having its peaks (strong asymmetry) and periods of relatively low deviations (false symmetry) both converging into 'more likely' or 'less likely' ranges.
Alrelax name them as 'sections'.

Naturally 'peaks' and 'flat' situations are the by product of the actual card distribution. More precisely they are in direct relationship of the key cards concentration/dilution parameter, a process completely dependent as once key cards are removed (or conversely live) in the deck patterns will be affected in some way.
Vulgarly speaking, we can't hope to get a pattern to stop when it's in the 'peak' mood but we can safely assume that a kind of 'flat' situation will happen for quite long.
In some sense, whenever we bet toward a peak raising we're simply gambling (maybe with a good cause) and whenever we bet toward more likely 'flat' patterns we're exploiting the game.

It's clear that forcing a steady state (peak or flat) to change is a strong mistake, instead we should be focused about how many times a'peak' or 'flat' state is going to change into the reversed situation after having collected a quite large of datasets. And obviously we can just estimate such processes by 'ranges'.   

5) Baccarat is a game of numbers

We can't beat baccarat by math, yet we can beat it by numbers.
A contradiction in terms isn't it?

Maybe, but as long as we were and are more right than wrong after years of playing, either we're the luckiest persons in the world or we're up on something.

Numbers can't lie, number successions can't lie either.

We'll see this decisive topic next week.

as.