Welcome and thanks for sharing.

In the short run every method seems to be good mostly as players try to raise the probability of success in every way (progressions, bet selection widely intended, following or not trends or lucky/unlucky players, etc) but itlr every attempt will be of no avail to consistently win.
We need more than that.

For example we have been playing successfully "for long" a very simple method: we simply bet that a new Banker hand was followed by another single Banker hand (that is betting B after PB) utilizing a 1-2-4 progression.
Anytime this progression failed (meaning that a cluster of three or more B singles appeared) and whenever a new B streak trigger came out, we raised our standard unit to 2, now wagering 2-4-8, then 4-8-16 and so on until the deficit was proportionally and slowly recovered step by step.

Even if it could sound as silly, this system has a math foundation as itlr PBB>PBP, B streaks are more likely than B singles, isolated B singles are more likely than clustered B singles and so on.

In a word and even taking into account the vig burden, the probability to be ahead of something along the way is close to 100%.

Notice that patterns as BPPPPBPPPBPPBPBP....will produce "just" three losses as the betting is stopped until a new B streak comes out.
If you test your data you'll see that a two-step martingale failing won't come out so often and of course you need a kind of balancement to get a consistent long term profit.

The main problem to overcome is to get a decent distribution of winning and losing shoes, nonetheless is just a matter of time to recover any deficit.

But if you look more carefully to those shoes producing a lot of B singles clusters and few B streaks you'll see a kind of cluster-cluster effect.
The reason is because such shoes will present few asymmetrical hands, asymmetrical hands went "wrong" for B side, B drawing hands were more predominant than standing hands, fifth card was mostly belonging to the 3,4,5,6,7 category.
Easy to notice that itlr a perfect world would contain a minor whole amount of such situations.

On average asym hands impact on the whole shoe is 8.4%, on asym hands B gets a 15.86% advantage, B drawing hands are inferior to B standing hands, fifth card is more likely to be a not 3,4,5,6,7 rank category (1:1.6 ratio).
Moreover any two card point higher than the opposite side is going to win about 2/3 of the times.

Similarly to what happens in other games, we should think baccarat as a game of ranges and not in term of exact outcomes.
That's why the shuffling issue is of utmost importance as it's one trillion impossible to guess right into a random distribution. 

In some way a proper shuffle judgement is even a better indicator than edge sorting as we want to beat the game legally and, more importantly, we want to be payed after our winning sessions (with all due respect to the baccarat queen Cheung Yin Sun).

as. 

Pro players take fully advantage from the "time" factor. The same thing why the house is getting enormous profits: time.
Itlr favourable situations to the player will arise no matter the math disadvantage, say that after four resolved hands (no ties), if we put in action 16 players wagering 16 different patterns we know for sure that two of them will get respectively a 4-hand winning or losing streak, the remaining players will get at least one winning or losing hand.

Of course that's based on the law of averages that in practical terms never apply to any game, otherwise casinos wouldn't exist. But it's just a matter of time and values will correspond more and more to such proportions.

In a sense, bac pro players wouldn't give a damned fk about the math disadvantage as they know very well that house cannot hope to get the perfect opposite situations capable to destroy every player's selection for long.
For long.

The same for the player's expectation. For long.

Now we should set up our plan in two ways. Either we want to fight with the house by betting that outcomes will come out more deviated than expected (and naturally we'll privilege the deviated side) or that things will more or less come out according to their probability.

To assess what to bet, meaning which lines will be more likely or not (in terms of probability of success) we have put in action 100 different random walks working on each shoe emphasizing what we named a "limited random walk" category. And time plays a huge role, especially when limited by a finite card distribution.

Differently to the random walk concept described in P. Griffin book, for example, at baccarat any random walk will be hugely affected by a finite card distribution and by the asymmetrical force acting here and there on the shoe.

We may infer that most part of random walks are not following a perfect 50/50 proposition not only because on average one side gets a 15.86% advantage on 8.6% portion of total hands, but as finite card ranks are whimsically placed along the same shoe and not favoring deeply one side or another.

That's why a simple card counting strategy won't get the player any substantial help, even though is made by a sophisticated software.

In fact, a simple card counting strategy is just a form of one simple random walk getting deep deviations and almost always no valuable predictivity.

To say the truth, the so called "baccarat perfect strategy" presented in some books is just bighornshi.t and not only because it will make insignificant profits.
We better adopt a silly "follow the lucky or contrast the unlucky" betting strategy (when it seems to be applicable) as at least it will involve more than one random walk.

The partial unrandomness of the shoe, a well known factor by almost every pro player, remains the main factor why this game may be beatable itlr.
At baccarat there are no hunches or superstition or supernatural forces working, cards are there and the fact that some players seem to guess right or wrong for long must be interpreted just as a natural product of a random walk.

I mean that time remains a huge factor to try to get an advantage, but if cards are perfectly or almost perfectly shuffled we are wasting money and that's why I stress about the importance to not play some shoes or to wager very few hands per shoe.   

as. 

Have no time to respond to all your comments, anyway very shortly:

1- The N 8/9 side bet will disappear very soon IMO as there are some teams attacking it and getting huge profits.

2- I do not understand what you meant.

3- You are correct.

4- You are correct.

5- The main condition where F-7 will come out more likely is when 8s and 9s are removed from the deck.

6- Nope, Player wins more hands having a standing 7 and not a standing 6 as any P standing point will not elicit the Banker to the correct drawing move when it has a 6.

9- Itlr my statement is perfectly true.

10- Absolutely agree with that.

as.     

Thanks for your inputs Al, I need time to respond.

Generally speaking, by now I'm only attending HS rooms where players like to follow any kind of pattern, mostly "human" WL patterns. That is they care more about the various players' destiny than what the display shows.

And it's not a coincidence that every long term winner won't place any money on side bets.
In some way I tend to disagree with that.

as. 

Quote from: Albalaha on September 21, 2019, 06:01:17 AM
Come up with a data where we have only 2 wins in 20 spins and the later 80 spins have less than 28 wins.  I won't die even if this happens somehow due to the RTM principles.

I fear this could happen, a couple of years ago i've watched a shoe unbelievably shifted to Banker's side followed by another one where Player seemed to be an inexistent option. I can't' say how many Players had come out, I remember the display where the sixth row was almost horizontally filled with red dots crossing the streaks several times.
There was just one player betting $20.000 a hand (maximum limit) and I remember floormen whispering "at least we are collecting the 5% commission" LOL.
At the end this guy had his seat literally filled with white and 25k chips and shared four bottles of the most expensive champagne to everyrone being there.

I've never seen a thing like that in my millions of pc generated shoes data, that's why I stress about the importance to consider how good or bad the LIVE shoes are shuffled.

as. 

I know at least a dozen of players making a living at this game and the common trait is they make very few bets. Some of them know a 0.1% of what me and you know about the game, yet they are long term winners.
Mathematically this move is sound. Since the game remains EV-, the probability to be ahead of something will be higher when betting very few hands, say that the best move is to wager everything only one time.
If in this precise instant every bac player in the world will wager Banker, casinos will lose money as B>P even though Banker is payed less than 1:1.
After this hypothetical hand, casinos will win money no matter what.
Obviously if casinos will lose money, players will get something of it.

And altogether obvious is the fact that the more we stay and play the better we are liked by casinos.

Ask the casinos if they would like to fade ten $20.000 wagers made on ten different occasions or if they'd like more ten $20k hands made on the same session.
Mathematically it doesn't change their expectation. In practical terms this simple different approach means a lot.

More on that later.

as. 

Quote from: Albalaha on September 17, 2019, 04:35:18 AM
A working formula makes me safe during the worst possible and to recover later and not pushing too much in the worst like 30/100.

I believe you, yet imo the problem lies in the word "later". How much later?

In my blog I've presented an "unbeatable progression", meaning that it can't be overcome by the worst successions in the world (ok, almost). Still without a proper bet selection, a player utilizing such progression could easily stay in the negative zone for a long time.

That's not a conceptual problem, of course, but a practical problem as the vast majority of players want to win or breaking even at least per every session played.

And this is just the main reason why players go at home broke.

as. 
 

Nope, at least when playing at baccarat.

Since any shoe is the product of a definite card distribution, we do not know if previous very bad patterns will be followed by favourable patterns. Not in the same shoe, not in the next ones.

Sayed that, you are absolutely correct that we should investigate the fluctuations in term of sigma values.
But such fluctuations must be restricted in the correct terms, again it's the bet selection which helps.

I'm 100% certain that no one bac pit would be happy to have me, you, Sputnik and Alrelax playing together.

Probably Al is the best player to transform the "bad" in "good", you are a master to control the deviations, me and Sputnik will do the rest. :-)

as. 

Dr B. Kaiser magistrally stated in his book that
people who make their living at numbers are always more comfortable dealing with the high likelihood of something's not happening than the slim chance of a rare event's occurring

In some sense, rarity works for casinos as give the players the illusion to beat the game (bac players like to bet toward long homogenous situations) and common events work for serious and patient players unless rarity come out.

Therefore in order to consistently win we must restrict the rarity appearance trying to take advantage of the most likely situations.

And only an accurate card distribution study could help us to define better the issue. 

as. 

Hi dear Lungyeh.

Imo and according to my studies there are only two kind of favourable card distributions for the players:

- an astounding homogeneously rank distribution or

- a heavy key cards distribution shifting to one side.

Notice that I'm not talking about real outcomes as itsr (in the short run) they could take whimsical shapes.
Thus I'm focusing about ranks and key cards.
Everything falling in between will act in house's favor itlr, no matter if we are lucky, geniuses or whatever.

Now, it's virtually impossible to physically put ranks and key cards for long not belonging to one of those two categories, a thing that only a software can do.

Fortunately at the time I'm writing CSM and manually shuffled shoes can't refrain to produce favourable card distributions, especially CSM as when the same deck is "biased" it remains biased for at least 2-3 more shoes.
Of course that doesn't mean that the same deck is going to produce the same outcomes' lines.

At high stakes rooms where each deck is fresh, house will get a higher advantage over the players and it's not a coincidence that some serious players want to bet very few hands or not at all if things are not fitting their plan.

We can bet everything we have on our name that it's quite easy to spot the players who make a living at this game: they perfectly adhere to the black jack rule where no mid-entry is allowed as they'll join the table from the start.

as. 

Hi Dilon, thanks! 

Let's take the shoe as a succession of fresh decks, the card distribution is A,2,3,4,5....K
We'll deal the cards in a baccarat game.

First hand: Player A, 3  Banker 2,4  drawing card is 5. Player wins by 9 over B 6.
Second hand: Player 6, 8  Banker 7, 9.  drawing card is a 10. Banker wins with a 6.
Third hand: Player J, K  Banker Q, A. Drawing cards are 2 and 3. Banker wins with 4 vs P 2.
Fourth hand: Player 4, 6  Banker 5, 7. drawing cards are 8 and 9. Player wins with 8 vs 1.
Fifth hand: Player 10, Q banker J, K. Drawing cards are A and 2. Banker wins with 2 vs 1.
Sixth hand: Player 3,5 Banker 4,6. Player wins by a natural 8.
Seventh hand: 7, 9 Banker 8, 10  Banker wins with a natural 8.
Eight hand: Player J, K Banker Q-A  Drawing cards are 2 and 3. Banker wins with 4 vs 2.
After this hand the process repeats infinitely up to the end of the shoe.

Let's see what happened in those eight hands:

P
B
B
P
B
P
B
B


We see that only hand #2 produced an asymmetrical hand and such probability is way larger than expected (12.5% vs the real 8.4%).

The increasing rank order of the deck of course helps the side acting last (Banker) but it's more interesting to notice what an homogeneous rank distribution (13/13) will act in terms of outcomes even though the cards are not featuring a perfect increasing order.

as. 

   







             

Itlr key cards are dealt asymmetrically by any means.
Itlr drawing hands and standing/naturals points are dealt asymmetrically by any means.

Itlr any four card point higher than the opposite four card point is going to win by a nearly 2:1 ratio and, of course, is dealt asymmetrically.

Itlr any third card helping or not the Player side is dealt asymmetrically and the same is true about the sixth card. 

Besides the original increasing order made manually, per any deck different ranks are dealt asymmetrically.

Baccarat is a game of constant asymmetricity working at different values.

as.







 



 

Instead of thinking about outcomes we should focus about cards distribution.
Do not forget that a large portion of hands will be resolved by the first four cards dealt alternatively.
For example, if we could bet about getting at least a natural point on either side this game wouldn't exist as a large part of hands will be determined right after the first cards are dealt.
We do not know which side will be kissed by such natural but we know that more than 1/3 of the time this event will happen.
Notice that when a natural will land, the game is a perfect coin flip proposition, meaning that there's no point to bet Banker. That is we're betting a zero negative edge game either on Player bets and on Banker bets at EZ tables.

Of course naturals are more likely when formed by a ten-8 or ten-9 combination than by the other card possibilities and 8s and 9s favor Banker only when dealt as fifth card (asym hands).
Therefore when we think that the next four cards will contain at least one of the possible 64 8s/9s, we know that it's more likely to get a natural.

Now, each of the all possible 64 cards rank will be distributed asymmetrically and the more such asymmetricity will be present better is the probability to assess their impact over the next outcomes.
And aces, 2s or 3s, for example, will involve a larger less impact than other key cards because they are going to produce more drawing hands than standing hands.
No way itlr a drawing hand will be favorite to win, especially at Player side.
But as players we are forced to work into an infinite succession of finite distributions.

After long tests made on live shoes compared to pc generated shoes, we've found that the more the key ranks are asymmetrically distributed, better are the chances to guess which side will be favorite to win on very few spots.

It's like as a given pattern should be more due than expected and obviously such thing cannot happen per every shoe dealt.

Thus the main problem is concentrated to spot the shoes which are really playable and neglect those which aren't.
And the fortune of casinos is that 99.99% of bac players want to guess every shoe dealt no fkng matter what.

as.

In few days I'll try to explain how a possible unrandomness could be the key to beat this game.

If you think that baccarat could be beaten you are reading the right pages.

as.

Interesting topic.

Somewhere I've read that classifying the last 5 numbers repeating or not could be a wise way to detect how things are working on that wheel.
I agree.

At a single zero wheel, the probability to hit the last 5 numbers (or any 5 numbers) is 0.135, obviously this value tend to be true only itlr.
For practical purposes we could consider separately a full cycle of 37 spins then  assessing such probability each time. 

Differently to man actioned wheels, softwares working at automated wheels tend to produce less randomized outcomes as there's less bouncing, less number of ball and rotor velocities and a constant point of ball's launch.

Of course there is some bet selection to be made along with the use of a strong progression helped by the fact that the payment will be huge (32:1).

There are several IB machines where around any cycle the probability to hit one of those 5 last numbers is 100%.

as.