Thanks all for your replies.

No matter how is the strategy, positive and negative results will come out along according to the binomial probability.
Since our enemy is not the house edge but the variance, we know that part of the shoes will present more negative situations than positive situations even if we are trying to reverse the probability by following trends or altering our strategy.

Imo the better countermeasure to take is not to play the shoes who are not adhering to our plan and not hoping that the following section of the same shoe will balance the previous negative outcomes.

Same is true about those positive shoes which can easily transform themselves into nightmares (Al' turning points).

Following this approach I've schematized my results as:

immediate win= +++
win after a loss= ++
immediate loss= - -
two losses in a row= - - - -

Notice that the total amount is unequal (5 + and 6 -) as there's always a vig working.

Our goal should be oriented to get a zero sum, meaning we are compelled to spot and ride the positive situations and not chasing the negative territory.

Unfortunately as I sayed above, some shoes start negative and remain negative as it's a natural thing that MUST happen.
And negative shoes are presenting negative clusters as well as positive shoes are presenting positive clusters. But remember the different wieght.

as. 



   

Imo to win at baccarat itlr, our plan must be considered in cycles adhering at most by taking into account just two steps:

1-  winning the first hand wagered is of outmost importance;
2- winning the second hand whether the first was lost.

This simple two step wagers plan considered by cycles must have each a higher 75% of success.

When it happens to be wrong at both opportunities, we need to be very careful to place more bets as strong negative variance is going to come out more often than we think.
Thus waiting to get a fictional positive outcome is not sufficient to restart the betting.

The reason is that baccarat is very similar to a coin flip endless proposition, therefore WW, WL, LW and LL sequences are presenting whimsically but itlr they'll be equal.

We cannot guess the lenght of the streaks, therefore we should simplify the problem by considering columns as singled or streaky (any streak).
It doesn't matter what strategy we like to adopt, what really counts is whether how many times we'll win the first or the second hand (really or fictionally), then classifying the results.

Since any bac shoe is a finite limited model, we know that more often than not a losing series won't be balanced by a perfect counterpart and the same is true taken in the opposite direction.

I mean that some shoes cannot be played at all as we do not want to find us in the position to guess the opposite of what our plan is dictating.

In a word, we'll be in a far better shape not playing certain shoes not fitting our plan at the start than trying to follow the actual shoe or, even worse, trying to hope to get balanced outcomes that have no room to show up.

Professional players like to bet a lot on very few spots and they never want to chase previous losses and it's not a coincidence that they'll stop the betting after two consecutive losses.

as.

Sometimes casinos are working hard to get something in our favor...

A couple of months ago a large casino introduced two EZ baccarat tables where  Dragon and Panda wagers were not removed after a tie.
That means that we could cut off a 9.5% percentage from the losing hands making Dragon bet an EV+ wager.

Do you think the house did realize the mistake?
No way. They simply kept away the tables as almost nobody was playing there...

as.




 

High stakes players willing to hear strategic suggestions and giving the mentor a cut on their profits simply want to get more winning hands than losing ones.
They do not give a fk about progressions, stop losses or MM issues.
They mainly like to adopt a wise flat betting strategy as they know that at worst they won't lose more than math expected (minus the huge comps they are entitled to get or deals on losses made with the casino).
A luxury almost no one bac player in the world would think about.

Thus only a proper bet selection might have the best of the game by 1 trillion of certainty.

There's no way a math disadvantage could be overcome by "human" countermeasures like MM, stop losses and progressions: such are just human illusory worthless tools.

If our plan is properly set up, the more we'll play the more we'll win.

Period.

as. 






 




   

Very soon a strict mechanical method which should help us to define when, how much and how long to bet.

as. 

Merry Christmas to everyone!!! 

as.

Thanks LungYeh,

Merry Christmas!!!

as.

Good job! 

But softwares can't teach us about the actual conditions we're playing in.

If roulettes worldwide were adhering to the random.org site production I'd be the most wealthy guy in the universe.

as. 

After years of studying baccarat I've come to the conclusion that the only way to win at this game is by properly assessing the number and distribution of BP shifts per each shoe.

Each shoe features an average probability to get this or that, first we should restrict the number of such this and that.

We cannot care less about long streaks, they are the best way amateurs try to get a profit by.
Long streaks or homogeneous patterns or predominance factors are just post hoc findings.
They will come at the right time or not.
As players we are compelled to restrict the "right time" within "now" or "very shortly" terms. A thing that the random world is laughing at.

Baccarat shifts move more from P to B than from B to P but itlr (and intermediate terms too) the number of BP shifts is equal, actually is slightly oriented to get more shifts than a perfect 50/50 proposition dictates.
Such conclusion came from testing millions of shoes.

We know that in a 50/50 perfect proposition itlr the number of singles and doubles will be very close to 75%.
Of course B singles and B doubles itlr will get a lesser amount than 75% compensated by the P outcomes.

Really?

No way.

A large sample study about sd values calculated on 3+ or 4+ streaks formed on both sides tell us that the number of shoes featuring a low than average number of such streaks will outbalance the number of shoes featuring a higher than average number of those streaks.

Of course along any shoe the probability to get an higher than average number of such streaks will come out more often than not whether those streaks had come out by a higher pace than expected.

Why?
Because actual card distribution which produced such "unexpected" long streaks has consumed space to get the more likely shifthing mood.
And the same is true regarding more likely situations.

The effect is working on every shoe dealt in the universe but it's more likely to happen when we have reasons to think that the distribution won't be perfectly random.

And in the actual bac world we're not betting against pc distributions.

as.

That's nice Al! :-)

Every bac player should think about this.

An almost 50/50 slight dependent distribution will form certain unidirectional results for some time.
Not every shoe will be so polarized but most part of shoes will present such feature.

Of course B/P gaps or other too variance affected outcomes won't give us many of hint.

Say we have won (or lost) 5-6 flat betting units so far (half or more of the actual shoe).

Now, are we going to bet toward the deviations happened so far or to get a kind of balancement situations?

Mathematicians will say it doesn't matter which kind of direction we'll take.
But they are wrong.

Since we cannot guess hands, the more we'll play the higher will be the probability to get opposite results already gotten, thus taking an unidrectional strategy sooner or later (I'm speaking about 4-5 shoes not more) will surely fail.

After 5 shoes played, the probability to be ahead is just 20% or so.
Thus, after 5 shoes, the probability to get some opposite results is very high at some point.

Guess what?

Balancements are going to appear when deviation situations will cross a 2 or 3 cutoff point.
Nobody wants to play a 2 or 3 or higher negative proposition hoping to get a single positive outcome, therefore a smart player would know when things are going to change.

I mean that it's not wrong to follow a positive pattern providing to have secured a profit, but it's highely recommended to stop the betting toward positive deviations whenever a 2 or 3 negative step is going to show up.

More on that tomorrow

as.
 



   









 

There's an interesting line of thought suggesting that the first half or 2/3 results of a shoe will slightly affect the probability of the remaining outcomes.

More later.

as.








   

Quote from: Jimske on November 28, 2018, 09:34:34 PM
Right, very rare.  But lesser productions of P single not so rare and is why I use the 1's as a key to help determine the bias.  We can use a bet placement that exploits this.  Any positive expectation (weighted count, regression to mean, etc.) has escaped me.  Enter the "educated" guess.
Assuming you or anyone has identified such it no doubt requires a potential long wait.  Waiting even for Sputnik's Ecart still produces the problem with variance due to the low odds.  We'd have to be in the neighborhood of 75%+ prediction to make it practical.

Do you disagree?

Nope, you are completely right.

We need some time to consistently win in the same way casinos need time to let the math edge or variance destroying players' bankrolls.
Only recreational players try to win every or almost every single situation dealt and that's not possible.

Imo, time and "space" are the two most important factors when playing baccarat.
Time allows math and variance to show up and space is the physical factor that works by time frames.

Spaces can be reduced by bankroll managements, nothing we can do about time but waiting.

as. 

Although your "sections and turning points" post is very valuable, we can't forget that power of math and statistics.

For example, we know for sure that somewhere banker will produce a streak or a given amount of streaks. There's no way that a given shoe will produce just one B streak, but we surely know that very rare given shoes won't produce a P single.
The answer is easy: streaks consume a well more room than singles but B side is more prone to produce streaks as it's more likely to happen.

Say we want to bet a very complicated and hyper selected strategic plan oriented to lose only when a shoe won't present a P single AND at least two B streaks.
We won't lose by 1 billion accuracy.

as.   

   

Thanks Jimskie!!!

After all singles provide less issues than streaks. A single is a single, streaks are of many kinds.
I mean that if we hope to get an initial streak, we should be happy to win the first hand. If we keep flat betting the streak, we need at least a streak of three to be ahead providing we continue to wager the streak until it stops.

Third card flow.

Everybody has noticed that more often than not  third cards greatly helps or totally not the player side. Sometimes miracles happen but they do not alter too much the shoe texture.
The same, this time more easy to understand, when player is standing and banker is drawing a third card. Obviously we do not want to find ourselves in such situation.

Remember that from a general point of view, a third card is a helpful card more often than not.
Asians like to shout "monkey" when they are betting a possible not drawing banker and waiting for the third card to show up, but they forget that the probability to get a monkey is "just" 30.76%.
Thus nearly 70% of the times they are dog to see what they wish to see.

Of course a third card could be an 8 or 9 or an high card damaging the Player or Banker hand. Or this card is going to make an unbeatable or hugely favorite P hand. Banker has the advantage to act after Player but it has no gain to draw if P is standing.

So how to consider a third card as good or bad from a player or banker perspective?

First, when playing baccarat we shouldn't want to see a third card falling on the side we are betting into.

If it happens we are losing money, except when we catch the quite rare pure drawing-drawing situations and we're betting P side.

When betting P side we want a standing point, when we are betting B side we want P drawing and B having any point different from 0, 1 or 2.

Nonetheless, third card has a sort of natural flow in direction to either help or not the side we are betting into.

Most people don't focus enough on third card nature as a large part of outcomes is decided by first four initial cards.

More later.

as.












 




 







     

Al, of course your post provides important informations

Almost all the time, people cannot cool off or stop playing and thus the disaster will strike.  Probably 99.98 to 99.99.9% of the times players win.  IMO and Experience.


This part is of extraordinary importance.

Bac players lose a lot more than expected by math as they want to recover too rapidly.
Or simply they want to recover trying to guess the unguessable.
They start betting side bets when losing and actually they should do right the opposite.

Simply put, people win less on positive patterns and lose more on negative ones.
In reality the sum is always zero (plus the vig burden).

Back to topics.

Every random game is formed by streaks and singles, the same about baccarat regarding the quality of the hands (not the results).
The exact points evaluation don't add anything worth of it; it's too complex and quite unreliable for the volatlity impact.

People emphasizes positively or negatively when "miracles" decide the hand outcome.
They shout with joy when their bet on player 4 catches a third card 7 and banker with 5 catches another 5. They win with 1 vs zero but they should be unhappy as they have totally mistaken which side to bet on. In fact P 4 - B 5 is one of the best opportunities to get an advantage (on B, of course).
Miracles (there are tons of them) are just a very small part of the total happenings at baccarat. And they tend to alter the general flow of probabilities very rarely.
They seem to do but they do not. Forget the hands won or lost by miracles. They tend to confuse.

Regarding the quality of initial 4-card hands we have four main fields to register singles or streaks at either side:

natural/standing points  -one side
drawing points  -one side
P drawing/ B standing 3-4-5-6 (asym hand) -both sides
P drawing/ B drawing

The very best player in the universe is the person capable to get the P draw/ B standing 3-4-5-6 situation at least one time over 8-9 attempts (mathematically it's about 1/11). Naturally he will bet always Banker.

The second best player in the world is the player capable to get a drawing hand on P side at least 73-75% of the times. Again he's going to wager Banker.

The third best player is the Player bettor capable to get at least 45% of the time a standing/natural hand.

Period.

You'll notice that the worst option we could have at baccarat is to get a drawing/drawing situation. It's true that if we bet P side we are playing a zero edge game but we are in huge trouble if we are wagering B (as it's payed 0.95:1 or prone to get some taxed hands as F-7, etc).

So not everytime a P drawing hand is good for Banker. Fortunately the pure B drawing hands are few (0, 1 and 2); 3,4,5,6 elicit the precious asym situation and 7,8 and 9 stand.

Fast is fine but accuracy is everything (Wyatt Earp)

At baccarat we'll win itlr only if we are able to catch the various flows (S, D, N, etc) that advantage mathematically one side.
Easy to see that it's impossible to be accurate playing every hand or most hands. It's like to admit that we are able to catch every single flow happening at the table.

Therefore now we can rely upon two different levels of thinking and classification: results and quality of the first initial points.
Sometimes those two levels collide and those are the best opportunities to put a real wager.

By now we have talked about first four initial cards. But also the third card plays a huge, albeit secondary, role.
Next time.

as.