Nice reply Al. Thanks.

It's quite known that I'm hardly working to set up a no brainer mechanical method capable to get the best of it no matter how whimsically will get the hands distribution.

Many shoes are not playable at all just for the reasons Al outlined in his several posts.

This as sh.it tends to come out in clusters than being balanced in subsequent portions of the shoe.
As well as good outcomes can be detected right at the start.

Into a finite and dependent model, probability works by various degrees and whereas some levels are "unlikely" reached, our best move is to not play at all.

Notice that imo we do not want to follow "unlikely" lines, we just want to get rid of them.

Baccarat is a game of balancements and deviations, whenever a given deviation is "due" we follow it, whenever is harshly going against the "expected" (it's sufficent to lose 2 bets in a row) we better wait the next shoe.

Imo never ever try to adhere at an "unlikely" distribution as it's more inclined to form difficult detectable results.

It's like poker where to get an edge you have to fold some possible best hands.

as.
 




 

 


 





 

 

Baccarat provides an important feature many times we forget about.
The casino's winning probability cannot be less than 50% unless bets are placed on Banker side.
Yet the economical return favors casino every bet we'll make.

Thus even if we're the world champion geniuses of bet selection, we are still playing a 48.94% or 48.76% proposition on our winning probability unit wager.

The only way one could lose only 1.06% or 1.24% or an average  mix of two of the total money wagered is by flat betting.
It doesn't matter which kind of selection one utilizes, by flat betting one is math expected to lose from 1.06% to 1.24% of his/her total bets.

Actually most bac players want to recover losses by increasing the bets, but they forget that the more they'll increase the wagers better are the opportunities to lose everything.
The same is about increasing the wagers when positive streaks seem to come out.

There's no one single possibility in the world that after a decent trial of shoes one can get the best of it by increasing the wagers unless certain "battles" provide a very low variance impact.

Say we have found an astonishing -4 +4 random walk working onto two opposite situations.
We know that when the +4 level is reached an unlikely still possible 8 losing streak is going to happen (that is a shifting force going toward -4 point). Are we going to bet?
No fkng way.
The same about a +3 or +2 random walk position.

We do not want to raise our bets to win just one fkng lousy unit, we want to get the best of it by increasing the probability to get one unit profit immediately or, at least, after two bets.

Say we are going to join an HS table after forming a bet selection site team, where each member put $5000 at risk . Our standard unit will be $10.000 and the maximum wager on that table is $20.000.
Our bankroll is $200.000, that is 20 units. That is 40 members.
Our goal will be to win just one unit after 3-4 shoes dealt, so every member will get $250 and the probability to lose the entire 20 bets for each player is very close to zero. Say it's zero.
In fact the probability to win one unit after 3-4 shoes dealt is 99.999%.

Are you going to join such team or do you think you'll get a better edge?

I know many players tell you they'll get a better edge but they are deadly wrong.

We do want to lower the variance at most and, by the way, nobody has shown to you that a given method can get the best of it by such "low" win rate.

Still you can't be wrong about this "silly" method, it's just a matter of waiting the right opportunities to come along.

And actually it's what we do, putting at risk 20 units to win just one unit after 3-4 shoes dealt by 99.999% accuracy.

Imo one needs to risk a relatively huge bankroll to win something after a given period of time, think that casinos are going to put at risk virtually infinite bankrolls to win our miserable buy-ins.

Guess what casinos think when we're constantly betting $100 or $300 (EV- situations) and suddendly we're raising the bets to $10.000 where our EV will be positive.
They'll think we are i.diots, but they'll fear our bets as they need 100 or 33.3 wrong bets to balance our previous no edge wagers.
Situations that cannot come along.

as.   





 







     
 





 
 

 

Very interesting thoughts from Al and Jim in a way or another.
I'll print this thread for good measure.

What happened to me is that I won too many bets deviating from my very selected betting plan and I know very well that there's no way to be right multiple times wagering many bets without having to expect multiple losses.
The numerous Margaritas I've drunk didn't help either.

Fortunately I wasn't mentoring anyone and probably this is the reason why I played so bad.

I hope this lesson will help me and many other reading the forum. 

as.

   

 

Speaking more practically.

Say the actual shoe is:

B
PP
BB
PPP
B
P
B
P
BBBB
PPP

Now what are we betting?

Maybe B as in the past we got a PPP streak or do we try to get a longer P streak?

Say next outcome is B then the shoe is:

B
PP
BB
PPP
B
P
B
P
BBBB
PPP
B

Now are we betting to get another B streak or to get a single B therefore wagering P?

I already know the answer.
The average bac player will bet B, period.

Needless to say, next outcome (ignoring ties) will be B 50.68% of the times and P the remaning 49.32%.
Average bac player has lost 1.06% of his money when betting B and the very few players who chose P lost 1.24% of their money.

I mean, could exist some additional factors helping us to get a possible edge on this bet?

as.





 

Yep Al! Still many players like to wager via strong progressions.

Back to the subject.

When we consider two opposing events A and B having the same (or almost the same) probability to appear, we'll expect deviations according to the binomial model.
Such events could be as simple as a Banker or Player hand or highly complicated specific situations (for example what's the next winning hand after a side had won with a natural 7 vs a drawing hand, etc)

No matter how sophisticated is our approach to select two opposing A and B situations, itlr everything will equalize with the well known unbeatable deviations (burdened with the vig).

Wait.
This is true whether the game is perfectly randomized and it's very difficult to negate that shoes do not present such feature.
Thus in order to try to demonstrate that shoes are not that random, instead of assessing the randomness by statistical tests (chi-square, etc), we should work more empirically, say thinking in more practical terms as it's what really counts.

If I'm able to find out the spots when two opposing situations do not adhere to the common deviations (that is they are more "restricted") I'm on cloud nine.

In fact, there's no way I could spot favourable situations per se, the only hope is to get what I name "limited random walk", a sort of pendulum which moves from the left to the right and vice versa within a restricted range and crossing several times the 0 point.
Since I do not think I'm a genius capable to dispute math laws, the only explanation is that cards distribution of every single shoe couldn't be that random as we think.

Therefore and thanks to my long analysis I dare to state that not every A/B opposing situation will produce the same expected deviations and, more importantly, that not every shoe is playable as some shoes are so polarized at the start that we better get rid off them without betting a dime.
I mean that we can't try to be right on every shoe dealt as many times the possible unrandom effect can't be properly grasped by human eyes.

And this is proven by the fact that no matter how many random walks we wish to set up, a given card distribution will present similar lines on each of them.

Now the question is how to classify a "not playable" shoe.
Next time.

as.

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. 



   

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.