Progressions

My experience with progressions was at Roulette.

Had a buddy "invent" a system years ago (turns out it was a martingale). He swore he and i would be rich. He took copious notes of our sessions for his book that he planned to write.

Here it is:

Find a half empty roulette table (don't want people waiting to sit down), buy-in....and wait for a repeat of three 'sames' on the "even-money" bets (three consecutive reds, blacks, even, or odds). Bet one unit. If you win, wait for three more 'sames' and go back to one unit. If you lose, keep doubling until you win.

The Croupier was cool. She knew what I was doing and let me dig my own grave. It was fine with her for me to sit out as long as I wanted to, as long as there wasn't anyone waiting to buy-in.

After 8 hours, I was up around $950. After 10 hours, I had lost my $950 and was another $1100 in the hole (13-straight reds tapped me out). I did get a free buffet for my efforts, however.

Stupidity has a high price tag.

many players started out with a progression system before they wised up and moved on to advantage play. Everyone makes mistakes.

But reading bacdk, there has been alot of talk about progressions. Just adding my personal experience.

Progression players who wise up often make good advantage players, since they already have made an attempt to beat the game with a structured betting system based on an (albeit incorrect) theoretical premise. Hope for everyone, I guess.

In fact, they take pride in being ignorant. They don't even have enough brains to even add a series of numbers correctly, or perform a simple multiplication, yet they think they are smart enough to beat a game, that millions of others have tried to beat and failed.

Step 1: Dismiss all mathematics. Claim it doesn't apply to this 'special' situation. They don't understand math so that is easy. And of course, a ball spinning in a wheel, or pasteboard cards dealt on a green felt surface, is much more complicated than weather patterns, or space shuttles, or ocean temperatures and tides, and all the things that math does 'work' predicting.

Step 2: Claim the game has changed. It is now a 'new' game. It is the game of the 21st century -- that way you eliminate all the 'old' failures.

Step 3: Seize on some old principle, like a progression, first developed sometime in the 13th century, and used unsuccesfully ever since. Claim this 'new' method produces amazing results on the 'new' game.

Step 4: Remain ignorant at all times. That way no one can mount a sophisticated argument that your method is wrong. You are just to 'dumb' to understand any proof.

I once unsuccessfully spent a long conversation trying to convince a Math Master's student at stanford that progressions don't magically turn every game into a winning game. I explained it to him using math he more than could understand, but he still didn't want to believe. Too many people (including some advantage players) have trouble looking past the facts when all they can see is the lure of easy money.

I eventually somewhat convinced him his progressions strategy wouldn't work using that logic that if there was a strategy that simple, everyone would be using it.

Rutager