Turnaround

I've become interested in a betting system called Turnaround. According to it's inventor, Ian Harmer, it's "a method of money management which could also be called a "streak system" because it relies on the simple truth that while the majority of wins and losses in" blackjack "are isolated incidents, many of them come in bunches." You can find an essay he wrote explaining it here. http://3738.nzspace.com/turnaround.htm

It's a pretty complicated explanation. I've read it several times, and I still don't understand it, so I was hoping some of you could help me out with that. Can anyone explain this in layman's terms for me or refer me to another link other than the essay I cited above where it's explained?

Also, I'm wondering if any of you have used this strategy or any other betting systems with the premise that you can exploit winning streaks in blackjack and had success with it over a long period of time in a land (not online) casino?

I've read it several times, and I still don't understand it

That is because it doesn't work. There is nothing to understand. You cannot win money in the long-term (or even the short-term without luck) at a negative expectation game using any system to manipulate the bets, no matter how complex. Harmer was just massively deluded.

Many people argued the toss with Harmer on rec.gambling.blackjack trying to persuade Harmer of his error. You can read the archives at groups.google.com. But, really, you just need to know Turnaround and all systems like it are built on foundations of sand and are ultimately doomed to failure.

At the following link at rec.gambling.blackjack

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/rec.gambling.blackjack/browse_thread/thread/8bd5fff3c7f1ec7f/9333a8fc6949c785?q=rec.gambling.blackjack++Ian+Harmer&rnum=2#9333a8fc6949c785

Ian Harmer cited a bunch of nanosecond.com links, but when I click on the nanosecond links he cited such as this one

http://www.nanosecond.com/~turnaround/simscore.txt

I get a "this page cannot be displayed" message. Why is this info no longer on the Internet?

Click on the link below to BJ21's explanation as to why money management systems are not money makers.

I know the math wizards will say this is voodoo, but I gotta know. Please save me from my dilusions. On many occassions, I've played into an increasingly negative pack while level betting one unit, i.e., a waiting bet. Lets say you want to walk away because of a negative count, but you just finished winning in a positive count. You play another hand so it looks natural to leave once you lose. Lets say you win and the count goes more neg. Why not press that bet since you "weren't supposed to win it in the first place". Lets say you win again. You have just won in a negative EV situation. Again, you could press some of it or pull some of it back and play another hand while waiting to lose before you take a hike. If this continues for several hands or many hands as you "inadvertently" play into a positive pack, which occassionally it will, you've just won a fair amount of money in a negative situation (actually a positive situation that you didn't have knowledge of based on the count). You can play the hands based on indices to minimize the potential for a big loss should you split to 4 hands and double on each one, for ex. If this happens, I suspect the count will have improved due to the small cards making up these hands. What is wrong with this and is this not one way to take advantage of a "streak"/positive pack. If you lose you walk, no worse for wear. If you win, you play on, and maybe even use the winnings to press. After all, if you had walked on the first negative count even though you had just won a hand or more, you would not have won these hands in the negative count. Is this like "free money" or "playing with the house's money"? Okay, let me have it voodoomeisters.

... but have you never lost a series of max bets when the count was high? Sure you have. So why would it surprise you that sometimes you win some of those bets when the count is in the tank?

Nobody should leave while winning, I'd agree with that, but if you are winning, and the count is continueing to tank (it happens), why would you want to press the bets? One of those parlays is going to finally go down and so will the time you wasted watching it happen.

I'd stick around all right as long as I was winning, even if the count was going South, but I'd be pocketing the win each time.

is a nutcase. He had this wildly complex progression system - more complex than counting - that he claimed was a winner. He claimed he had sims to prove it. I examined his sims. They weren't sims at all. No BJ rules, no cards, nothing like BJ. He just took Win/Lose/Push percentages and randomly applied them in Excel. And the WLP stats were based on the game in the original Beat the Dealer. That is single deck, S17, Surrender which has a positive expectation using basic strategy. His "sim" also proved that every progression system works.

He wrote a paper on the system as a math term paper and was flunked. No joke.

www.Blackjack-Scams.com

Turnaround surely is a complex betting system. I didn't expect to find people who believe in Ian Harmer's system on this (Stanley Wong's) website. I just want to understand the rules of it, so I can try it out for myself. So did anyone ever get Ian Harmer's Turnaround rules down?

Every time he went to the casino and lost he would add an exception to the rules. So the rules kept getting longer and longer. It was quite funny. His "simulator" "proved" that anyone flat-betting basic strategy would be guaranteed to win.

Perhaps I am just very simplistic but basing things on streaks seem to only really work if you actually know that a streak is happening. I never seem to be smart enough to know. If I have won three in a row, I just do not seem to know if it will grow to 4 or 5 or 20. Tell me how I can figure this out and I will play progressions.
Hell, if I could tell when a streak was coming I would probably also be capable of knowing the next card out of the shoe,the dealers hole card each hand, the winning lottery number and anything else I might want to know. Makes blackjack an easy game.

Yes, winning streaks can happen in negative counts. They are utterly unpredictable though. If you press your bets, you will wind up betting more money when the house has a greater advantage. In the long run, you will lose the total amount of money you bet in negative situations times the house advantage.

What progressionists and streak players do is isolate certain events to the exclusion of all other possible outcomes. If I win 5 in a row and lose the sixth bet, I have made a profit.

Yes, but what about the times you press your bet and immediately lose? Add up all the possible outcomes, and you will discover a net loss.

abandoned it. Streaks, both winning and losing, are a very small part of the overall game. He lacks understanding of the game and like his holding bet, after a loss, his development is also in a holding pattern. It only takes a few sentences to describe what he's doing.
Because he can't explain simply what he's doing, shows he's confused himself. There is some value in trying to understand what he was trying to do, but not to waste money on.

MANY times, especially in DD, the "good" cards will come out early, resulting in you winning 1, 2 or 3 hands in a row with the minimum bet out and the count tanking.

Instead of parlaying, remember that bit of "good fortune" has a price later in the shoe when the crap cards start coming out and the dealer starts making those 5- and 6-card 20s and 21s.

Harmer admits that his system is similar to Oscar's Grind, and that's really all you need to know. It attempts to use a positive ("up as you win") progression to "exploit winning streaks," but since the amount of the increase is really dependent on how much you are down in your "current series," it really behaves more like a negative ("chase your losses") progression. If you combine the logical fallacies from two different ways to lose faster, what would you expect to get? Anyway, the fact that it behaves more like a negative progression allows you to predict that in the long run (or maybe even much sooner), you will probably have a lot of winning "sessions" with small wins, with just enough disastrous sessions to give back your winnings plus the house vig. End of story. Adding "stop-loss" rules will reduce the amount you stand to lose in any one session, but that's a meaningless concept with respect to your inherent disadvantage. That's because stop-loss rules will also increase the number of losing sessions exactly enough to make the rule useless in improving your disadvantage.

If your own personal results are better than that prediction, then I can assure you that it has everything to do with luck and nothing whatsoever to do with "clever" betting.

He claims that the difference between his system and Oscar is that his system works while Oscar doesn't. That assertion is utter bullshit -- it simple proves that he has no idea whatsoever why Oscar doesn't work. If he understood why it doesn't work, he'd understand why you can't fix what's wrong with it by simply fiddling with the bets; he'd understand exactly why his system can never work either. And that reason is that the ridiculously complicated rules that he's invented don't do a damn thing to change the house's edge. The cards have no way of knowing how you're doing so far in your session, and they are sincerely unimpressed by the size of your bet.

Alright, so let's forget about the Turnaround. I can set $1000 aside every month as play money for the casino. So, if I go to the casino and flatbet $50 until I either lose it all or win $200, then what is the likelihood that I will win $200? I would switch tables once I got down $500. Further, would I be better off flatbetting a different amount than $50? And, how much am I losing per hour if I flatbet $50 and don�t count? Also, at what point should I switch tables?

You wrote:

I can set $1000 aside every month as play money for the casino. So, if I go to the casino and flatbet $50 until I either lose it all or win $200, then what is the likelihood that I will win $200? I would switch tables once I got down $500. Further, would I be better off flatbetting a different amount than $50? And, how much am I losing per hour if I flatbet $50 and don�t count? Also, at what point should I switch tables?

Basically, Big player answered your question below, and gave the main points. I will simply expand on this.

If you were playing an break-even coin-tossing game, then the answer would be 1000/(1000+200) = 5/6, or about 83%. 80%. In 100 months, you would expect to win $200 in 83 of the months, for a total gain of 16,600; you would lose 1000 in 16 times for a loss of 16,000. Your overall profit would be zero.

But this is not break-even coin tossing game. First, there is the house advantage working on you. The more you play, the more it costs you. Another way to say this is hat you probability of successes less than 83%, because of the house edge.

A second problem concerns the boundaries. How do you handle splits and double downs. If you play BS, these will cause you to sometimes reach $250 or even more on your winning months. That is, your effective Stop-Win is grater than $200, so your probability of reaching it is less.

There is a similar problem on the other end. What do you do if you have lost $950, and you have a $50 out. Would you double it? Would you have the cash to double it?

There is one other consideration. My earlier calculations were based on always reaching the boundry each month. That is, you always get to either +200 or -1000. In reality, there will be month where will lose money, but not lose the entire $1000. You lose $700, win back $500, lose $300 more, win $100, etc., etc. If you play enough you will eventually hit boundary, you may not have enough time every month to do it. This would also complicate he calculation.

Turnaround surely is a complex betting system. I just want to understand the rules of it, so I can try it out for myself.

Save time and uncomplicate maters. Just head to Vegas, find yourself a French Roulette wheel with an extremely high limit and place 500K on red or black. Win or lose, leave after that one bet and never return until you a ready to play properly with a real advantage.

Another way to look at this is:

We know that we have more of an edge when there is a higher propertion of higher cards in the deck as compared to lower cards, so...

If there are 6 players at the table and the count is 0 with 3 decks unseen...and EVERYONE gets a face card, with the exception of the dealer - who gets a natural...WHY would you bet MORE on the next hand? The math is simple...the true count is greater than 4 and the house now would have an advantage of greater than 2%!!!!!!

To Fade, I would suggest betting the minimum and having fun.

As to the percentage of times up $200 vs down $1,000...that does depend on too many things to answer, but I must admit, I am curious to see the flip side of Wongs table that addressed this issue (in "Professional Blackjack").

You have brought the donkey to the trough. It is staring at the water. It brays in thirst but will not drink. Time to set this donkey free.