Dahl's Progression:
This system is found in
Dahl's book Progression Blackjack which claims to expose the "card counting
myth" and give the player "an edge in '21'." It is a progression
in which the bettor raises bets with each win. A $5 progression is
5-5-7-7-10-10-15-15-25-25-35-35-50. Win two bets and go to the next level. A
blackjack entitles you to skip a step and a double-down lets you skip two steps.
If you ever get to the top bet, which might be expected to happen once every
10,000 hands or so, factoring in ties, you stay there until you lose. Any loss
in the series and you start over.
Up and Pull:
This is also known as a
"regression/progression" system. You start with two units. If you win,
you "pull back" or "regress" to one unit. If you win that go
back to two units, then steadily go up and back until you've reached some
pre-set cutoff point, or, if you are brave, until you run into the table limit.
Hoyle's Press, aka Oscar's Grind:
This
system is designed to win one unit per series. Flat bet until you lose. Then
continue to flat bet until a win. At that point, raise your bet one unit and bet
at that level until you have recouped your loss plus one unit. It might go like
this: 1-L. 1-L, 1-W, 2-W. Thus, you have won one unit from your initial two
unit loss and your series is over. This system looks good until you run into a
spotty streak followed by a long losing streak. All of a sudden, you have a lot
of money on the table and its going to take a long winning streak to get
it back.
Reverse Martingale:This system is the
opposite of the Martingale described above. Instead of doubling your bets after
a loss, you double after each win. Of course, if you lose a bet in the series,
you have wiped out your wins plus one unit. Not a good deal when the house has
the advantage.
All of the systems described above have many variations, but
they all purport to give a person the edge in a negative expectation game. The
fact is, they don't. No amount of tweaks, twists or twiddling is going to make
them winning systems. Any system that relies on a betting progression to beat a
negative expectation game just means, in reality, that you are putting more
money on the table than you would flat-betting and, thus, losing more. If, as in
many blackjack games, a basic strategy player can expect the house to have a
half a percent advantage, the fact is, he is losing one half percent of each bet
he makes.
The more he bets, the more he loses. The same logic applies to any
game where the house has the advantage, and that's all of them. I know. I have
bet each one of these systems at one time or another, and I've never won a dime
in the long run. Sort of led me into card counting. I got tired of losing.
