Discussion of E-Z Bet Progressions
E-Z Bet was developed from the following hand played data regarding wins and losses in a row:
I kept records for 4089 hands of Blackjack and this table is the result. To understand what it means, the 1 column is the percentage of hands that were solo wins. The 2 column is the percentage of the series of wins when there were two wins in a row. And so forth. The %L row is the percentage of series that were 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or greater than five losses in a row. If you were to keep records of your play, and played a strict basic strategy, your numbers would be similar. These numbers are different from those of the computer simulations. They are as follows:
One obvious difference between the tables is how the simulated losing hands demonstrated a skew to the right. The reason for this is the computer kept up with losses of up to 20 in a row. A player would not lose twenty in a row before walking, but the computer had no ability to leave the table. When simulating billions of hands, you have some long winning and losing streaks that you don't have in the casino. Because of this fact, I developed E Z Bet from the hand played data. I felt it would be more casino-like percentages.
Rules for the Simulation
Six deck shoe
Double on any two cards
Split up to four times
Double after splitting
No surrender or insurance
75% Shoe Penetration
Blackjack pays 3:2
E-Z Basic Strategy
The reason I collected data under the above rules is they are about as strict as you will find. They are also common in the areas in which many of us play. If you find a single deck and/or surrender allowed game, your results should be even better.
Data
307,409,100,800 hands were played
7,031,609,725 Shoes
Equivalent to 3,002,497,000 Hours of play
Software used: Casino Verite, CVData 3.0
Wins: 133,160,000,000
Losses: 148,030,000,000
% Wins: 43.34
% Loss: 48.16
% Push: 8.50
Ratio W/L: 0.90
Advantage: - 0.597%
Following is the hand played data using the same rules.
Wins 1965
Losses 2124
%Wins 48
% Loss 52
Ratio W/L 0.925
W Hands/group 1.95
L Hands/group 2.06
When discussing the New York and Telephone systems, I mentioned why I think the second bet in the winning sequence should be two units. I do agree one should lock in the winnings, but after the second win, not after the first win. After this bet is won, guaranteeing a winning series, you may then progress in either a conservative or aggressive manner. So far it looks like the following:
W (1) - 2 - 1-
Now, let’s look back at the table once more. We see that 49 + 27 +14 percent of the time we win either one, two, or three hands in a row. So 90% of the time we never get to the fourth wager. Most of the winning will occur before you get to this point. The one unit bet should be repeated once more before progressing to be mathematically optimal. After the next bet the real gambling in this system begins. I propose two ways to press up your bet - one conservative, and one a bit more aggressive. The conservative way is to pull back one half unit, leaving one and one half units for the next bet. The aggressive way is to press up after the third win, letting the W (3) bet plus winnings ride. Here is what the two sequences look like so far.
CONSERVATIVE
W (1) - 2 - 1 - 1 - 1½ -
AGGRESSIVE
W (1) - 2 - 1 - 2 -
The conservative sequence will pull back more of your winnings, making it more profitable. A counter-point to this is that the aggressive system will have greater wins but also greater losses. When you have more money on the table, you will have more profit on the occasions when you receive a Blackjack, double down, split, or just win a long series. Since you have locked in a profit, you are taking a gamble with the one unit you just won. You may be able to turn it into a sizeable profit if the winning series continues, or, you will lose one unit trying. Therefore, your style, conservative or aggressive, dictates how you play out the winning series. Here is what the rest of the series looks like.
CONSERVATIVE
W (1) - 2 - 1 - 1 - 1½ - 2 - 1
AGGRESSIVE
W (1) - 2 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 1
This carries the sequence out to seven places. Once you arrive here, you have had a good run, and the choice is yours to flat bet one unit or progress more.
This completes the winning side of E-Z Bet. E-Z Bet also has a negative progression when losing. For the website, I will suggest you flat bet when losing. The negative progressions are in my book, Easy Blackjack for the Average Joe which is plastered all over this website. One of the beauties of using a limited negative progression is that you recover fully half of your losses if there aren't any long streaks. If there are, you still don't lose any more than when flat betting. For the player it's a win - win.
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