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Greetings, gamblers! Below you'll find the Dogg's Day and Ty's Triumph betting systems —a couple of money makers that work to keep you in the game while you’re waiting for a streak, then really pick you up to a nice win when that streak hits.
Then, courtesy of Arnold Snyder, at Blackjack Forum Online, you'll find the Grandmaster of all online betting systems: Oscar's System, first published by Dr. Allan Wilson in 1965 for craps players. Unfortunately, the print run for the book was small and Oscar's betting system was quickly out-of-print, so very few gamblers ever heard of it. Oscar's Betting System is proven to win—I kid you not—4999 out of 5000 times. Check it out.
The Dogg’s Day Betting System
This one’s so easy you could play it in your sleep. Rating: Conservative. Pick any betting unit you’re comfortable with, let’s say $5. You flat bet that $5 until you hit two consecutive wins, then you add $5 and bet $10 until you hit two consecutive wins at that level. Then you add another $5 and bet $15 until you hit two consecutive wins at that level, etc. That’s how it goes when you’re winning, and when you hit a winning streak you get a nice score because you keep ramping up your bet with the house’s money.
What happens when you lose? A single loss and you revert back to your $5 starting unit and start all over again. This means that if you’re on any streak of losses, every bet in that streak will be a flat $5 after the first loss. So, your win streaks pay off very well, while your losing streaks just dent you a bit.
What if you’re playing blackjack and you push (that means tie, for all you slot players)? That bet doesn’t count. You don’t drop your bet or change your bet; you keep riding your win streak until you have an actual loss.
What if you win a double down? Just count it as a single win. Don’t raise your bet until you’ve literally had a win two hands in a row, not just a one win on a doubled (or split) bet.
This system will keep you in the game a long time, longer than any other system I know of, except, perhaps, for:
The Ty’s Triumph Betting System
This system’s a lot like Dogg’s Day, only a few more beers went into the design of it. Rating: Conservative. Again, you pick any betting unit you’re comfortable with. I’m comfortable with $25. You flat bet that $25 until you’ve had two consecutive wins, then you add $25 and bet $50 until you’ve had two consecutive wins at that level, etc. That’s how it goes when you’re winning, and when you hit a winning streak you get a nice score because you kept ramping up your bet with the house’s money.
But hey, Ty (I can practically hear you saying)! That’s exactly like Dogg’s Day! What’s the difference, other than the $25 betting unit?
I’m glad you asked me that. The difference is how we react to losses. Let’s say I’m using Dogg ’s Day with my $25 unit, and I’m on a hot streak where I’ve got my bet up to $100 when I hit a loss. With the Dogg's Day betting system, I would immediately revert back to my starting $25 unit.
Not so with the Ty’s Triumph system. Instead, if I hit a loss, I simply lower my bet by one unit, to $75. And if I get two consecutive wins at this point, I’m right back up to $100 again. Ty’s Triumph accounts for those times when a sporadic loss doesn’t necessarily mean your winning streak is over. That loss might just be a momentary lapse. So with Ty’s Triumph, you go up one unit at a time and down one unit at a time.
The Dogg’s Day system makes out better if the first loss is a signal that a genuine losing streak has begun, because Dogg ’s Day will only give back one unit at a time after that first loss. But Ty’s Triumph works better when that single loss was just that—a single loss within a winning streak that’s still happening. Both of these systems are good for keeping you in the game a long time because you’re only raising your bets after a couple of wins, so your big bets are made with the house’s money.
How do you know which system to use? Well, it’s easy to tell after the play’s over. For me, it seems whenever I use Ty’s Triumph, I look back at the results and I wish I had been using Dogg's Day. And whenever I use Dogg's Day, I look back at the results and I wish I had been using Ty’s Triumph!
If I could just pick the right one at the right time, I’d be a millionaire! Which brings us to …
Oscar's System: The Betting System that Wins 4999 out of 5000 times
(By Arnold Snyder)
Players ask me more questions about betting systems for blackjack than just about any other topic. Not betting systems for card counters—just betting systems. I always start by going into my spiel that pure betting systems don’t win in the long run. And the usual response I get is, “I don’t care about the long run. I’m going to Vegas this weekend. I just want to win on this one short run.”
As a matter of fact, there are betting systems that provide a player more of a chance of finishing a trip with a win than a loss. If you use this type of betting system, and you look over your records after years of play, you’ll see a whole lot of small wins—and one (or a few) big losses, big enough to wipe out the profits from all of your small wins, and then some. (Mustn’t forget that house edge!)
But, you don’t care about the long run. You just want a win this weekend. So, let’s look at what betting system works best in the short run. We can’t guarantee a win, but there is a logic to betting systems that can greatly increase your chances of success.
There are two main types of betting systems—positive progressions and negative progressions. With a positive progression, the general theory is that you raise your bets after wins, which means that your bigger bets are primarily funded by money won. This is a conservative betting system insofar as a long string of losses will not wipe out your bankroll as quickly as with a negative progression.
With a negative progression, you raise your bets after your losses. This is more dangerous, since a bad run of losses can wipe you out quickly. In its favor, however, it allows you to win on a session in which you’ve lost many more hands than you’ve won. Since your bets after losses are bigger bets, you don’t have to win so many of them to come back, assuming you can avoid a truly disastrous series of losses that empties your pockets.
There are dozens of variations on betting systems that incorporate features of both the positive and negative progressions, in an attempt to create the “perfect” betting system that wins the most often with the least chance of busting out. The best system of this type I’ve seen for accomplishing this end was first published 40 years ago by mathematician Allan N. Wilson, in his Casino Gambler’s Guide (Harper & Row, 1965). Dr. Wilson called it “Oscar’s system,” named after the dice player who’d invented it. Here’s how it works:
The goal for any series of bets is to win just one unit, then start a new series. Each series starts with a one-unit bet. After any win, the next bet is one unit more than the previous bet. After any loss, the next bet is identical to the previous bet. That is, if you lose a two-unit bet, your next bet is a two-unit bet until you have a win, at which point you raise your bet one unit to a three-unit bet.
That is the whole system, except for one stipulation—Never place any bet that would result in a win for the series of more than one unit. In other words, if you win a 4-unit bet, and you are now down only 2 units for the series, you would not raise your next bet to 5 units because of the 4-unit win; you’d only to 3 units, which would be all you’d need—if successful—to achieve a one-unit win for the series.
Oscar’s betting system combines the best features of both the positive and negative progressions. You can suffer much longer runs of losses without busting out than you can with a negative progression, since you don’t raise your bets after losses. Yet, a much shorter run of wins can get back your previous losses on a series, since you raise your bets following wins. It’s kind of brilliant, actually. Strings of losses hurt less, yet strings of wins pay more.
When Oscar told Dr. Wilson that he had been using this betting system for many years and had never had a losing weekend in Las Vegas, Dr. Wilson did some mathematical and computer simulation analysis on it. Was this possible? His findings were amazing. Using a $1 betting unit on an even money payout game, the betting progression is so slow that the player would bump up against the house’s $500 maximum bet (at that time) on only one series of every 5,000 played. On 4,999 of those series, the player would expect to achieve his $1 win target.
Since Oscar was shooting for a weekend win of only $100 (back in 1965, this was a very healthy win!), Dr. Wilson concluded that it was quite likely that Oscar had played on many weekends over a period of years with never a loss.
So, should we all start using Oscar’s system? One word of caution: Watch out for that one losing series. How much does Oscar lose when his system fails on that one unlucky series out of 5,000?
About $13,000.
You see, even though he’s just bumped into the house’s table maximum of $500, he’s gotten to this point by losing lots of bets in the $100+, $200+, $300+, and $400+ range during this horrendously long series. So, if you try Oscar’s system, you still have to be prepared to lose.
Oscar’s System: Sample Betting Sequences
| Bet | Result | Total | Next Bet |
| 1 | L | -1 | 1 |
| 1 | L | -2 | 1 |
| 1 | W | -1 | 2 |
| 2 | W | +1 | done |
| Bet | Result | Total | Next Bet |
| 1 | L | -1 | 1 |
| 1 | L | -2 | 1 |
| 1 | L | -3 | 1 |
| 1 | W | -2 | 2 |
| 2 | L | -4 | 2 |
| 2 | W | -2 | 3 |
| 3 | W | +1 | done |
| Bet | Result | Total | Next Bet |
| 1 | L | -1 | 1 |
| 1 | L | -2 | 1 |
| 1 | W | -1 | 2 |
| 2 | L | -3 | 2 |
| 2 | L | -5 | 2 |
| 2 | W | -3 | 3 |
| 3 | W | 0 | 1 |
| 1 | W | +1 | done |
No betting system will ever overcome the house edge in the long run. But they’re not worthless. Professional gamblers do find opportunities for profiting from various types of betting systems.
Thanks, Arnold. As for you lounge lizards, we will be adding more articles on the properties of betting systems for blackjack and other games every month. So stay tuned.
— Ty Thompson, the Lounge Lizard |
