BETTING SYSTEMS AND BLACKJACK: IS OSCAR'S SYSTEM A WINNER?

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 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.

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 in gambling tournaments, as “camouflage” to disguise an advantage play that is not based on the betting system itself, and especially in online casinos where betting systems can be used to milk the casino “bonuses.”

If you’re interested in these genuinely profitable applications of betting systems, and especially if you play blackjack or other casino games online in the Internet casinos, check back with us. We will be doing a definitive article on the properties of betting systems for blackjack and other games soon. ♠