[MicroBob]

I looked at my percentages and realize it adds up to 103%.
Not good.

But I'm pretty sure it's something close to that (depending on the game of course).
I now think it's something like 42-50-8 or 41-50-9.
Something like that.
I'm going off memory here and don't feel like digging through my old BJ books to try to find it.

Regardless, your point that the push shouldn't be counted is a valid one.

My calculations pretty much did it for a 15-loss streak with no pushes in there.
But for most who were to try this system they would just stay at the same bet-size after a push.

So a 17 hand streak with 15 losses and 2 pushes would be the exact same as 15 straight losses with 0 pushes. But my calcs were ONLY for 15 losses and 0 pushes.

your theory that we should ignore the pushes and make it more of a 46/54 proposition is clearly the way it should be done.


I found it somewhat interesting that 15 straight hands at 50% is 1:31k while 15 straight hands at 51% is 1:25k.


You are correct that it's about 2 1/2 times more likely at 54%.

I just looked at 15 straight occurances at 54% and landed on close to 1:10k.


So at a snail's pace of only 100 hands an hour playing 40 hours a week you will have such a $163k loss roughly once every 2.5 weeks.


Obviously most people in live casinos who are actually trying such a martingale system would get stopped long before then by betting maximums or bankroll considerations.

Low-rolling casino I dealt at for 8 months has a $500 max-bet limit and I'm not sure they would be willing to raise it for you.


For a more realistic bankroll of $10k (still probably more than many martingalers are using) it would only take 11 losses to bust you.
This is a 1:1000 shot (if 54% chance of losing a hand).

at just 100 hands an hour you should expect to have a $10k downswing once every 10 hours or so.


At the casino i used to deal at with a $500 max-bet you will not be alloed to place the bet you nee after only 7 losses.
(5, 10, 20, 40, 80, 160, 320...next bet would need to be 640)

Chance of you sitting down and losing 7 straight hands of blackjack (at 54%) = 1:100