- Hey, I'm Colin from Blackjack Apprenticeship.
I'm here with my good friend David
also known as Loudon Ofton,
and we have been professional blackjack players
for roughly 15 years.
In this video, we're going to explain progressive betting,
also known as The Martingale System.
And if it can be used to be profitable
at the blackjack tables, as well as the exact math
of using this system.
(soft music)
Hey guys, so like I said,
we've been professional blackjack players
for roughly 15 years.
We've taken over one and a half million dollars
from casinos.
We've been a part of teams that have done
a lot more than that.
And we want to explain to you
one of the most common
mathematical systems people try to use to beat blackjack,
and it's called progressive betting
and David's got a dirty little secret.
- That's what I thought was going to work for me.
- So that was your first system you used in a casino.
So why don't you explain it to people really quick?
So you've got $10 here.
- Yeah, well, if I lost that on the first bet,
then I would double it and bet $20.
- Okay, what if you lose that $20?
- Then I would go to $40.
- And if you lose that?
- Then would be really scared and not know what to do
and go back to $10.
- Okay. A true Martingale progressive system,
you would continue to double it until you win,
and once you win, what do you do?
- You go back to your..
- Go back to $10.
So that's one form of progressive.
So we were a part of a blackjack team
called The Church Team.
And it was featured in a documentary.
But my point of that story is that
we were called The Church Team
because some of the players were from,
friends of ours, from church.
And I remember an elder,
at the church I was going to at the time,
and he's like, so I heard that you play blackjack
because the word was out about me being a card counter.
He said, I've got a system.
He's like, I go to Vegas like twice a year
and I've got a system
and he starts to describe progressive betting.
And I knew enough at this time to say,
well, that's cool,
but it doesn't work.
And let me explain why progressive betting doesn't work.
There are really two reasons.
The first one is that you're going to get capped
by the table limits.
So let's say you're playing at a $5 table
and you start with $5.
Well, most casinos, if it's a $5 minimum,
it's going to be at the most, a $500 maximum.
So you could only double your bets
5, 10, 20,
40, 80, 160,
320,
and then you couldn't place an eighth bet.
So you could only double seven times.
But let's say you're at a casino
that happened to have $5 all the way to a $2,000 maximum.
You would still be capped by a 10th bet.
So you could only double your bets nine times
before that $2,000 maximum is going to cap you.
And you might be thinking, well,
how often is that going to happen?
Well, how often is that going to happen, David?
- Like once every seven hours.
- That's right.
That's right.
Once every seven hours on average,
you're going to be capped by this
and you might say, well,
then I'll just play less than seven hours.
But the point is,
if you do this for very long, it won't work.
It might work in the short term.
It might,
but it's not going to work over time.
And so basically,
is it a winning system if it doesn't work over time?
- No.
- No, it's not a winning system.
That's the first reason is the table limits.
But you can might be saying, well, Colin,
I'm gonna play online and I'm going to start, you know,
some much larger table minimum to table maximum option.
And I can explain why that won't work either.
Let's say you're, you're thinking, well, Colin,
I know an online casino or something like that,
that's $5 to $10,000.
And so, well, that way you could double your bets.
I think it's 12 times before you're going to be limited.
But think about it this way,
you would need $20,000 to recover your initial $5.
So if you want a system that takes
$20,000 to get that $5 back, you can try this,
but it's still, isn't going to work.
Even if you say Colin, I've got an infinite bankroll,
and I want to use this progressive system
because I can continue to double my bets to infinity.
It's still isn't going to work.
And that's because the house edge is against you.
If you're playing a blackjack game that had a 0% house edge,
what does that mean?
0% house edge.
- Even.
- Yeah, so you've got just as good a chance
to win as the dealer,
then you could break even with Martingale
with an infinite bankroll,
by infinitely, doubling your bet always.
There never being a streak of losses
that you couldn't recoup,
but that's not the reality of blackjack.
So how much of an edge does the house have against
a perfect basic strategy player?
- A few percent.
- About half of 1%.
Yeah, an average player, a few percent
perfect basic strategy player,
the casino has about a half percent advantage.
What that means is this isn't a zero sum game.
You still are playing a game with a disadvantage.
And if you don't trust my math on this,
you can read Wizard of Odds
and other mathematicians that just break down the math,
that show Martingale system progressive betting,
isn't a winning system.
What that means, over the long haul, it's not going to win.
Is there a winning blackjack system?
- There is.
Well, what is it?
- Counting cards.
- That's what we are.
We're card counters.
It's legal.
We've done this legally to take
millions of dollars out of casinos.
And that's what we're about.
If you want to learn how to actually beat the casino
card counting is based on math,
is based on logic.
It's a repeatable system,
that over the long haul
actually flips the casino's edge
from the dealer to the player.
That's why the first book on card counting
was called Beat the Dealer
because it is a system based on math
to actually beat the dealer.
If you wanna learn more,
that's what we're about.
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