Progression after three loses ?

S

slim100_us

New Member
If you lose three hands in a row, and then decide to start a progression. What percent chance would you have in making your bet?

An example might be

Bet $50.00 Lose
Bet $50.00 Lose
Bet $50.00 Lose
Bet $150.00 Percent Chance?
Bet $300.00 Percent Chance?
Bet $600.00 Percent Chance?

In Wongs book it states that by betting 1/7 of your bankroll gives you a 86% chance to make it. By starting a progression like this after three loses allready, would'nt you be better than 86% ?

I realize this is a dangerous strategy, because you can lose ten hands in a row, I've done it. Just curious what the percents are :)

Thanks,

Slim
 
This is a might small sample upon which to base anything but last spring I tried this strategy a few times in a weekly tournament that I was playing each week in an effort to get ready for MBII last spring. It seemed to work on a limited basis.
By that, I mean that it was successful at about the expected percentages but not as a long term strategy. My problem came from using this idea multiple times in the same round. I would use this 3 step progrssion any time I lost 3 hands in a row. That 87% success ratio comes down fast with multiple exposures. I believe this idea has merit as a one-time strategy to get yourself into the BR1 position but not as something you would employ as a matter of course during a tournament or even during an entire round.
Needless to say, this experiment caused me to drop this strategy except as a means to become BR1.
 
slim, the percentage is not affected by the fact that you've just lost three in a row. In that sense, the cards don't remember what happened last hand.

I'll get sidetracked for one paragraph here, to clarify one point... The odds of winning a hand do change according to the remaining deck composition, but there's almost no correlation between the current deck composition and your results over the last few hands. Back to progressions...

Whenever you start a 3-bet progression, you'll have approximately that 86% chance of succeeding, regardless whether you've just won three in a row, lost three in a row, or anything in between.

However, I think progressions are overused in tournaments. I wrote an article on that subject for this month's BJ Insider newsletter, and subscribers can read it at Henry Tamburin's site: http://www.bjinsider.com

I'm behind in posting articles here, but this is one that is likely to appear here for free after a month or two. Don't let that dissuade you from subscribing at Henry's site, since his newsletter has a lot to offer beyond that.
 
progression

Ken, do you happen to know the approximate % of succeeding using a four step progression ?

Thanks
 
92.7%

Ignoring pushes you have a roughly 52%/48% W/L on each hand.
Losing four in a row is 0.52^4 = 7.3% of the time.
Thus succeeding in a four-step progression is a 100% - 7.3% = 92.7% shot.
 
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