Three Strikes

31 March 2022

By Royal Flushes

CINDY: I want to talk about the “Three Strikes” idea of Marti Wilson.

ABBY: Ohhhh.

CINDY: I know you don’t like her…

ABBY: No, I just don’t buy into her ideas since she always claims these methods can beat the house edges at the games. They can’t. You know that. I know that. She should know that. Over the years, has she won money? I doubt it.

CINDY: I think the “Three Strikes” can be a fun way to play. I am not saying you can beat the games using this but it gives you a steady method for playing the various games you want to play.

ABBY: Okay, proceed.

CINDY: Thanks. You choose three games to play. No slots or video poker. Just table games. Let us take blackjack, roulette and craps as our games. You divide your session money up into thirds. Let’s say you bet $10 a decision.

ABBY: Are you going to play craps like that? Just a ten-dollar bet?

CINDY: Just a $12 bet. Just one. Your last bet would be $18 to get it up to almost $200. On the 6 or 8 by the way; I am sure you realized that.

ABBY: I took a wild guess.

CINDY: Now, let’s say that you have $600 for a session. You divide it into $200 per game. You are going to bet the entire $200 for each game. That gives you approximately 20 decisions at each game, or less.

Let’s go to blackjack. You play the basic strategy and you do make the doubles, splits and so forth properly. That means you might not make it to 20. At the end of using your $200, you just count the chips. If you are ahead, great. If you are down, that’s one strike.

ABBY: We have two more to go.

CINDY: Hit the roulette table. Bet one even-money bet. You can definitely go to 20 decisions. If the casino has surrender, you might go one or two fewer decisions. Again, once you go through your $200, see if you are ahead or behind.
At this point you could have two strikes, one strike or no strikes.

We finally go to the craps game. You bet that twelve dollars on the 6 or 8. The payout for a hit will be, as you know, fourteen dollars. You can switch the bet from the 6 to the 8 and back and forth if you want to.

You add it all up at the end of playing your money and see if you have a strike or not.

Now, if you have only two strikes, you give yourself another round, if you can afford it. That is an important ingredient in this method of play. You have to have enough money to afford continued play. You can reduce the total session stake if you need to. Just divide that into three stakes.

You go through the process again. And that’s the three-strikes method of Marti Wilson. What do you think without being prejudice against Marti?

ABBY: It’s a fine way to play. It cannot overcome the house edge on any game at all. Players have to be told that. But I do think some people might enjoy going from game to game.

CINDY: So at least you gave Marti that.

ABBY: Certainly.