Walkthrough: Oscar’s Grind

The plan

Bet one unitmoneyUnitThe base stake a system or a player works in. Progressions are described in units so they apply at any table.Read full →. After a loss, bet the same again. After a win, raise by one unit, unless the raise would take the cycle past +1 unit, in which case bet only what is needed to finish at exactly +1. When the cycle is one unit ahead, start over at one unit. The stake rises only on wins, so a losing streak never inflates it; the grind comes from needing a run of wins to climb out of a hole dug at a small stake.

Probability of Streaks

Spins 1–30

Four cycles closed. The longest ran eleven spins: L L L (−$30 at $10), W (−$20, stake to $20), L L (−$60), W (−$40, stake to $30), W (−$10; a raise to $40 would overshoot, so stake $20), L (−$30), W (−$10), W: cycle at +$10, closed. Net after 30 spins +$40. Stakes never above $30. It is the least exciting system on the site, which is a compliment.

Spins 31–71

The long cycle. Eight losses in the first ten spins dug −$50. Wins raised the stake to $20, $30, $40, $50; losses at those stakes dug further, to −$230 at spin 52. From there a favorable stretch, eleven wins in sixteen spins at stakes of $40–$50, climbed back, and the cycle closed at spin 71 for +$10. Forty-one spins, $230 at risk at the worst point, one unit earned.

Spins 72–100

Three more cycles closed, one abandoned at spin 100 standing at −$140 with a $30 stake. Final −$60: eight cycles at +$10 and one open cycle at −$140 (the open cycle is the usual way an Oscar session ends, because cycles are long).

The accounts

Average stake about $22, total wagered about $2,200 against $1,000 flat. Expected lossmathExpected lossExpected value times total amount wagered; the average amount lost over a session or a period.Read full → $59; actual −$60. A session that lands on its expectation, which Oscar’s Grind does more often than other systems because its variancemathVarianceA measure of how widely results spread around the expected value. High for straight up, low for even-money bets.Read full → is low: the stake only grows when we are winning, and never doubles.

What the session shows

Oscar’s Grind is a system designed by someone who had understood the others. It has no cliff, the stake stays modest, and it produces long sequences of small wins. The price is time: cycles can run for forty spins, and the one-unit profit at the end has been bought with a drawdownmoneyDrawdownThe fall from a bankroll peak to a later low within a session. Maximum drawdown is the largest such fall.Read full → twenty times its size. The expected loss per dollar wagered is 2.70%, and the grind adds dollars.

Questions