“Shooting the Moon” is a term used to describe the act of collecting all the hearts plus the Queen of Spades in the game of Hearts – where you would normally want to toss those cards to your opponents, if you can collect them all, your opponents are all penalized the maximum number of points (26) – but if you miss even one, you take a huge hit yourself.
In casino gambling, similar actions occur only at games like video poker, where one might toss away a high pair in order to try and hit a royal flush – but for me, it means tossing away small profits in order to realize larger gains – craps players press their bets in hopes of a hot roll, slot players return small wins hoping to hit a jackpot… you get the picture.
What I call shooting the moon is commonly known as a bet progression – using a portion of a winning bet to raise the next bet. These progressions are commonly used in blackjack, roulette or craps where wins are usually paid even money.
Now I know that there are many bet progression methods around,and the one I am about to describe to you may resemble one of these, but I developed it for my own use and have seen others use similar methods.
Starting with an initial bet of $2, I raise my bets following each successive in,and drop back to $2 after a loss – hoping to catch a long winning streak. The “moon” is the top of the series, whether you either maintain the highest bet in the series after a win, or you drop back to $2 and collect a sizeable win.
The progression series I use is 2,3,5,7,10,15,20,30 etc… where following bets are equal to 1.5 times the size of the last bet. My “moon” is usually set at 20 units, after which I can decide to continue betting 20 units at a time until a loss, or collecting the 20 units and starting over at 2.
Of course, you can always vary the value of your unit – some people may prefer $1 – I use $5, so my moon is worth $100. And you can also start anywhere in the series I showed above – for me, I generally eliminate the 2 unit bet and start with a minimum of three, which lessens the number of wins required to reach the moon but increases the risk to one’s pocketbook 🙂
So let’s say that you achieved the required 7 wins to reach a 20 unit bet. The following table shows what your net profit at each step is.
Bet size Bet increase Net profit
2 1 -1
3 2 0 (break even point)
5 2 3
7 3 7
10 5 12
15 5 17
20 10 27
30 0 57
As you can see here, a good run of cards, dice or colors on the 먹튀검증 roulette table can make you a tidy sum of money. Had you been flat-betting 2 units during this progression, you would have ended up with a 14 unit profit instead of 57 units.
On the other hand, if you were to win one, then lose one, you would be even when flat-betting, but down half a unit using the progression.
When playing blackjack, and getting a blackjack, you will obviously have an extra half-unit to deal with. You can either pocket the extra half-unit as a bonus, or use that amount to move one step up the progression but you’ll have to add a little money of your own.
The conservative method of pocketing the bonus half-unit is recommended – but I’m an impatient type and so I typically move up the progression instead.
The only pitfall with using this sort of a progression is that it takes two successive wins for you to break even, whereas with flat-betting you would be ahead 4 units. With a third successive win, using the progression you would be ahead 3 units, and 6 flat-betting. 4 wins with the progression would net 7 units, and flat-betting 8 units. Any streak longer than 4 wins will put you ahead of the game.
It’s a heck of a lot more exciting – and in theory you are taking the same amount of risk as when you are flat-betting – the major difference is that your profit/loss will be like a roller-coaster ride. But it definitely takes the tedium out of playing blackjack!
