Bet Spreads

Bet spread is the ratio of your smallest bet to your largest bet. The higher the ratio of bets when you have an advantage to bets when you have a disadvantage, the better your results. Unfortunately, the higher the ratio, the more you look like a card counter. So, we need to pick a compromise spread. First, we need to know just how much bet spreads affect results. For this, I will present charts, as they allow quick comparison of many points of data at once.

In the chart below, red indicates the SCORE using a bet spread of 1-8 (e.g., $10 to $80). Green, blue, and cyan successively add four to the previous spread. The effect is much like adding indexes. But bet spread adds to your SCORE at every penetration while extra indexes are far more important at the higher penetrations depicted at the right of the chart. It should also be noticed that there are diminishing gains as each addition has less of an impact than the previous.

Of course, it is much easier to add to the spread than to learn and use more indexes. On the other hand, the house is unlikely to notice that you are using more indexes, but is very likely to notice a large spread — particularly at higher betting levels.

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 © 2009 Norman Wattenberger