RECESSION PROOF GAMBLING by Jeff Fisher

In gambling, everyone wants to keep their losses low and profits consistent. Why not? It only makes good gambling and business sense. But that's easier said than done. Up to now, the Benson Company has controlled your losses by strict adherence to your money management and departure rules. This issue I would like to focus on departure rules only.

I know you've heard it a hundred times before. That is, all previous Benson systems and Newsletters have stressed the absolute importance of departure rules. It is the key to the player's math. That is, departure rules are a powerful weapon to controlling the built-in negative expectation of each casino game.

Leonard says it best, "You can miss a bet from time to time, mess up the strategy once in a while, but to win in the long run you must not break your departure rules."

He's right. And we've discussed this many times before in the Newsletter. Joe even discusses it in his "Winning and Losing" article on page 4 of this very issue. Bottom line, there are four possible outcomes every time you gamble: 1) You can win a lot. 2) You can win a little. 3) You can lose a little. 4) You can lose a lot. If you eliminate "losing a lot" from these four outcomes then two out of the three are winners. Departure rules are key to removing "losing a lot" from your play.

That said, everything so far is an introduction to why I wrote this article: Recession Proof Gambling. And in order to understand how to "recession proof" your play, you need a whole new look at what we mean by "departure rules." Let me explain.

I was introduced to the Benson Company in 1993 with Playing Craps as a Profession. I had played throughout the 1980s in Atlantic City but I never heard the word "depart" until I attended Leonard's seminar. The only word I knew was "attack"! Anyway, Leonard showed me and a lot of other gamblers that there was a middle ground to our play. That is, there was nothing wrong with winning a little and accepting small losses as long as your departure rules kept you away from losing a lot. It is the time-proven approach of "hit and run."

But even with the original departure rules, there were times I found myself "losing too much" for my liking. With Playing Craps as a Profession, if I hit the switch from the don't side to the do side, I could lose half a buy-in with one shooter. Although this did not happen often, it introduced "losing too much" into the overall picture.

During the last 10 years I have looked for more conservative playing strategies to offset "losing too much." I did not trust the departure rules alone to eliminate this outcome. I felt the departure rules needed the support of these conservative plays to keep me within the three desired outcomes. Then about six months ago, I realized that there might be another way to eliminate both "losing a lot" and "losing too much" from my play. I realized I didn't need the conservative strategies. I could do it with just the departure rules. All I needed was a different approach to the original departure rules.

Isn't the worst-case scenario responsible for "losing too much"? That's the Achilles heel to our gambling. In Playing Craps as a Profession, if I had limited my play after encountering the switch, wouldn't I control my losses better? Looking to play five tables doesn't address the issue of how we "lose too much" in one session. In those five tables you can hit the switch or worst-case scenario at each table. Then what? How does limiting your play to five tables in craps or two shoes in baccarat or a full buy-in in blackjack or roulette guarantee that you will keep down the big fluctuations?

It doesn't really. The key to controlling your losses and signaling when to depart is the worst-case scenario. And every system has one. If it didn't then we would own the casinos. When we don't encounter a worst-case scenario our buy-in is usually intact and most times we are ahead. When we do encounter a worst-case scenario then our losses tend to mount and we may be forced to stop playing.

Suddenly, my gambling came into a new light. The original departure rules seemed antiquated. As long as I evaluated my play with each worst-case scenario, I could stay well within the desired three outcomes. I began analyzing the worst-case scenarios for each of the Benson systems and slowly developed new departure rules and playing strategies around these worst-case scenarios. But here's the best part: I found myself gambling longer and if the worst-case scenario appeared, I continued playing as long as I knew that I was within the three desired outcomes.

I now refer to these new departure rules as "recession proofing" my play. They truly eliminate the fluctuations and give me the consistent wins I demand from my play. We are still finalizing these new departure rules for each system. But we plan to incorporate them into all of our games. There's still work left to be done but we are close. Until next time.