Dahl’s Progression

This positive progression system was devised by Donald Dahl and published in his book ‘Progression Blackjack’. Since it is a positive progression system, the player will only increase their bet size following wins, losses result in returning to the start of the sequence.

In his book, Dahl outlines various progression sequences based on different minimum bet amounts:

The player only advances to the next bet if they win. If the player receives blackjack or wins a double-down or split, they can skip the next bet and proceed to the next highest. If for instance we won the first hand, then won a double-down on the second, we would skip to the second bet of three (the fourth bet in the sequence) rather than only advancing to the third bet.

Dahl also suggests minimum bankrolls necessary to use each of the progression systems as follows:

The bankroll is broken down into the number of sessions (or days) you wish to play. Dahl also advises moving tables if you lose four or five hands in a row.

If the player reaches the end of the sequence they may choose to either continuing at the maximum level of 10 units, or revert to the start of the sequence. They may even choose to end the game if their winnings have met or exceeded their win-limit.

Dahl says that at any point the player is only ever risking one unit of their own money since the remainder is “the casino’s money”. This seems like a dangerous scheme to advise. Thinking that your winnings are somehow the property of the casino means you are more likely to feel that they are entitled to have your winnings back. This is a huge mistake and the complete opposite of the advise we give in our money management article.

The system is also reliant on the player hitting a ‘winning streak’ in order to extract profits from the casino. Like most other positive progression systems, without knowing when to stop, the player is risking their profits in the aim of winning another hand.

While I think the system is not nearly as effective as Dahl states, his writing style is unlike that of any other blackjack book you may read. He suggests that casinos and card counters are in cahoots and that the casinos are powerless against the might of his progression system. Big words Dahl. He also calls card counters “suckers” and says that card counting is ineffective because of the betting spreads necessary, this when his own system uses a 1-10 spread!