Oscar’s Grind System​

Content curated from and authored by Clear Data Sports

Another popular positive progression sports betting system is the Oscar’s Grind betting system.

The system was first documented in the 1965 book, The Casino Gambler’s Guide, written by mathematician Allan Wilson and based on stories he was told by a weekend craps shooter named Oscar.

It’s formulated by calculating bet size around winning and losing streaks and is based on the premise that wins and losses tend to come in bunches, so you want to keep your bet lower during the lean times and higher during the good times.

Oscar’s Grind only works on events when the odds are evenly distributed, like point spread and totals bets. It’s not to be used for events with more than two possible outcomes or uneven odds like a moneyline or parlay.

What Is Oscar’s Grind Betting System?

Like a number of other systems we’ve talked about, Oscar’s Grind was originally a system to bet on even odds craps, even odds roulette, and baccarat. It breaks your bets into units and into sessions.

It is recommended that each unit for Oscar’s Grind not exceed two to three percent of your total stake. So for the sake of this example, let’s assume a bankroll of $1,000, which gives us a unit size of $25.

And each session ends, only ends, and always ends, when we’ve achieved one unit of profit - $25 in this case.

Bet 1: $25, loss.

Since the bet loses, the system dictates that we keep the bet the same.

Bet 2: $25, loss.

Bet 3: $25, win.

Now that we’ve won a bet, the system tells us to increase our next wager by one unit.

Bet 4: $50, win.

And that ends the session. We lost $50, but we’ve since won $75, putting us up one unit and requiring us to pocket the money and start over with another single unit bet.

Bet 1: $25, loss.

Bet 2: $25, loss.

Bet 3: $25, win.

Bet 4: $50, loss.

Now, unlike some of the other positive progressive systems we’ve looked at that drop the bet back down after a loss, Oscar’s Grind says that we should keep the bet the same following a loss. So …

Bet 5: $50, win.

This is another place where Oscar’s Grind goes off on its own as compared to other systems. Increasing our bet one unit following that win would normally dictate a $75 bet. But in this case, we make an exception because a win on $75 would actually give us a profit of two units, and for each session, we are only seeking a single unit of profit.

So Bet 6 is also $50, and if it wins, we have $25 of profit, and thus our session is over.

But if Bet 6 loses …

Bet 7: $50, loss.

Bet 8: $50, win.

Bet 9: $75, win.

At this point, we are back to even. (Get out your calculators if you don’t believe me.) So our next bet, even though we just won, is only $25, because again, we’re only looking for one unit of profit per session. If we win that, the session is over. If we lose, we keep going.