¹University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

Correspondence: JM Freeman, OPTIMA, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, Booth Street West, Manchester MIS 6PB, UK. E-mail: jim.freeman@mbs.ac.uk

Received May 2005; Accepted September 2007; Published online 21 November 2007.

Abstract

Use of the HI-LO procedure by the gaming industry is ubiquitous—hence playing strategies of interest to gamblers and machine providers alike. Players' tactics necessarily depend on goals being pursued and consistent with these, a variety of schemes ranging from the 'aggressive' to the 'timid' have evolved. Characteristics of the some of the best known of these—as far as they are applicable to a variable wager version of the HI-LO routine—are considered and contrasted. Of interest, results for a relatively risk-aversive scheme, played over a finite number of rounds are reconciled with those obtained asymptotically when maximizing capital growth is the priority.