this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
0 points (NaN% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35258 readers
1510 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Ok so here's the rules

  • I just bet on red every time
  • I start with 1 dollar
  • every time I lose, I triple my previous bet
  • every time I win I restart

I'm going to simulate 10 games

  • Game 1 - Bet $1 Lose
  • Game 2 - Bet $3 Lose
  • Game 3 - Bet $9 Win $18
  • Game 4 - Bet $1 Lose
  • Game 5 - Bet $3 Lose
  • Game 6 - Bet $9 Win $18
  • Game 7 - Bet $1 Lose
  • Game 8 - Bet $3 Lose
  • Game 9 - Bet $9 Lose
  • Game 10 - Bet $18 Win $36

In this simulation I'm losing at a rate of 70%. In reality the lose rate is closer to 52%. I put in $54 but I'm walking away with $72, basically leaving the building with $18.

Another example. Let's pretend I walk in with $100,000 to bet with. I lose my first 10 games and win the 11th.

  • 1 lose
  • 3 lose
  • 9 lose
  • 27 lose
  • 81 lose
  • 243 lose
  • 729 lose
  • 2187 lose
  • 6561 lose
  • 19683 lose
  • 59049 win $118098

$88573 spent out of pocket, $118098 won

Walk out with roughly $29525.

I get most casinos won't let you be that high but it's a pretty extreme example anyway, the likelyhood of losing 10/11 games on 48% odds is really unlikely.

So help me out here, what am I missing?

top 3 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Cokeser@feddit.de 0 points 8 months ago

With the first rise of online casinos (pre 2010), a friend of mine thought he had rigged the system by more or less the same strategy. I think the usual approach is actually to double the bet.

Well..in the end he won a debt of several 10k€ before he had to quit. This put a huge strain on his early adulthood.

[–] patatahooligan@lemmy.world 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

So help me out here, what am I missing?

You're forgetting that not all outcomes are equal. You're just comparing the probability of winning vs the probability of losing. But when you lose you lose much bigger. If you calculate the expected outcome you will find that it is negative by design. Intuitively, that means that if you do this strategy, the one time you will lose will cost you more than the money you made all the other times where you won.

I'll give you a short example so that we can calculate the probabilities relatively easily. We make the following assumptions:

  • You have $13, which means you can only make 3 bets: $1, $3, $9
  • The roulette has a single 0. This is the best case scenario. So there are 37 numbers and only 18 of them are red This gives red a 18/37 to win. The zero is why the math always works out in the casino's favor
  • You will play until you win once or until you lose all your money.

So how do we calculate the expected outcome? These outcomes are mutually exclusive, so if we can define the (expected gain * probability) of each one, we can sum them together. So let's see what the outcomes are:

  • You win on the first bet. Gain: $1. Probability: 18/37.
  • You win on the second bet. Gain: $2. Probability: 19/37 * 18/37 (lose once, then win once).
  • You win on the third bet. Gain: $4. Probability: (19/37) ^ 2 * 18/37 (lose twice, then win once).
  • You lose all three bets. Gain: -$13. Probability: (19/37) ^ 3 (lose three times).

So the expected outcome for you is:

$1 * (18/37) + 2 * (19/37 * 18/37) + ... = -$0.1328...

So you lose a bit more than $0.13 on average. Notice how the probabilities of winning $1 or $2 are much higher than the probability of losing $13, but the amount you lose is much bigger.

Others have mentioned betting limits as a reason you can't do this. That's wrong. There is no winning strategy. The casino always wins given enough bets. Betting limits just keep the short-term losses under control, making the business more predictable.

[–] TooPoor@lemmy.world 0 points 7 months ago

All your math above is irrelevant and your last paragraph is completely wrong. Table limits are the reason this strategy won't work...

If you have a large enough bank roll and continuously double your bet after a loss, you can never lose without a table limit.

Source: data analyst.