Sounds like free money to me

OK OK, pays $1

Just so you know. You would need somewhere around 20 trillion dollars to do this 40 times.

If you want to be risky and only have 10 times, you need 10,240 on a $10 minimum table.

Believing you've just invented the martingale is one of the most satisfying moments of a young gambler's life.

Love these threads.

no

He's very happy as a one-post member.

No, keep it to yourself. Preferably in a dark hidden space.

In fact, shove it up your ass.

Why'd you have to say something?

I've seen a few of you guys hint at the ridiculously increasing cost of trying to Martingale a game, but here's a quick list so that it's clear just how ridiculous it is.

The exponent in "2^x" is the number of bets you have lost thus far. Shooting for a $20 win, you will have to risk (each row is an individual bet, with the next assuming that you lost the last bet):

$20 × 2^0 = $20
$20 × 2^1 = $40
$20 × 2^2 = $80
$20 × 2^3 = $160
$20 × 2^4 = $320
$20 × 2^5 = $640
$20 × 2^6 = $1,280
$20 × 2^7 = $2,560
$20 × 2^8 = $5,120
$20 × 2^9 = $10,240
$20 × 2^10 = $20,480
$20 × 2^11 = $40,960
$20 × 2^12 = $81,920
$20 × 2^12 = $163,840
$20 × 2^13 = $327,680
$20 × 2^14 = $655,360
$20 × 2^15 = $1,310,720
$20 × 2^16 = $2,621,440
$20 × 2^17 = $5,242,880
$20 × 2^18 = $10,485,760
$20 × 2^19 = $20,971,520
$20 × 2^20 = $41,943,040

Note that these aren't even the cumulative sums of what you will have risked, just the new amounts you'll need to risk on each bet to chase your original $20. By the 5th or 6th bet, you'll be risking amounts that, if you had that much to bet, you'd hardly care about the small win you're trying to book. Run it up higher, and…well, you can see.

Now, to get this across more informally, look at those numbers and think about where your threshold is. You are a human in a finite world, so you have finite limits to what you can or will bet. Ignore the idea of table limits.

Wherever your personal limit is, you will have lost nearly that much already by the time you bet that much ($20 less, to be exact). And when you do bet that much, that "long-run thinking" that led you to think this was a good system goes out the window. Sure, it's a huge longshot to lose a near-coin-flip bet 9 times in a row, but once you've already lost it 8 times in a row, it's now about a coin flip that you'll hit the 9-loss streak. This is true every step of the way, from the second bet on up. Your last bet is just as much of a loser as your first bet, probability-wise, but just for more money.

If you have a large sum of money that you're intent on betting on a –EV near-coin-flip game, just drop the whole sum on one bet, double or nothing, and walk away whatever the outcome is. It's still a bad bet, but it's better than using the money to try to run a Martingale system because "double or nothing" gives you a better chance at short-term variance working in your favor. Better still would be abstaining from the game entirely.

If casino house games could be beaten by such rudimentary systems, there would be no casinos.

I think the thing that confuses them is that, the chance to lose 9 times in a row could really be described as a "hindsight" probability. As you state, the next bet is 50/50 even if you lost the last 8. Always. The chance to lose 9 in a row is sort of an emergent property of very long series, an average that is expected to eventually emerge. On average. Usually.

People who believe in this kind of system seem to make one fatal logical error more than any other. They trust that "You have to eventually win" if you play enough times, and sometimes the related idea that you will become "due" if you've lost enough times in a row.

But both of those points are bunk, just false altogether. And you certainly don't have to catch an eventual win within the narrow series that your bankroll enables. They tend not to see this until the exponentially growing bet sizes get through their entire roll after 5 or 6 bets.

The fact is, you're always going to have people who think they can outsmart a brick wall. You could have a guy on the corner who sells common $5 bills for $5.25 each, and you'd have people like this making up pseudo-math and coming up with all kinds of cockamamie schemes to pull one over on the guy. (That's effectively what casinos are doing, after all, and what Martingalers are trying to do to beat them.)

People believe they'll beat the long odds when they play the lottery and then turn around and believe the odds won't beat them when they martingale. And the real sad thing is the lottery odds are way longer.

Grunching, but the only 100% winning strategy at baccarat is not to play. Or just bet banker. They're both good strategies.

I can not stop laugh.

If you play long enough, Martingale will fail you miserably. Other systems MAY stand a chance but no one knows as of now. I did find one recently that appears to work. Although I have a hard time understanding it.

Check this out if you want to try it.

https://www.youtube.com/user/ArtOfBa...w=0&shelf_id=1

Many people know for certain that your claim is false.

Yes it is known as of now. Betting systems don't change EV in any game of fixed odds, all they can do is alter the distribution of wins and losses with the average outcome (EV) being exactly the same. The EV is controlled by the rules of the game, not by the betting strategy.

In simple terms, there is no possible sequence in which you can sum up a series of negative numbers and get a positive result.

Any betting system that involves increasing bets will only cause you to go broke faster, on average.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJSNI74zTOE



Keep fighting the good fight and catch those streaks lol!

Catching streaks is one of the most effective strategy I think. He did say it's all about money management. If you watch all video in that series careful, you will see he had a lot of effective ways. I also checked out his other videos and tried it out myself.

I doubt it myself when I first saw it. Now that I tried it out, I think it's pretty good. In a few video, you can see him build his bankroll from a few thousand to 50K. I can't do that yet. I can win a few hundred after a few shoes. I will try more to see if it's just luck or not.

Maybe we might be laughing out loud but he's laughing his way to the bank.

We're laughing at you.

Ok laughing hyenas. Working for me so far so I don't see why I shouldn't try it. Going to try it out for a month or two and head back to the casino if it works. It's only time wasted anyway.


Have a good strategy you want to share with the rest of us, OldGuy? I'm open for anything that works.

You don't get it about betting systems. Your expectation isn't affected by them, and the house edge is entirely controlled by the rules of the game. What you can affect is your variance, by playing a high variance system and hope to get lucky (this time). But that's random. This idea of "catching streaks" is ludicrous, since they can only be recognized in hindsight. You can't bet more when you're "in one" or about to have one. If you could predict the future you wouldn't need to play losing casino games to be rich.

Thanks for sharing your point. There is only one way to find out. That's to simulate or try it out. So far 6 successful sessions. Each session is 10 shoes. I can simulate 3 session each day. 10 shoes x 3 sessions x 30 days x 2 months = 1800 shoes. If all goes well, I will hit the casino to see how many sessions I can win for one or two month. That's another 900 or 1800 shoes, which makes it 2700 or 3600 shoes. I think that should be a good indication. My goal is 5%-10% of bankroll.

Be back here in 3-4 months. It's either laugh or cry. Wish me luck.

Phil Ivey it lol.