Lolwut

You're betting to not only win your $5 but the $1.5million and change you lost betting martingale...you do realize this right?

Apparently you don't, or the poster who mentioned the $1.6 million figure either. That figure doesn't happen anywhere in a Martingale scheme starting with $5. No bet amounts are anywhere near approximately that amount.

The sequence is $5 times consecutive powers of 2. And the bets will jump from 5*2^18 or ~$1.3 million on the 19th bet, to 5*2^19 or ~$2.6 million on the 20th bet (in any steak of consecutive losses). And of course the cumulative losses at any point are always exactly $5 less than the current bet amount, not "something and change".

None of which has anything to do with my earlier point about the bet. People with a million bucks or more in cash usually aren't dumb enough to risk it on a negative expectation bet. Only degens who can't do math. I guess that's who you mean.

People with a million in cash are the ones who should be placing bets. The degens who roll in with their weekly paycheck thinking they'll give martingale one more shot should stay home and open an IRA.

People with a million in cash should use it for something more worthwhile and intelligent than placing an exponential succession of –EV bets.

No I don't mean to say they should martingale. That's silly.

You're still missing the point. By saying "people aren't dumb enough to risk it on a negative expectation bet" you're still ignoring the hypothetical that was outlined.

The guy that said table limit would get ya is correct. My brother in law kept playing like that and the limit on a roulette was five thousand and he could not bet over it and he bet at least the five thousand anyway and lost it never to do again. I warned him way before as he kept doing it and gaining about 50-200 and quitting then it got him. Harry

Sorry i forgot to mention thats why the table limit is there to stop millionaires etc from doing that. Harry

lol no, casinos don't have table limits because they're afraid of Martingaling millionaires. They have enough capital behind them that they could absorb ludicrous hits from the most high-rolling of high rollers trying to Martingale them out of business.

Go ahead, raise a $100M bankroll and tell Wynn you want to put it all in play. Try to Martingale them. No matter what, you couldn't break them. If you want to have enough bankroll to cover you start with a small unit, say $100k. Okay, so even if you ultimately win after a losing streak, you've only hit them for $100k. If you hit the anti-lottery and lose 7 hands in a row, you're now laying $12.8M on your next bet, and even if you win that you're actually only winning $100k with the rest being covered by the money you've already donated to them. What if you lose 9 in a row? Now you can't cover your next bet.

Maybe you started with a $10M unit, to try to really show them what's up. If you win, sure, you took a bit out of their earnings. Their $356M earnings. Yup, you really crushed them, affecting their profits to the tune of -4.7%. But if you lose, now you have to place a $20M bet. Win that and you're still back to only $10M ahead. Lose that and your next bet of $40M is the last you can cover, still trying to only get back to that same $10M ahead. If you lose that, you can't play correct Martingale, and no matter what you haven't hurt their profits.

Maybe you're thinking of someone who's like anti-Martingaling, and keeps letting their winnings ride. The house won't care, you're just giving them all their money back.

Your best bet to hurt their bottom line would be to throw out a single $100M bet. But then you're throwing $100M on a -EV bet, made worse by the fact that you can't double or split properly.

Table limits are there for a combination of reasons --not the least of which is simply convenience, because having to continually refill a table stacked with drastically different bettors is irritating and slow-- but "protecting the house from idiots trying to Martingale" is pretty low on the list.

I know this threads about martingaling BJ, but as far as exceeding table limits at roulette:

I seen a guy who wanted to bet more than the table limit on red. (Table limit for outside bets $1000 and he wanted to bet $3000).

All he did was ask two people (that I assume he knew) at the table to place the bet for him. He gave them 1k in chips, they placed the bet and when it won, they passed the chips right to him. Dealer didn't say anything.

So I guess if one needs to circumvent limits, it can be as easy as having friends join you at the table.

You could find a 100k roulette table easily in Vegas too.

I think to sum up the thread here is what I take of it:

You need to start at a low $5 table so you can handle losing up to around 20 bets in a row before you are forced to bet more than max bets.

The trick is, with that large of a bankroll you are better off investing in other things besides grinding out $5 bets. You might even make more money if you just keep the money in a savings account and earn interest which might be a better roi than maybe $100-200 a day.

Huh?

Martingaling $5
Bet#/$ wagered
1/5
2/10
3/20
4/40
5/80
6/160
7/320
8/640
9/1280
10/2560
11/5120
12/10240
13/20480
14/40960
15/81920
16/163840
17/327680
18/655360
19/1,310,720

After losing 19 bets, the 20th bet would be $2,621,440.

I'm pretty sure you can get action up to a million in Vegas so that's around 18. What are the odds of losing 18 in a row, that will sum up the thread.

It'll happen about once a yearish to a serious player.

The probability of losing 18 coin flips in a row is 1/262,144, or about 0.0004%. Playing an optimal strategy to minimize house edge, and assuming typical rules, blackjack is slightly worse than a coin flip, so the probability of 18 losses in a row would be slightly greater. (Actually, it would be even greater than that, but the greater likelihood of the player losing is offset somewhat by the 3:2 payout on blackjack. However, this complicates things too much to present a simple example.) The percent is probably close enough due to rounding error.

Notice, however, that assuming the coin flip for the moment, your EV when only considering 18 losses in a row starting on a $5 bet is:

P(winning any one of the 18 bets) × (net profit) + P(losing 18 times) × (net loss) =
(262143/262144) × $5 + (1/262,144) × –$1,310,715 =
$1,310,715/262,144 – $1,310,715/262,144 =
$0

The house edge in blackjack, on the other hand, means that the right-hand number being subtracted grows and the left-hand number shrinks, making that $0 figure sink into the negatives—the same as it would in our coin flip example if you were flipping a biased coin that is 49% to land heads and 51% tails, and you only win on heads.

As long as the game you're playing is –EV, this is the case for any specific bet size in a Martingale system and for the system as a whole. You are a money dog, always, no matter how you sequence your bets.

Oops, I missed a power of two.

Okay so once every two-ish years for a serious shoe player. Still, not a real good plan if you're going to hit the anti-lottery every couple of years and lose $1.3M in your quest to win $5.

You'd be further ahead collecting lost change off the Strip.

Here's your problem. You realize that blackjack is -EV, right? It's not investing. You'd definitely make more money with a savings account earning 0.1% than playing blackjack earning -0.5%.

This still continues a critical flaw in the logic. If the probability is that it happens on average every 2 years, that does not mean the first occurrence isn't likely to happen for two years if you start now. The first occurrence could be tomorrow. It could be the very first time you ever play. As we extend the time window longer and longer, the likelihood of having an occurrence within that window approaches 100%.

No, you're creating some straw man to "prove" some imaginary point.

An average occurrence of "once every two years" means exactly that, that in a two year span it is likely to occur once. No one but you has ever said that it implied that it would occur two years from your start date. Once means just that -- once. The first trip could be "once". The second trip could be "once". Any specific interval in that span could be "once". There's no implied set date anywhere in anything I said, just a time span, which you're trying to distort into a set point in time.


If I said having a kid with some metabolic disorder is a 1/20,000 chance, no one (but you, apparently...) would say it's implied you'd have to have 19,999 children first before you could have a child with the aforementioned disorder.

You should reread the thread. It has been implied multiple times that you are safe for a while.

That's fine, but don't quote me for some straw man argument then.

If I said it'll happen on average once every two years it doesn't in any way imply that it won't happen on any particular trip. Losing the anti-lottery is just like winning the lottery; despite the odds against, it can happen at any one time.

My apologies. I misunderstood your post and thought it was continuing a line of thought started earlier that did imply what I said.

I'm a little dumbfounded I've been around gambling 20/32 years of my life and never heard this system as martingale....

But I may have cracked the foolproof of full proof martingale systems that might not miss.....all hypothetical of course

Say you have a bankroll of 40 million and are willing to put it in play instead of going to a bj table or baccarat what if you started banging show at the track.....

From the outside it looks dumb Looking for 2.10 BUT in West Virginia and Massachusetts the min payout is $2.20.....

And the track would love the handle....

At 2.20 if you bet 200 you get 20 etc etc

Bet 200 if it misses you gotta bet 2000 to win 200

If that misses now u gotta bet $20000 to win 2000 etc

If you do your homework you can pick a track apart with this "martingale system"

Huge difference between 2.10 and 2.20

In a billion years would the track say no to you betting 200k to show with there 18 percent chop

Go for it, obviously no one's ever thought of this and you'll get rich real easy.

Wow, betting 10x as much to cover your losses instead of 2x. Yup, no way that could possibly fail.

Even betting show on the favorite you're only gonna collect ~67% of the time in the long run IIRC.