This F***ing sucks

[Hraesvelg]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marting...ette_system%29

[Belaslav]

You don't believe me? Find a flash roulette game, and try this strategy out.

[Hraesvelg]

It works if you have an infinite bank, otherwise the edge is still with the house.

[Ralath]

There's no mathematical proof behind your method.... :/


(I'm not even dealing with money amounts at this point, just the outcome.)

[Belaslav]

Hrae posted the Math proof of the method. But like William Blake said:

The true method of knowledge is experiment.

Try it.

[Ralath]

I don't think you read Hrae's link...

Let me pick out some highlights:

Since a gambler with infinite wealth will with probability 1 eventually flip heads, the Martingale betting strategy was seen as a sure thing by those who practised it. Of course, none of these practitioners in fact possessed infinite wealth, and the exponential growth of the bets would eventually bankrupt those who choose to use the Martingale. It is widely believed that casinos instituted betting limits specifically to stop Martingale players, but in reality the assumptions behind the strategy are unsound. Players using the Martingale system do not have any long term mathematical advantage over any other betting system or even randomly placed bets.

The impossibility of winning over the long run, given a limit of the size of bets or a limit in the size of one's bankroll or line of credit, is proven by the optional stopping theorem.

The only way to come out ahead is to have an infinite amount of resources--time, money, etc. Hrae posted this as well.

Another way to think about it is if the probability was something extraordinarily small. Let's say... picking a number between 1 and 1,000,000,000.

You can pick the number 1 for as long as you like but the number 1 has the same probability of being picked as any other number.

And no, I don't need to test this out because this is just a game of probability and there are mathematical rules in probability. If you win in the flash roulette game, then you got lucky (the standard probability worked in your favor).

[Hessah]

I think, theoritically, I can see Bel's proposal... where you bet on flipping a coin, where the chance of getting a head, is the same as getting a tail... So the chance of you winning, is the same as you losing...

But in a real Roulette, You don't just have Red and Black (in order to win double, you must be just betting on the colours).. you also have the 0 and 00, which belongs to neither red or black, and the chance of you winning, will always be lower than the chance of the host winning in the long run...