If a Casino game had 0 house edge...

I have spent many nights thinking of betting systems and bet size structures... unsuprisingly have always found that the House still holds an advtange on each one.

Lets say that a casino offered a game where they would flip an unbiased coin and you could bet on heads or tails. The casino agreed to pay Even money on both heads and tails. Since the casino has 0 edge on this.... would there be any betting system that could guarantee a player profit. Assumption that player has a bankroll of and the casino accepts a maximum bet of 10,000 units

I was in a seminar recently where the instructor used a 1000 trial coin flip as an example. After 1000 flips, the typical result was further from "even" than most people would have expected (although the most frequent result would be "even", if I recall correctly and was paying attention).

I'll leave further commentary to the WIZ and MATHEXTREMIST.

If you could explain how the most frequent results are even while the typical results are not???

That seems to contradict each other.

Quote: minnesotajoe

I have spent many nights thinking of betting systems and bet size structures... unsuprisingly have always found that the House still holds an advtange on each one.

Lets say that a casino offered a game where they would flip an unbiased coin and you could bet on heads or tails. The casino agreed to pay Even money on both heads and tails. Since the casino has 0 edge on this.... would there be any betting system that could guarantee a player profit. Assumption that player has a bankroll of and the casino accepts a maximum bet of 10,000 units

No

Quote: minnesotajoe

I have spent many nights thinking of betting systems and bet size structures... unsuprisingly have always found that the House still holds an advtange on each one.

Lets say that a casino offered a game where they would flip an unbiased coin and you could bet on heads or tails. The casino agreed to pay Even money on both heads and tails. Since the casino has 0 edge on this.... would there be any betting system that could guarantee a player profit. Assumption that player has a bankroll of and the casino accepts a maximum bet of 10,000 units

The very statement, "the casino has 0 edge on this" is EXACTLY EQUIVALENT to the statement, "there is no betting system that could guarantee a player profit". In other words, the two statements are expressing the same concept. Re-word the first statement to say, "the PLAYER has zero edge on this", and you'll see what I mean.

Quote: minnesotajoe

I have spent many nights thinking of betting systems and bet size structures... unsuprisingly have always found that the House still holds an advtange on each one.

Lets say that a casino offered a game where they would flip an unbiased coin and you could bet on heads or tails. The casino agreed to pay Even money on both heads and tails. Since the casino has 0 edge on this.... would there be any betting system that could guarantee a player profit. Assumption that player has a bankroll of and the casino accepts a maximum bet of 10,000 units

No. Taken in the most simple terms the expected return here is 1.0. If B is amount bet then expected return is B* 1.0. Same as if a BJ game had a house edge of 1% abd thus a "return" of .99 then expected return would be B * .99. No matter how you vary the bets the return is always the same. As the wiz says, "No betting system can beat a negative expectation game." So none also can turn a neutral expectation game positive.

Even more interesting: if you had several million dollars or even a billion dollars and wanted to open up your own casino to make a killing .. there is no "system" to guarantee a profit from operating a casino WITH A HOUSE EDGE.

I have never been a millionaire myself, but I had almost $900,000 in liquid assets back in 2006. One of the things that I learned (the hard way) is there is absolutely no such thing as a guarantee about anything. I lost almost everything I had money wise, AND if I had it to do all over again .. I would even do it the same way. You can definitely buy insurance to cushion yourself against certain events, but even that doesn't guarantee anything. My mistake was that I bought a house and stayed married to the same person in California for more than 10 years to someone who quit working two weeks after we got married. It seems like that wouldn't wipe out a million bucks, but you'd be surprised.

Back in 2004 and 2005 a lot of people believed that property values only went up, and that casinos couldn't possibly lose, and other things relating to what was guaranteed.

But again, there is no such thing: just believing in something doesn't make it true.

Another point that I would like to make is that if you do aspire to be a millionaire (or better) you are going to have to take risks and be willing to lose. When you go to the casino, they are giving you some of the most inexpensive paths to making money by taking risks. The only downside is that you don't have the edge in the events, so you had better not take too many of them. But you can in fact win.

If you want to be guaranteed of being successful, you also need an edge, and probably bigger than a measly one percent (unless you have a LOT of money and do a LOT of transactions).

The mega rich love anything that returns 10% or more yearly. I have made 35% in the stock market so far this year trading a single stock (swing trading) and by focusing on that stock .. feeling that I might have an edge over others who are trading it. Much of this may have been from the same risk I would face in the casino, but it's all in my 401k, so at least I don't have to worry about taxes.

If you want to learn how to be the one with the edge, there are plenty of transactions you can search for that will lead to better opportunities than to spend a lot of time taking risks in the form of bets against a casino. In the low denomination world, you could risk digging in the garbage for valuable items, and then either redeem them at the recycling center, or sell them somewhere, or use (or eat) them yourself. That's a very nearly guaranteed profit if you also eat from the garbage and walk them to the center or ride them there on a bicycle that you found. Most people recognize that this is a guaranteed way to come out "ahead."

However, as you start looking at transactions where you are looking for dollars at a time or hundreds of dollars at a time, you find out there is a lot more competition from people who are not fit for the funny farm.

Good luck finding the guarantees you seek! They are out there, just not in the casino. There you will only find gambling. But you will also find gambling embedded in just about everything else you do, so it's good to practice gambling in an isolated environment until you fully understand and appreciate it and how to use it to get ahead when combined with other things that do give you an edge, if not a guarantee.

The biggest edge you can give yourself is called education. And in this world, at least you have the internet (and the world) at your fingertips. So keep trying and you will get it eventually.

Quote: minnesotajoe

I have spent many nights thinking of betting systems and bet size structures... unsuprisingly have always found that the House still holds an advtange on each one.

Lets say that a casino offered a game where they would flip an unbiased coin and you could bet on heads or tails. The casino agreed to pay Even money on both heads and tails. Since the casino has 0 edge on this.... would there be any betting system that could guarantee a player profit. Assumption that player has a bankroll of and the casino accepts a maximum bet of 10,000 units

No -- there is no betting system that can "overcome" or "improve" the house edge on a game, regardless of what that house edge is. Even if it's zero, and even if it's positive. In other words, if you have a +EV game, whatever betting strategy you use won't change the amount of the +EV edge. (This doesn't hold for games like BJ, where a basic-strategy zero-EV top-of-the-deck game is likely to be positive using a composition-dependent strategy based on the first 3 cards.)

I've done some work for online casinos that offer zero-EV games. I know they did a roulette game with normal payouts but no zeroes on the wheel, and I helped them figure out a near-zero-EV version of Red Dog. The point is, they're not worried about systems. You shouldn't be either.

Thank you all for the replies.

I found them all useful. I found it interesting that a game with a positive Player advantage.. that a betting system wouldn't work either. I never really thought about it... but yea, in the long run it should come out the same.

Quote: aahigh

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I have never been a millionaire myself, but I had almost $900,000 in liquid assets back in 2006. One of the things that I learned (the hard way) is there is absolutely no such thing as a guarantee about anything. I lost almost everything I had money wise, AND if I had it to do all over again .. I would even do it the same way. You can definitely buy insurance to cushion yourself against certain events, but even that doesn't guarantee anything. My mistake was that I bought a house and stayed married to the same person in California for more than 10 years to someone who quit working two weeks after we got married. It seems like that wouldn't wipe out a million bucks, but you'd be surprised.

I used to hear about the dangers of this from Tom Leykis daily. Being in a job where I read divorce paperwork fairly regular it is scary. But the worst was this. The years have been estimated as I forget the exacts.


2003 Guy owns house in his own name.

2005 Guy quit-claims his wife onto the house.

2007 Guy gets quit-claimed OFF the house as part of the divorce settlement.



OUCH.