Real life Martingale bet

Post #109 on this forum stated 28 losses in a row with 49.5% odds is so rare that I am willing to bet it hasn't occurred a single time in the entire history of satoshidice and other gambling sites. Note "satoshidice" is a Japanese gambling site.

Post #139 replied with over a billion bets at Just-Dice I would be surprised if there wasn't at least a 28 streak at one point.

Post #141 was the bet with up to $30,000 in action. The owner of the website would go through the 1.2 billion bets and filter out only those with 49.5% odds of winning and look for streaks. His guess prior to filtering was half the bets were of that type.

Would you take some of that action? The people who bet didn't know what percentage of the 1/2 billion bets were at 49.5%. The guess that half were of that type turned out to be wrong. Only a third were.

49.5% chance of winning is a bad bet. Can't even play the DI card with online dice.

This is this an online casino I would never 100% trust an online casino.

Quote: BleedingChipsSlowly

49.5% chance of winning is a bad bet.

Really?
How do you figure?

Quote: DJTeddyBear

Quote: BleedingChipsSlowly

49.5% chance of winning is a bad bet. Can't even play the DI card with online dice.

Really?
How do you figure?

Sorry, for some reason I felt compelled to state the obvious...

Not if it pays 2-1 :)

Quote: BleedingChipsSlowly

Sorry, for some reason I felt compelled to state the obvious...

Obvious? Not to me it's not.

To me, a 0.5% house edge is not bad at all. So what am I missing?

Quote: thecesspit

Not if it pays 2-1 :)

I'm assuming 1:1

Two things at play here, each of them referred to as "real world".

One use of "real world" is a pseudonym for a player having the knowledge that on line casinos are akin to butchers with a thumb on the scale, although they can't see the thumb or know how much it weighs.

The other use of "real world" is the eternal gambler's puzzlement: IF past events have no effect on that next spin then what should I bet on if the past ten results were "Black". The Ball and Wheel still don't know the past and have no desire or ability to "even things out" in some sort of just world, but there are far MORE ten streaks followed by a Change than ten streak followed by an Eleventh result.
So even though the Ball and Wheel can't "balance things out" we know that in the long run Ten streaks are more frequent than eleven streaks so after ten reds bet Black.

Quote: DJTeddyBear

Obvious? Not to me it's not.

To me, a 0.5% house edge is not bad at all. So what am I missing?



I'm assuming 1:1

The house edge in this case would be 1%

Quote: DJTeddyBear

Obvious? Not to me it's not.
To me, a 0.5% house edge is not bad at all. So what am I missing?
I'm assuming 1:1

Certainly that's better odds than the great majority of what's offered in most casinos. but a 50.5% chance of losing a 1:1 bet is not good. I'll grant you it's acceptable if you just want to have some fun, but if you wager at those odds long enough your bankroll will evaporate. My main point was that no matter what outrageous streak is involved, winning or losing, the next play will be independent of that streak. "The dice have no memory" is posted to this forum so often I thought I wouldn't have to say it again.

Quote: DJTeddyBear

To me, a 0.5% house edge is not bad at all. So what am I missing?
I'm assuming 1:1

It's actually a 1% house edge (49.5% chance of winning means 50.5% chance of losing). Yes it pays 1:1
Conversely if you like variance you can select a 1% chance of winning which pays 99:1

They had a whale last October laid odds of winning at 92%. Payout was 7/92%=7.60870%. He did this 12 times and more than doubled his 1700 BTC.

He came back in 36 hours and bet 7 more times. Now he set his bet to win the maximum profit, or 0.5% of the investor's bank. He still had 93% chance of winning or higher. After a few hours he did it 7 more times.

Now he had 6812 BTC. Possibly with the hope of turning it over 7000 BTC he bet the max again and lost everything.

Was there a question for the poll? I'm totally lost either way. What exactly is the issue with the Martingale?

Quote: pacomartin

It's actually a 1% house edge (49.5% chance of winning means 50.5% chance of losing). Yes it pays 1:1
Conversely if you like variance you can select a 1% chance of winning which pays 99:1

They had a whale last October laid odds of winning at 92%. Payout was 7/92%=7.60870%. He did this 12 times and more than doubled his 1700 BTC.

He came back in 36 hours and bet 7 more times. Now he set his bet to win the maximum profit, or 0.5% of the investor's bank. He still had 93% chance of winning or higher. After a few hours he did it 7 more times.

Now he had 6812 BTC. Possibly with the hope of turning it over 7000 BTC he bet the max again and lost everything.

Whale indeed. 6,800 btc is well over $4 million.

Quote: onenickelmiracle

Was there a question for the poll? I'm totally lost either way. What exactly is the issue with the Martingale?

Most of the players who make long strings of even money bets (against 1% house edge) are playing Martingale. A table in a brick and mortar casino, usually sets the minimum and maximum so that you can only play Martingale between 6 and 10 losses in a row (usually 6). Because these bets are in bitcoins, the min and max are set so that you can place Martingale bets up to 24 or 25 losses in a row.

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The owner of the website is always asked "What is the worse streak of losses that has happened?". His answer was always that it isn't worth digging through the database.

Then he saw a post on the forum: 28 losses in a row with 49.5% odds is so rare that I am willing to bet it hasn't occurred a single time in the entire history of ... gambling sites. So the owner said he would take a bet to make it worth his while to dig through the database. He would filter the database of 1.2 billion bets to find the odds of winning at 49.5% (pays even money). He didn't know what percentage of the bets qualified, but his guess was half.

He expected people to bet one or two bitcoins against that proposition, and was surprised when a 21 year old bet 50 bitcoins (over $30K). The owner of the website is not so well off that a proposition bet of that size didn't make him sweat.

My question is would betting against the proposition be a good/bad bet?

Quote: pacomartin

Most of the players who make long strings of even money bets (against 1% house edge) are playing Martingale. A table in a brick and mortar casino, usually sets the minimum and maximum so that you can only play Martingale between 6 and 10 losses in a row (usually 6). Because these bets are in bitcoins, the min and max are set so that you can place Martingale bets up to 24 or 25 losses in a row.

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The owner of the website is always asked "What is the worse streak of losses that has happened?". His answer was always that it isn't worth digging through the database.

Then he saw a post on the forum: 28 losses in a row with 49.5% odds is so rare that I am willing to bet it hasn't occurred a single time in the entire history of ... gambling sites. So the owner said he would take a bet to make it worth his while to dig through the database. He would filter the database of 1.2 billion bets to find the odds of winning at 49.5% (pays even money). He didn't know what percentage of the bets qualified, but his guess was half.

He expected people to bet one or two bitcoins against that proposition, and was surprised when a 21 year old bet 50 bitcoins (over $30K). The owner of the website is not so well off that a proposition bet of that size didn't make him sweat.

My question is would betting against the proposition be a good/bad bet?

I'm sure it has happened on that site it probably cheats. This is probably all some gimmick.

Quote: AxiomOfChoice

The house edge in this case would be 1%

Oops. My math head was asleep. I stand corrected.

But even at 1%, I'm sure that many/most of us regularly make bets that are worse than 1%. So I stand by my assertion that a 1% bet is not terrible.

Quote: pacomartin

My question is would betting against the proposition be a good/bad bet?

Oh! The poll was not about a single bet, but about a 28 bet losing streak?

In that case, I wanna change my vote to "unknown".

Even if you assume the casino isn't cheating, you need to know the number of qualifying bets before you can say it is or isn't a good bet that there was ever a streak as long as specified.

Quote: DJTeddyBear

So I stand by my assertion that a 1% bet is not terrible.

That's kind of an understatement. I've never seen a pure luck bet of 1%. The lowest in brick and mortar casino is usually 1.41% in craps. The original website like this in Japan uses 1.98%.

Quote: DJTeddyBear

Even if you assume the casino isn't cheating, you need to know the number of qualifying bets before you can say it is or isn't a good bet that there was ever a streak as long as specified.

There were 1.2 billion bets placed in the casino. The guess was that half qualified (i.e. were even money bet) and wagers were placed based on uncertain knowledge. In fact only 358 million qualified.

But the streak had to be for one player. You weren't just allowed to line up the bets in chronological order and look for streaks. The count produced 22,807 players who made these type of bets.

Now if all players bet equal number of times (358 million / 22,807 = 15,700 player per person) it is wildly improbable to get a streak of 28 or more losses in a row.
A total of 70 players made between 1 and 6 million bets apiece (over the course of year). Another 91 made 1/2-1 million bets. Together these big players made 195M of the 358M bets.


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The profits of the website is posted for all to see. It was 1860 BTC. Now when they started the website 1860 BTC would be worth about $200K. But now those BTC are worth $1.2M. So the website runs a tidy profit (but they must pay for server time and operations). I guess it is run by a guy in his 40's and his girlfriend.

But the website owner is not a multi-millionaire. when he offered this bet he expected people to bet 1-3 BTC. Instead some 21 year old kid bet him 50 BTC (nearly $30K). He was obligated to go through with the bet.

But the guy that bet against him was told by a mathematician friend that he had a 73% chance of winning.

I agree for the recreational gambler 1% is a very good bet. I mean this thing where you will lose overall the long haul is great but I don't play enough to ever get to the long haul. My wins or losses happen on positive and negative variance, not grinding out a moderate win or loss over 1,000,000 hands. Now having said that, I still look to play games that have as low house edge as possible. Its just that I cant get worked up over playing a 9-5 versus a 9-6 JoB game if I am at a casino playing and drinking for fun.

Quote: pacomartin

Most of the players who make long strings of even money bets (against 1% house edge) are playing Martingale. A table in a brick and mortar casino, usually sets the minimum and maximum so that you can only play Martingale between 6 and 10 losses in a row (usually 6). Because these bets are in bitcoins, the min and max are set so that you can place Martingale bets up to 24 or 25 losses in a row.

----------------------

The owner of the website is always asked "What is the worse streak of losses that has happened?". His answer was always that it isn't worth digging through the database.

Then he saw a post on the forum: 28 losses in a row with 49.5% odds is so rare that I am willing to bet it hasn't occurred a single time in the entire history of ... gambling sites. So the owner said he would take a bet to make it worth his while to dig through the database. He would filter the database of 1.2 billion bets to find the odds of winning at 49.5% (pays even money). He didn't know what percentage of the bets qualified, but his guess was half.

He expected people to bet one or two bitcoins against that proposition, and was surprised when a 21 year old bet 50 bitcoins (over $30K). The owner of the website is not so well off that a proposition bet of that size didn't make him sweat.

My question is would betting against the proposition be a good/bad bet?

Ok I would guess a bad bet because we cannot assume he doesn't know and could refuse bets if he knew he was going to lose. It can not be worth his while if he doesn't gain.