this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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No Stupid Questions

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Ok so here's the rules

  • I just bet on red every time
  • I start with 1 dollar
  • every time I lose, I triple my previous bet
  • every time I win I restart

I'm going to simulate 10 games

  • Game 1 - Bet $1 Lose
  • Game 2 - Bet $3 Lose
  • Game 3 - Bet $9 Win $18
  • Game 4 - Bet $1 Lose
  • Game 5 - Bet $3 Lose
  • Game 6 - Bet $9 Win $18
  • Game 7 - Bet $1 Lose
  • Game 8 - Bet $3 Lose
  • Game 9 - Bet $9 Lose
  • Game 10 - Bet $18 Win $36

In this simulation I'm losing at a rate of 70%. In reality the lose rate is closer to 52%. I put in $54 but I'm walking away with $72, basically leaving the building with $18.

Another example. Let's pretend I walk in with $100,000 to bet with. I lose my first 10 games and win the 11th.

  • 1 lose
  • 3 lose
  • 9 lose
  • 27 lose
  • 81 lose
  • 243 lose
  • 729 lose
  • 2187 lose
  • 6561 lose
  • 19683 lose
  • 59049 win $118098

$88573 spent out of pocket, $118098 won

Walk out with roughly $29525.

I get most casinos won't let you be that high but it's a pretty extreme example anyway, the likelyhood of losing 10/11 games on 48% odds is really unlikely.

So help me out here, what am I missing?

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[–] zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world 36 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Expanding a bit more on what everyone else says: This strategy works, as long as you never lose n times in a row, where n is the number of bets it takes to bet ALL of the money you currently have.

So the more money you bring with you, the longer you can make this strategy work - but the more devastating it'll be once you inevitably lose.

If you go with a doubling strategy instead of a tripling strategy, that means you have to lose floor(log₂(x+1)) times to realize an unrecoverable loss (you don't have enough to make your next bet), or one more than that to lose absolutely everything. With your tripling strategy the calculation is floor(log₃(2*x+1)). x is the amount of money you had after the last "reset".

So if you go to the casino with $100,000, your strategy will work as long as you don't lose 11 times in a row - once you do, you've suffered your devastating unrecoverable loss. Every time your money triples you can last one more loss. Tripling your money is very difficult with this strategy, as most of the time when you win, it's a small amount relative to what you're holding - you need large losing streaks to make a real difference, and large losing streaks make reaching the threshold of an unrecoverable loss easier, obviously.

Others have said it already, but - you can use this to win in the short term if you have a lot of money and only want to win a little bit more. If you use this strategy in the long term you will lose everything.