Mazille wrote:With a sample size of just one player playing with a reasonable budget, I don't think the 1 in 37 chance to get neither black nor red makes much of a difference.
It's of course where the house makes it's money, big picture.

That's more or less what I was getting at. That people overestimating their odds of winning is where the house makes out. Somebody making a bet thinking they are getting 50/50 odds on a 2-1 payout is fundamentally how casinos are profitable.

Nicko wrote:

purplerat wrote:

jamest wrote:
Anyway, the idea is so simple that I'm probably embarrassing myself by saying it, but if I were to [say] simply double-up my bet every time I lost on a 50/50 chance, such as red or black in roulette,

Black:Red is not 50/50 in roulette.

It does however pay out 2 to 1.

On any such game, if you simply double up every time one loses, then you will win all your money back plus profit equal to your original stake once you win.

The only snag is one must have the funds available to back this strategy, while avoiding the house's bet ceiling.

What this means in practice is that the amount one can win using this strategy is fairly small.

It's a payout of 1 to 1 and lower than the odds against.
Hereis a summary table of the odds and pay outs.

purplerat wrote:

Mazille wrote:With a sample size of just one player playing with a reasonable budget, I don't think the 1 in 37 chance to get neither black nor red makes much of a difference.
It's of course where the house makes it's money, big picture.

That's more or less what I was getting at. That people overestimating their odds of winning is where the house makes out. Somebody making a bet thinking they are getting 50/50 odds on a 2-1 payout is fundamentally how casinos are profitable.

Something I learned long ago was to step inside the casino complex and take a good look around.

Someone had to pay for all that shit... and keep paying for it.

The things are goddamned monuments to the direction money flows within.

Having giving it more thought, the odds of [say] getting a hundred black numbers in-a-row seem so obscure that I'm quite sure that anyone with sufficient funds could not lose. Those funds would probably need to be into the several-millions, if not billions, but as someone said why would they go out of their way to always double-up on a £$1 stake? I mean, if they played all day they'd probably make a £$100.

As for me, who can't even dream of having a pot of more than 5 figures, the odds still seem stacked in my favour of making the same amount. Until of course that day finally arrived when [say] 16 consecutive numbers of the wrong colour busted my pot.

The question is, now, how many days would that take? A lifetime? Then maybe I'll give it a try.

The_Metatron wrote:

purplerat wrote:

Mazille wrote:With a sample size of just one player playing with a reasonable budget, I don't think the 1 in 37 chance to get neither black nor red makes much of a difference.
It's of course where the house makes it's money, big picture.

That's more or less what I was getting at. That people overestimating their odds of winning is where the house makes out. Somebody making a bet thinking they are getting 50/50 odds on a 2-1 payout is fundamentally how casinos are profitable.

Something I learned long ago was to step inside the casino complex and take a good look around.

Someone had to pay for all that shit... and keep paying for it.

The things are goddamned monuments to the direction money flows within.

christ, trying to write this reminds me how old I am and how bad my memory is.

What you're saying is a casino has a very high negative [?], meaning it's a sink, money flows in, it doesn't flow out. Is it divergence, ? It's the del f, or ∇ f, the divergence, had to check wiki.

Basically, he's a cynic to everything. Except his kids. I know a few people like that.

jamest wrote:Basically, he's a cynic to everything. Except his kids. I know a few people like that.

Stating that casinos make shitloads of money by exploiting people who don't understand basic statistics is hardly cynical.

Mazille wrote:

jamest wrote:Basically, he's a cynic to everything. Except his kids. I know a few people like that.

Stating that casinos make shitloads of money by exploiting people who don't understand basic statistics is hardly cynical.

Correct. I was cynically refering to other observations in other threads. My apologies.

Well...

Mazille wrote:Well...

I'm fine, thanks for asking.

Mazille wrote::thumbup:

You have a large thumb, squire. I pity frozen badgers in your neck of the woods.

I once beat a casino. Many years ago on my nineteenth birthday my sister and I were in Dawson City in the Yukon and we went into what, at the time, was the only licensed gambling house in Canada: Diamond Tooth Gertie's.

Well they found out my last name which has some cachet in those parts so I got $10 in chips, then they found out it was my birthday so I got another $10, then this guy who was trying to pick up my sister kept giving me ten bucks to fuck off, and my sister would give me ten bucks to come and put him off his stride. I gambled and lost all night and it didn't cost me a dime. The only time in my life I have ever gambled.

Then one of the dancing girls took me home after the place closed.

Onyx8 wrote:

Then one of the dancing girls took me home after the place closed.

Couldn't you remember where you lived? Sounds like quite a night.

July 2nd in Dawson City, you can read a book outside at midnight: I could see where I lived. A tent with my sister. Not a tough choice.

jamest wrote:Having giving it more thought, the odds of [say] getting a hundred black numbers in-a-row seem so obscure that I'm quite sure that anyone with sufficient funds could not lose. Those funds would probably need to be into the several-millions, if not billions, but as someone said why would they go out of their way to always double-up on a £$1 stake? I mean, if they played all day they'd probably make a £$100.

As for me, who can't even dream of having a pot of more than 5 figures, the odds still seem stacked in my favour of making the same amount. Until of course that day finally arrived when [say] 16 consecutive numbers of the wrong colour busted my pot.

The question is, now, how many days would that take? A lifetime? Then maybe I'll give it a try.

Every casino I've been in has a maximum bet per hand/roll of the dice/spin of the wheel. Your bet is going to increase exponentially after every loss, and it's very likely that you'll eventually run into the maximum wall.

Even if they didn't, you would have to have infinite money to be guaranteed to make a profit.

Casinos have been around a long time, and they're careful to make sure that the payouts of every single bet will, on average, result in them making money in the end. They have hundreds of years of experience ripping off the average stupid gambler. Think about this for a moment, and then feel free to feel silly that, after a moment of casual thought, you believed you had found a novel way of beating the house.

Shagz wrote:Every casino I've been in has a maximum bet per hand/roll of the dice/spin of the wheel. Your bet is going to increase exponentially after every loss, and it's very likely that you'll eventually run into the maximum wall.

Unless of course, your initial bet is low enough to avoid this problem. For a while.

Take Keno: the game I mentioned earlier. It's 20 numbers drawn out of 80.

You can play a version of this called "Heads or Tails", where your bet is whether more numbers will be drawn in the top or bottom of the screen. The payoff (leaving an "evens" bet aside for the moment) is twice your wager.

The maximum bet in Keno is $1,999.

If your initial bet was $1 on - for the sake of argument - heads, you would have eleven chances to get a result of heads in order to end up $1 richer. Say there is a seven-game streak of "tails" or "evens" before a result of "heads" comes up. That means on the eighth game - the one you win - you will bet $128 and get a payout of $256. The problem is that by this stage, you will have lost $127 on the preceding seven games, putting you only $1 in front of the house.

If you get to your eleventh game, you will be betting $1024 that you are not going to see an eleven-game tails/evens streak.

For an effective payoff of $1.

Admittedly, I've never seen this happen.

Fail-safe Gambling

= oxymoron when it comes to casino's. Gambling as a skill is hard won..not by any means failsafe.

Unless the casino was owned by Trump then you would stand a chance

Remember zero and double zero in America. Bent tables. They do exist.

Really, all you need to remember is that if you were in business, you wouldn't leave the success or failure of that business up to pure chance.