Posted: Feb 10, 2019 8:03 pm
by Thommo
Fallible wrote:
Thommo wrote:Incidentally, there absolutely are betting systems that work (e.g. card counting blackjack, there have also been more dubious, but reliable incidents in recent years like edge carding or mobile phone analysis of roulette wheels to predict a quadrant). The Martingale just isn't one of them.

If you do count cards, the difficulty is preventing the casinos from banning you. They tend not to like people who win.


Yep. Casinos and betting shops have self-exclusion policies which one can sign up to (and have more holes than Swiss cheese), but if you really want banning, win too much too often.


They are shamefully bad at not enforcing their self-exclusion policies and allowing people to bypass them. It was in the news a few months ago. Deregulated gambling in this country has gone too far and needs to be dialed back a few notches.

If people really want to gamble, they should just trade leveraged stocks on the NYSE. Doesn't have a house edge (as long as you're not employing a broker or fund manager), doesn't have a stamp duty like FTSE shares. You can still utterly ruin yourself, it's just likely to take a bit longer.