Friday 20 June 2008

Martingales

I'm always interested in ways to make money online. A recent trend seems to be the Martingale. You might not have seen it published under this name, but that's what it's called - it is claimed to be a new invention, but really dates from several centuries ago.

The system goes something like this:-

You sign up for accounts on online casinos, and then play roulette using the following strategy:-
  • Bet £1 on red (or black - let's arbitrarily say red)
  • If you win, pocket the winnings
  • If you lose, double your bets (e.g. betting £2, £4, £8 etc) on red
The sites which propound this method state that if you can't fail to lose, because you will always make £1 back eventually. This is a system which has "casinos running scared", as I read on one site.

Or not. It doesn't actually work, because there are 3 facts which have been ignored.

The principal one is that the odds of red (or black) coming up are not 50% if there is a zero (or double zero) on the board - actually, it's 48.6% or 47.3% respectively. This means that you should expect to lose each spin of the wheel.

That's OK, you might think, because you can follow the strategy, and still win, because you're bound to win on a subsequent spin. No - two factors limit this: 1) the size of your bankroll; 2) the size of the table's maximum bet. If you don't have the money to bet, you can't continue in the martingale system. If the table won't accept your bet, you can't continue in the system.

Therefore, on average, you will lose, since you will tend to lose on each spin.

Do not believe the hype. If you actually simulate the process, you will find out how often you will win. It's almost as if people who run casinos aren't stupid...

(There is a very good article on this at The Wizard Of Odds)

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm interested in how you got Qt4.4 to compile with visual studio 2005. i was wondering if you can help me with that; this is the only way I can reach you, since there aren't any email links here.

You can email me back at: jordanmisiura@gmail.com

Any help is appreciated.

Andy said...

Hi Jordan,

Sorry it has taken me a while to get back to you.

I found it very little trouble to compile. This wasn't the URL that I used, but it looks something like the steps I followed:-

http://tom.paschenda.org/blog/?p=28

Hope this helps!

Andy:)

Andy said...

I really hope that the irony of advertising a "100% free winning system" in the google adwords isn't lost on everybody...