Why can’t people go to the casino playing roulette and bet on black, and if they lose, double what they lost and bet on black again until they win?

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If you bet $100, your odds of winning are around 50% and if you lose, bet $200, and so on and so forth until you win, and then cash out with a guaranteed profit. Assuming odds of black are 47.37% as per American roulette, your odds of not winning a single one after 6 tries are 0.02125 (I think) and decrease exponentially after each subsequent try.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

One of the many reasons this is a bad idea is because of the way the house odds are compounded. The odds of winning vs losing by betting on black (47% vs 53%) seem very close — it’s almost 50-50 either way, right?

But if you play six times, the odds of winning six times in a row are (.47)^6 = 1.1%, and the odds of losing six times in a row are (.53)^6 = 2.2%. You’re literally twice as likely to lose with this strategy than to win, and the more times you play, the worse it gets.

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