So I don’t gamble, and don’t ever indend to make it a habit.
But a friend told me to play roulette, and I would have a ~47% chance of doubling my money and , as long as I had enough money to keep doubling my stake, would have a ~95% break even if I kept going until I won and never played again.
So say I had $200k in the bank and always put my money on red
Spin 1 : $5K
Spin 2: $10K
Spin 3: $20K
Spin 4: $40k
Spin 5: $80K
Spin 6: $160k
In this scenario, I’d have a ~47% chance of winning $5k, and just a 2% chance of losing $160k?
EDIT: Although just working this out, I think I would probably put the 160k into a 4% savings account if I had it, or start off way smaller amounts e.g. $500 to reduce my chane of losing money significantly lol.
In: 8
The first thing is that casino tables have limits on what you can bet, so your strategy of doubling and doubling and doubling when you lose doesn’t work in the real world. But even if it did, this strategy is more likely to result in an actual loss or just breaking even after risking lots of money than it is to result in winning.
Under your example, you run out of funds after six spins. While it is unlikely to lose six spins in a row, streaks like that do happen, and if it happens to you, you are completely cleaned out.
Also, your upside is very limited compared to your downside. If you win right away, great, take your winnings and go home. But you have less than a 50% chance of that happening. What’s more likely to happen is that you lose on the first spin. Now the best you can do is break even. And there ‘s a chance that you’ll just continue to lose until you’re wiped out. So you have an under 50% chance of walking away with a relatively small amount of money compared to the amount you could lose, and once you’ve lost the first spin, the best you can hope is to break even.
And if you counter the above by saying every time you break, even you’ll just start again, that doesn’t much change the calculations, and does increase the chance of a six or more spin. Losing streak, wiping you out.
Sure, you can just make smaller bets so you can use the same pool of money and last far longer on a bad streak, but that also greatly reduces your upside. So the math stays the same.
In any event, casinos would love people who think like you to come to the roulette table all the time. There will be some winners for sure, but overall the casino wins under that strategy, as it does under all of them by the way.
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