Thus, I since I cannot afford to lose more than 10K, I will not be able to keep betting after the tenth loss. This approach guarentees at least a ten dollar profit UNTIL, I go bust. How often have all you gamblers seen Red or Black (or those streaks with busts) come up TEN times in a row? How likely is it that I can play about four hours per day on Sat/ and Sunday without the “Bust” occuring?
Hate to make matters tougher, but roullette wheels have another color: green.
Depending on the place/table, you could have two green spaces for 0 and 00, making the chances of not seeing red or black even after 10 in a row more feasable.
If you don’t believe what I say there here is what the Encyclopedia Britanica says under the subject of roulette:
The oldest and most common betting system is the Martingale or “doubling-up” system, in which bets are doubled progressively. This probably dates back to the invention of the Roulette wheel, but every day of the week some gambler somewhere reinvents it, or some variation of it, and believes he has something new. Over the years hundreds of “sure-fire” winning systems have been dreamed up, but regardless of what system is used, in the long run it cannot overcome the house’s advantage of the 0, or 0 and 00. This house advantage is the only system that consistently wins in the long run.
I don’t have any stats handy but it is way more than likely that you will come back $10k poorer with this method. A good thing to keep in mind. When you get to Las Vegas, look around at all the huge buildings and lights. If it were this easy they wouldn’t be there.
A failure under your system is a series of ten consecutive black or green results, with the probability of black or green roughly 0.5 for each trial, depending on the number of greens and the idiosyncracy of the wheel. The probability of a bust in your system is about 0.001, 1 divided by 2 to the tenth power.
Let’s suppose that you could run your plan 100 times over the course of a weekend. The probability of never busting is 0.999^100, which works out to 0.9. In that case you will have won $1000. The probability of at least one bust is 0.1, in which case you lose $10,000 and go home poorer, but hopefully wiser.
Short answer: you will probably make money, but you might well lose it all.
There is a discussion of this very topic going on in the Gambler’s Fallacy thread.
To summarize, if you follow the scheme you described, you’ll have a 1023/1024 chance (99.9%) of winning $10. Good odds there, though a small payoff. But you’ll also have a 1 in 1024 chance of losing $10,230. The overall edge — more specifically the expected rate of return — is still in the casino’s favor.
Also note: someone on the other thread mentioned that Roulette tables in Vegas have a maximum bet of $2000. I don’t know whether he meant that that’s the maximum everywhere, or is merely the common one.
I was going to bring up the table limit factor, but Bytegeist beat me to it. Another problem: after your 9th loss, you’ve lost over $5000. So you don’t have $5120 to place on your 10th bet; so even if you win your 10th bet (after losing the previous 9) you’re down a few hundred bucks.
Sorry, I missed one of your questions that I meant to answer.
Having played roulette at Vegas for one evening a long time ago, I would estimate that each round is about two minutes long. That’s the time from spin to spin, including the placing and resolving of all bets before and after. Obviously the time will vary some, depending on how many people are gathered at your table. (I was indeed at a very crowded table on a Saturday evening.)
So call that about 30 spins per hour, or 240 spins for the 8 hours total you intend to play. A back of the envelope calculation suggests to me that you have about a 10 to 15% chance of seeing a catastrophic loss — that’s when ten non-red numbers show up in a row. Otherwise, if that doesn’t happen, you’ll win $2400.
Personally, I just gamble with very low amounts on each bet and then take liberal advantage of the free drinks. This is the only strategy that makes sense to me.
This is just a common number, although they are all similar (in the $1000-$5000 maximum range for an outside bet). You could go to a high limit table, but then the minimum is more than $10. But as far as I know the system is not banned, so according to the “Sucker Bets” show on the travbel channel, if it is allowed by the casino it is not a winning system.
Personal anecdote: I was playing roulette in Ballys and black came up 16 times in a row. After the eighth black the pile of money on red kept getting bigger and bigger, with everyone saying it has to be red next, there is no way “n” blacks in a row. But it was black on the 9th time, the 10th time, the 11th time… By the time red came up on the 17th role, everybody betting color was already broke.
If you think you have a valid betting system, install a casino game on your computer and play your betting system to see if it really works. It’s better and cheaper to be disappointed at home.
Might I suggest learning some other table games as well? The standard blackjack table is easy to memorize and the game takes a while to play as well as having a low house edge. Craps can be intimidating (and a quick way to run through money) but it can also be very fun. Pai Gow Poker will leave you there for a while with all its pushes, though the 5% house commission is annoying. Even jacks or better video poker can last a while, and the basic strategy is also pretty easy to memorize.
And just to reiterate, there is no good system for roulette. If by some chance you can find an European wheel in Vegas, play on that as the single-zero decreases the house edge.
Daffyduck, I wrote a computer simulation of this scheme some years ago. It bet according to the doubling-up rules and kept track of all bets, all winnings and losses.
I ran it for several days. Sure, it was on a 286, but a compiled-DOS program on a old 286 runs rings around a modern Windows-based machine, so it was no slouch. It proved that the scheme works. At the end of each betting cycle, the player won $2. Guaranteed. Every time, no matter how long it took.
But sometimes the player had to bet millions of dollars on each roll just to keep the process going. Had there been a house limit, this would have stopped the whole thing, but my virtual player just kept on betting his millions, and pocketing his enormous net $2 even after hours of losses. Made a job at Mickey-D’s look more profitable and certainly less risky.
So the moral of the story is…given an infinite amount of time & money, you can always win $2.
musicat, I’ll bet you $2 that the reason your program consistently came up with a net gain was an artifact of the random number generator you used, i.e. it wasn’t truly random over infinite time. The odds don’t lie – with double zeros on the wheel, you have to lose money if you play long enough.
Roland Deschain, the only game in Vegas that can consistently make you money is poker. And then only if you’re better than the other players at the table. Play the other games for fun. Expect to lose, and be happy if you win.
With a truly infinite pot (no bust) and no house limit, I think this isn’t the case, because you just keep on playing until you win (it doesn’t even matter if you lose 90% of all bets, as long as you finish on a winning one). It isn’t at all realistic, of course.
Giraffe, you are right to be suspicious. But there was nothing wrong with the random number generator (I ran a simulation on it just for kicks and over days it exhibited no unusual patterns). Yes, absolutely, if given enough time and money, you can win $2.
(The $2 figure is because of the initial bet. Deschain’s pyramid started at $10 instead.)
The falacy of this scheme is the “given enough time and money” factor. Also, it is not tempting to quit when you have only won $2 this cycle, since to get to the magic 2 you have won millions! But you also have lost millions. The trick is to know when to stop and foresight is greatly needed.
Yes, in a long betting run, the average loss approaches the house advantage, typically very small. But the large swings from (max loss) to (max win) dwarf the tiny house advantage, at least over a (relatively) short time. If only you could weather the valleys and stop on one of the peaks!
OK, Musicat and Mangetout are right, and I was wrong. I just wrote a little program to convince myself. With no maximum bet and infinite money and time, you will consistently make money (I actually find you’ll make well more than $2), although your net gain is an ever decreasing fraction of the maximum amount you bet (i.e. while you might make $100 risking a $1000, you’d have to have 500 million in cash in order to reliably net a few million.)
It’s interesting how the house limit changes the data pattern. With infinite betting limits, your cash balance increases linearly with time (all those $10 bets adding up) with negative spikes of various sizes as you lose n bets in a row and 2[sup]n[/sup]*10 dollars. The spikes are immediately corrected by the next win of 2[sup]n+1[/sup]*10, so the overall dataset looks like a line.
Any limit on the pot size changes the data from a straight line with singular spikes, to more of an avalanche-type pattern. The avalanches will eventually occur faster than the balance can recover, leaving you deep in debt.
There is an interesting system, and it doesn’t go against the odds. Let us say you have “x” amount of money to bet, and that isn’t enough for much gaming. OTOH, you will enjoy other entertainment in LV even without gaming. If so (and that describes me, and so I have tried this) try this: take your gambling wab. All of it, except maybe $10 for “crazy stupid bets”. Go to a craps table. Place the entire wad on ONE roll of either Pass or Don’t pass - both give you within or so of even odds (the roulette table has a 5% or so house %, it isn’t very good odds at all- assuming they have both 0 & 00), and Don’t pass is very slightly better for you.
There- you have basicly bet your wad on a coin toss. If you win, you can now play the rest of the weekend on their money. If you lose, walk away, and go see shows.
I don’t know why such systems concentrate on the roulette wheel- you’ll lose 5X faster. If you like gambling, and know your odds, and the House offers a high “Odds” bet multiplier- you can get so close to even odds that you can play all weekend and still walk out just slightly behind- if the luck is dead even.
