I’ve been to Vegas once or twice. It’s fun to play, but I would never bet more than I expected to lose. You can see how people get addicted to it though – it’s easy to start fantasizing and lose track of reality. Case in point…<\/p>\n
I thought I had perfected my gambling angle to the point where it couldn’t fail. The idea is to shift the long odds to shorter by decreasing the payout. Here’s the details, it’s pretty simple.<\/p>\n
First, some basic Roulette. You can play red (or black) with a 2:1 payout. What this means is that if you bet $1 on red, and the little ball lands on a red number, you win $1. If it lands on black, you lose. All the numbers are either red or black, so it’s pretty good odds – the only down side is the 00 number – if that comes up, EVERYONE loses. OK, now for the angle.<\/p>\n
If you lose, double your bet and play again. Keep doing this until you win. Once you win, if you do the math, you will see that you have won $1 since beginning the round of betting. You ALWAYS WIN $1!<\/p>\n
OK, one bad assumption has ruined many a scheme, and the same is true here: you can’t double your bet indefinitely. Therefore, it’s just a matter of time until you lose several times in a row, doubling your bet each time, until you hit the betting limit and you’ve lost your shirt. Losing your shirt is typically seen as a BAD gambling strategy.<\/p>\n
It’s still not too bad though, if you look at the numbers… UPDATE: yes it is… move on, nothing to see here…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Say you start betting at $1, then $2, $4, $8, $16, and a max bet of $32. You would have to lose six times in a row to “bust”. The chances of that are 50\/101 – NO WAIT I just looked up the rules and, this sucks, roulette only has 36 numbers, and, in the US, TWO<\/b> house numbers (00) – it’s not worth continuing… :P<\/p>\n
…but addicts never give up…<\/p>\n
that means 2.12558% chance of losing $63
\nthat means 97.87442% chance of winning $1<\/p>\n
that means if you play 100 times, you will, on average, win 98 times, lose twice<\/p>\n
i.e., LOSE $28, WOW THAT WAS FUN!<\/b> ackk…<\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,6,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chatter","category-gaming","category-rants-and-raves"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9M0Zg-1F","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1153,"url":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/2011\/9-5-fallout-new-vegas\/","url_meta":{"origin":103,"position":0},"title":"9.5 Fallout New Vegas","author":"m","date":"April 18, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Gaming has been such a rich experience for me, and my life has been better for it. There are so many wonderful worlds in my head created by game developers and shared with my family and friends. But just like my moral objection to vengeance-fueled thrillers that play on people's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "PC gaming"","block_context":{"text":"PC gaming","link":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/category\/consumption\/gaming\/pc-gaming\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1615,"url":"https:\/\/bitpost.com\/blog\/2012\/reiley-and-i-play-shoot-em-up\/","url_meta":{"origin":103,"position":1},"title":"Reiley and I play shoot-em-up","author":"m","date":"August 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Played paintball with Reiley on Saturday, she'd been asking for a while and then Groupon provided the financial motivation with an all-day offer to play at Black River Paintball for half price. 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