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Keep Doubling My Bet, I'll Eventually ... by John Wise I grew up in a small town. Once a year, the carnival would come. I remember being about eight or nine years old and playing roulette for the first time. The carnys weren't supposed to allow this, but the coast must have been clear. They always seemed shady anyway. I don't remember all the particulars but I lost whatever money I had. But I do remember thinking that if I only had enough money, I couldn't lose. You know, bet black for five cents, ten cents, twenty cents, etc. until I won. I had to win sooner or later, right? Just recently, on another forum, I noticed an old post from somebody asking for roulette advice. It was a couple months old. One reply offered advice the same as I just mentioned. Hope the guy looking for the help didn't use it. Somewhere in the study of probability, we deal with independent events or occurrences. These are events where say the first happening has no affect on what the second happening will be. And so on. Flipping coins, roulette spins, etc. are independent. When you flip a coin, for example, the coin does not remember anything about the previous toss(es). Discounting a bias of any kind, the chance of a heads is still 50-50 even if the last 1000 flips have been tails. I'm sure most of us know that when you play a color in roulette, the casino's edge is when 0 or 00 comes up. Red and black lose. But you also have to deal with the limit. The progression goes like this : 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024,2048,4096,8192,16384, etc. As you can see, if you keep losing, by your 10th play you are risking 1024. The 14th play is 16384. Helluva lot of risk to make 1 dollar whenever you do win. That is all. And the casino limit has probably stopped you long ago. Keep that in mind when betting sporting events. Teams can go on huge losing streaks. And with a good team, say the Yankees, you are paying all the big odds so the total soars fast. And people thinking that the good team is due to win could possibly drive the odds up to where the underdog is the real value. Good luck. |
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