The Martingale System

[darthsidious]

Now, according to the martingdale system, when gambling,you should double your bet everytime you lose. This ensures that when you win, you cover all your losses + make some money.

Now, experts argue that the martingdale system is bad, and actually causes you to lose more. But I don't get it. As long as you kept doubling, the expected value of your winnings becomes smaller and smaller, and you lose more and more with the martigale system. But if you quit right after you win, then you still come out ahead Then reset back to the original bet size and start over again. Why would this not work? Anyone have any thoughts? Feel free to use math/probability theory; I'm reasonably familiar with it.

Wiki Article

 

[Chronoshock]

House minimums/maximums limit the number of doubles you can do

 

[darthsidious]

Even so, let me use a recent example.I was at a casino with $10min/$1000 max on a table. This means you could double 6 times. Now assuming a house edge of about 2 %,. the probability that you win one of those hands is 1 - (0.52)^6 = 0.7296. So 3/4th of the time you'd win....

 

[Chronoshock]

Your gains will be linear while your losses are exponential. Eventually you will lose 1000 and negate 100 winning hands.

 

[hehatedme]

Draw your self a bell curve, but nudge it off center by the amount of the house edge. That's how much you will lose over infinite iterations. Now there is a chance (.5- the house edge) that you can still land in the area that is to your winnings. However you will eventually, and probably sooner than you can imagine, hit that table maximun when the n'th sigma event occurs. That will most likely set you back enough that the system will not work, even in the short term. I probably have a bunch of errors in what I just said, but hopefully you understand what I trying to convey.

 

[Lorax]

if you can't figure out why it won't work, please don't gamble.

 

[ElFenix]

i was doing that and dropping back down to my minimum every time i won. but that was for play money and when i started explaining blackjack the dealer started giving me crap. you can't do it with minimums and maximums.

 

[darthsidious]

true enough, but if you always play till you win (and keep doubling), and stop right after you win, you still come out ahead (assuming you have enough moneyto keep going till you win.

Originally posted by: Chronoshock
Your gains will be linear while your losses are exponential. Eventually you will lose 1000 and negate 100 winning hands.

 

[darthsidious]

Ok, that makes sense. The casino would probably limit your min/max bids, to make this ineffective.

Originally posted by: ElFenix
i was doing that and dropping back down to my minimum every time i won. but that was for play money and when i started explaining blackjack the dealer started giving me crap. you can't do it with minimums and maximums.

 

[dafatha00]

Originally posted by: darthsidious
true enough, but if you always play till you win (and keep doubling), and stop right after you win, you still come out ahead (assuming you have enough moneyto keep going till you win.

Originally posted by: Chronoshock
Your gains will be linear while your losses are exponential. Eventually you will lose 1000 and negate 100 winning hands.

It's entirely possible to lose 8 or 10 hands in a row.

 

[darthsidious]

True, and this is why I added the qualifier "If you have enough money to keep going till you win".

Originally posted by: dafatha00

Originally posted by: darthsidious
true enough, but if you always play till you win (and keep doubling), and stop right after you win, you still come out ahead (assuming you have enough moneyto keep going till you win.

Originally posted by: Chronoshock
Your gains will be linear while your losses are exponential. Eventually you will lose 1000 and negate 100 winning hands.

It's entirely possible to lose 8 or 10 hands in a row.

 

[dafatha00]

Originally posted by: darthsidious
True, and this is why I added the qualifier "If you have enough money to keep going till you win".

Originally posted by: dafatha00

Originally posted by: darthsidious
true enough, but if you always play till you win (and keep doubling), and stop right after you win, you still come out ahead (assuming you have enough moneyto keep going till you win.

Originally posted by: Chronoshock
Your gains will be linear while your losses are exponential. Eventually you will lose 1000 and negate 100 winning hands.

It's entirely possible to lose 8 or 10 hands in a row.

Regardless, in the real world, there's really no such thing as "having enough money to keep going until you win". Even if some guy had a million dollars for a bankroll and he played on a $10 minimum table that didn't have a maximum limit, it would only take him 17 hands to lose the entire million. Now you may think that it's unlikely that he'll lose 17 hands in a row, but over time, there's a good chance it will occur.

From a theoretical standpoint, Martingale could be useful provided that (1) someone had an unlimited bankroll and (2) was able to play on a table with no limit. But in the real world, Martingale won't work.

 

[compuwiz1]

Martingale system would only work, if there were no upper betting limit. Limits are there for a reason, mainly to bust Martingale system bettors.

If you could infinitely double after every loss, you would eventually beat every casino, using this method, provided you had the bankroll to do so.

Bets, might look like this:
1. $5
2. $10
3. $20
4. $40
5. $80
6. $160
7. $320
8. $640
9. $1280


Let's say a player walks into a casino, and has a $1000 bankroll, and loses the first 8 bets. Unusual, but not unlikely. By the end of the 8th bet, he's running to the ATM, if he expects to cover the 9th bet. Bad, very bad idea!