Gambling with the Martingale Strategy - Numberphile
1,083,183
Published 2021-05-16
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All Comments (21)
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Me not having an infinite amount of money does usually come up as a problem
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"If only I had unlimited money so I could do this, then I'd be rich!"
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Everybody gangsta until it goes green
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Man, if only I had seen this video last time I only had $100 and wanted to buy a $101 item at the store next to the casino.
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I actually tried this once a long time ago at the Blackjack tables in Vegas and found out very quickly why there are table betting limits.
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'the richer I am, the less likely to lose all my money' ... quite the life lesson here!
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The beauty of a casino is that you could make this video required viewing before entry and you’d still have a dozen people every day walking in convinced they cannot lose
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My father in law came up with a slightly tweaked version of the martingale, I can’t remember the differences but they were significant. I downloaded a roulette app and started with a fictional float and played for a whole weekend. Come Sunday afternoon I was up by so much I was considering setting up a live account. Then I lost it all in about 10 minutes.
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As someone who once lost $1000 playing roulette at a casino in Las Vegas, believe me when I say “don’t gamble kids”.
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My calculus teacher used to say that gambling is a tax on people who don't understand mathematics
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I played this game in the university library computers with my mate one afternoon. We both started with £128 which gave us 7 spins before losing. Vividly remember we both had a balance over £200 after a couple hours, and both lost everything within 2 minutes of each other. Some adrenaline rush when we were on the 5th and 6th spins quite a few times, but we learned an important lesson about gambling probability that day.
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Gambling rule number one: The house always wins.
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The expected value is the same whether you use the martingale strategy or just bet it all right away. The 36.8% chance to double neglects the fact that you've been saving your winnings in a separate pot. In most of the 63.2% of cases where you go bust, you'll still have some saved from previous wins, and this will exactly balance the reduced chance to double, so the expected value is the same.
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I encountered this strategy a few years ago and I just wrote a short code simulating the whole thing. And I was quite amazed at how every now and then there'd be a ridiculously long losing streak that basically destroys you.
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Remember everyone, you're only 36 straight wins of roulette away from being a billionaire.
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I love the videos with Tom Crawford, such a pleasure to watch!
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In order to make a small fortune at the casino, one must first start with a large fortune.
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As far as gambling strategies go, the Kelly formula is quite valuable. In the case of 50/50 it essentially says bet nothing. In a case like roulette with the green zeros, it says "be the casino"
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I remember independently "discovering" this strategy when I was about 18 and for a brief period of feverish joy I thought I was gonna be a millionaire if I could just lay my hands on some odds and then had my hopes crushed by betting limits
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This is a classic exercise in university. Was waiting for you guys to go over it! :) Would've been great with some actual Martingale equations in here as well as the technical proof that we need funds = infinity. Nice video regardless!
