/biz/ - Business & Finance

This decides it

http://www.strawpoll.me/13956881

>>1917163
I wrote a little program once that simulated the martingale strategy for roulette (bad game btw). Even Bill Gates (80 Billion) would lose all his money 93% of the time IIRC, where each time is defined as doubling the bet until you come out with a profit.

There's a couple reasons it's not intuitive. The probability that you can get a streak of losses is higher than you think; people don't tend to realize that previous outcomes do not affect future outcomes (gambler's fallacy). Secondly, the nature of exponential numbers is not intuitive. This is the progression of Martingale bets for 10 rounds at a minimum starting bet of $25, as is the case for most casinos:

25, 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400, 12800

On the 16th losing bet, you'll be up to $1.6 million. Martingale only works if you have literally infinite money.