Bitcoin Forum

As the title says, I gambled my bitcoins both bought and mined. Satoshidice is the sole recipient.

Make sure you only gamble what you can afford to lose as hindsight is 20/20 and it's amazing how much you can kick your own ass.

Cheers,
k.

how much is the damage?

All told 5BTC.

Just a friendly PSA for fellow gamblers.

k.

This is normally what happens, you feel you're on a winning streak and then BLAM! you lose everything. I hope you recover after this.

Get em next time!

Luckily or unluckily my convenient method of transmitting fiat to a certain exchange has gone away so next time may be far away.

>2013
>playing negative EV games
did you fail high school math?

As a tax paying worker, I thank all the people willing to pay a share of mine through national lotteries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lottery

They once were considered as a scam and forbidden in France, for example. Until the king understood it might be a good way to fund this melting treasure...  :)

Sorry for your loss, which was to be expected.

As always, the best bet on SatoshiDICE is no bet. The second-best bet is the minimum on the best odds.

I don't understand the draw of satoshi dice, and I'm a degenerate gambler.

I hope you have learned lesson: never play with negative EV!

Only gamble what you can afford to lose, gambling should only ever be done for fun  >:(

Or for profit, but only if you can actually make one.  There is no way of doing that at SatoshiDice.  The degenerates and the blockchain just take a hammering, the degenerates from losing and the blockchain from being spammed with worthless dust transactions.

Whenever you gamble on SD or a clone, you GIVE THEM your BTC.
Keep doing that, and they'll hold 90% of the coins, making them useless.

Just buy stuff with your BTC instead of your $, please.

Sometimes the hard way is the best way to learn.

Learn BlackJack. A much more interactive game and proven to be beatable.

^what he said

I'll never gamble with btc that i bought for $$$, but instead i only used that i've gained via mining.

That shit went through an investment

I know the odds are alway stacked in the houses favour.

But I tried out Bitzino's BJ and just to mess around put in 1BTC, walked with 3BTC - Excellent.

Now to run with my winnings and never return. So i can say i have a lifetime win using BTC.

(Suppose its Karma for being scammed of 1 BTC by Hiddenoreo)

Not with basic strategy.  There are very few opportunities online for card counting at blackjack.  However, blackjack is a reliable game to play when clearing a bonus or when there is rakeback or something else active that brings your overall EV positive.  Even these are a lot less common than they used to be even a couple years ago.  It used to be quite possible to make a lot of money "bonus whoring" the various online casinos, but not as much these days.

THIS.

Come on guys. Don't be the dumb ones in the pack.

If you're going to spend money, do it to promote good business.

SatoshiDice is really harmful to the blockchain, why promote them? Use Coinroll.it or other off the blockchain gambling services.

yeah, me win once and kept loosing until now  :'( :'(

Play http://peerbet.org/

Well it has 0 EV  :)

Expected outcome, to always result in being even

Okay, please pardon my ignorance.. but when you say "EV", what does that stand for, and how can you find the value?

It's the expected value.  It's the weighted average of all outcomes.  For gambling it's always negative meaning you're always going to lose.  It's very often misused when talking about gambling.  Just remember you'll always lose.

just-dice or no dice

Not actually true, although casinos in particular are always in the business of offering -EV wagers.

Simple explanation of EV.  The perfect example of a 0 EV bet is flipping a coin where whoever calls it wins $1.  If the coin is fair, that is, lands on heads or tails equally often, if you flip it a million times, you can basically expect to break even.  If you flip it a billion, or a trillion times, the results will converge toward breaking even.  The equation for that is simple.  50 percent of the time, you win, 50 percent of the time, you lose, and you win or lose $1 every time.

So (.5*1) + (.5*-1).  .5 - .5 = 0.

Now, rig the coin a bit.  49% of the time you win and 51% of the time you lose.

(.49*1) + (.51*-1).  .49 - .51 = -0.02.  So, betting a dollar each time, you will lose $0.02 on average.  Keep doing this, and you will keep losing.  It doesn't sound like much money, but Las Vegas is built on odds like this, converging toward the expected value over billions upon billions of trials.

A blackjack game with very favorable rules to the player actually has a house edge less than .5%.  That means the house would profit less than half a cent for every dollar bet.  Most games are vastly more unfavorable to the player.  Shit like slots can be as bad as 10% house edge or worse, though some jurisdictions have laws against this kind of flat-out ripoff.

However, basically any time you have a wager where the EV is positive, the opposite rule applies.  Whereas when you make a negative EV bet over and over, you are simply going to lose more and more money, when you make a positive EV bet over and over, your results will converge on positive, if you can play long enough.  There is also a related concept called "risk of ruin," which is the odds that even on a +EV wager, you will lose your entire bankroll anyway.  There is also a concept called the Kelly Criterion, which is worth Googling, which is an aggressive bankroll-maximizing strategy for deciding the proper bet size, based on your precise EV edge and bankroll size, to use to make money fast.  Most consider the pure Kelly strategy to be overly aggressive and risky, but most also use some variation on the concept.  When I use a Kelly-ish betting strategy, it is generally betting about half what the pure Kelly strategy would imply, but very quickly backing off if it starts to endanger my bankroll.

In any event, the concept of EV is absolutely essential to advantage playing and actually making money.  Every -EV bet you make is a loser.  Even if you win that particular bet.  If you make -EV bets over the course of a career, you're just plain going to lose money.  Maybe not on any particular day, but over the long run, if you even get there without going flat broke.  If you make +EV bets, you are going to make money over the long run.  You still have the possibility of going broke, but if you actually reach the long run, you're going to make money and keep making money.

Making money gambling is really, ultimately, a very simple thing to do.  Just do the math and know what the EV is of every bet you make, or at least have the intuitive skill to know when a bet is +EV and when it is not.  Have a grasp of the concept of "risk of ruin," especially if you have a limited amount of money (and who doesn't).  

I think the most obvious thing about this exposition is that casinos do not build all those fancy buildings by offering gamblers +EV wagers, at least on purpose.  They build those buildings by taking money from people willing to make horrible wagers at horrible odds for the fun of it.  Or because they're preying on addicts.  I'd have a moral judgment here, but I can't really afford one.  Most of my profits gambling have been on poker, where to be utterly frank about it, the profits are to be made by preying on addicts.

He's right, try Sports betting or a Predictions market gambling.  Would be better off.

I'm really excited about Predictious! Looks like it will be fascinating.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=264443.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=264443.0)

If you really have a handle on a subject, YOU have the advantage.

This was highly educational. As was your "Re: Is it possible to "work" as a gambler and live off the profits?" I really wish to thank you for taking the time to share that information with us.

Gambling and winning long term is a lot of work. If you gamble as a hobby without putting in the time you will lose.
Personally I prefer sports betting, and I play the lines as much as I play the games themselves.
Agree with the other posters in this thread, if you're gambling long term on roulette or slots any other game with a house edge you will lose.

You may win from time to time and feel like you're in front but if you keep a spreadsheet of your deposits and withdrawals you may find you're not doing as well as you think you are. It's easier to remember the big wins and forget about all the small losses. If you are just gambling for fun or to make a sport more interesting when you watch it, treat it like any other form of entertainment and don't spend more than you can afford to lose.

that is usually what happens lol.

i did the same thing on just-dice :P
then put more in chasing lost bets until i'd lost all my bitcoins.

must remember, house always wins!

Just dice keeps taking my money, never won anything but half of what I lost. Also did the invest thing, steadly loosing money

When you invest in Just-Dice, you're effectively sitting on the black line in the chart below.  It goes up and down, but mostly up:

https://i.imgur.com/J1YpzlL.png

I may need to give it another shot. I invested .15 when I checked it 2 days later I only had 0.07 left. I don't think it likes me

I'm sorry to hear gambling turned out this way for you luckily you didn't lose more than 5 BTC though.

I think you must be remembering it wrong.  Nobody ever lost anything close to 50% of their investment.

satoshi dice a game coming from freedom lovers that does not bother to exploit the weakness of other people.  

how good is that, I wanna all the dumb people to be free and give me money, its their choice to be dumb.  ::)

gambling is unhealthy behavior, get out and stop giving away free money.