Stop gambling your coins unless you're playing for entertainment!

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

The more you play, the more you're likely to lose them all. Don't play BTC gambling games to try and make you rick or "turn 0.24 btc into 0.25 btc for a nice number, they're not worth it. Only gamble if you want to lose your coins.

[1715265411]

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[1715265411]

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[dustintrammell]

The more you play, the more you're likely to lose them all. Don't play BTC gambling games to try and make you rick or "turn 0.24 btc into 0.25 btc for a nice number, they're not worth it. Only gamble if you want to lose your coins.

The validity of your statement depends entirely on where and what you play, and if it's a game of skill (say, poker), how skilled you are at it.  For example, there are raffles over at BitDraw that no one is entering.  If a single person enters, they are guaranteed to win, and will win more than twice what they paid for the raffle ticket (prize amount goes up as people buy tickets).

I've also personally made money playing BlackJack over at BitZino, but that's because I know how to play BlackJack properly (:

[FreeMoney]

Here is another reason to gamble.

You have 2.7BTC left over from before your GPUs burnt your house down and need 3.25BTC for your order from a certain website to ease your pain. You could go through the hassle of buying 0.55BTC or you could bet exactly 2.7 to win 3.25 on Myriad and have an 82% chance at avoiding the hassle and fee.

People with discontinuous utility/btc curves can profit (it terms of their utility) by making negative EV wagers at the right times even disregarding entertainment value.

[SRoulette]

The more you play, the more you're likely to lose them all. Don't play BTC gambling games to try and make you rick or "turn 0.24 btc into 0.25 btc for a nice number, they're not worth it. Only gamble if you want to lose your coins.

Someone just worked out how gambling works !!!
If you start with $100 and spend all night betting your balance of course you will end up losing.

Some people really seem to have trouble grasping this very simple concept, let us use a lottery for an example.

Fools Method:

100 tickets @ 1 bitcoin each.
House takes 1 bitcoin for operation costs.
Fool buys 100 Bitcoin tickets and is annoyed when he wins 99 bitcoin.

Gambling for entertainment Method:

100 tickets @ 1 bitcoin each.
House takes 1 bitcoin for operation costs.
100 people buy 1 ticket each, 1 lucky player wins and is thrilled he won 99 bitcoins.

[dooglus]

I've also personally made money playing BlackJack over at BitZino, but that's because I know how to play BlackJack properly (:

I'm pretty sure there's no winning strategy for BlackJack at bitZino.  It's a game of skill, but no matter how good you are at it, the house edge is still positive.

[IveBeenBit]

Here is another reason to gamble.

You have 2.7BTC left over from before your GPUs burnt your house down and need 3.25BTC for your order from a certain website to ease your pain. You could go through the hassle of buying 0.55BTC or you could bet exactly 2.7 to win 3.25 on Myriad and have an 82% chance at avoiding the hassle and fee.

People with discontinuous utility/btc curves can profit (it terms of their utility) by making negative EV wagers at the right times even disregarding entertainment value.

This post is awesome. I love when maths justify my gambling habit.

Not so funny story:

I was hanging in #bitcoin-otc one day and a guy showed up who had BTC8.5, but due to currency fluctuation, he was about BTC0.5 short that he needed to complete an important purchase on a site that only takes bitcoins. He had no trading history and no one would sell him the last 1/2 bitcoin through paypal even though he was offering an obscene premium - like 50% or something.

Anyways, another guy and I advised him to play the 75% shot on Satoshi Dice and Martingale it up if he lost. He lost the first one, then we coached him to increase his wager to make up the difference. I wound up getting kicked off #bitcoin-otc because of a nitty op who thought it was morally repugnant to encourage gambling as a money management strategy. The guy wound up winning all he needed on his second or third try.

The op tried defending himself with variations on the "house always wins" canard, but when I asked why HE didn't jump at the opportunity to trade some BTC at a 50% premium he suddenly ran out of answers.

[cAPSLOCK]

The more you play, the more you're likely to lose them all. Don't play BTC gambling games to try and make you rick or "turn 0.24 btc into 0.25 btc for a nice number, they're not worth it. Only gamble if you want to lose your coins.

But gambling is the single solitary way I have made my coins.  I started from zero and have piled up dozens and dozens of BTC, all from gambling.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say not to place bets that have a negative expected value as a known outcome? If one can find bets where the expected value is generally positive should one not take those coins?

I do.

[Buffer Overflow]

But holding Bitcoins as a store of wealth is a gamble already.

[SRoulette]

Here is another reason to gamble.

You have 2.7BTC left over from before your GPUs burnt your house down and need 3.25BTC for your order from a certain website to ease your pain. You could go through the hassle of buying 0.55BTC or you could bet exactly 2.7 to win 3.25 on Myriad and have an 82% chance at avoiding the hassle and fee.

People with discontinuous utility/btc curves can profit (it terms of their utility) by making negative EV wagers at the right times even disregarding entertainment value.

This post is awesome. I love when maths justify my gambling habit.

Not so funny story:

I was hanging in #bitcoin-otc one day and a guy showed up who had BTC8.5, but due to currency fluctuation, he was about BTC0.5 short that he needed to complete an important purchase on a site that only takes bitcoins. He had no trading history and no one would sell him the last 1/2 bitcoin through paypal even though he was offering an obscene premium - like 50% or something.

Anyways, another guy and I advised him to play the 75% shot on Satoshi Dice and Martingale it up if he lost. He lost the first one, then we coached him to increase his wager to make up the difference. I wound up getting kicked off #bitcoin-otc because of a nitty op who thought it was morally repugnant to encourage gambling as a money management strategy. The guy wound up winning all he needed on his second or third try.

The op tried defending himself with variations on the "house always wins" canard, but when I asked why HE didn't jump at the opportunity to trade some BTC at a 50% premium he suddenly ran out of answers.

To many people telling people what to do with "their" bitcoin, just tune them out as noise is my advice.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

The more you play, the more you're likely to lose them all. Don't play BTC gambling games to try and make you rick or "turn 0.24 btc into 0.25 btc for a nice number, they're not worth it. Only gamble if you want to lose your coins.

But gambling is the single solitary way I have made my coins.  I started from zero and have piled up dozens and dozens of BTC, all from gambling.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say not to place bets that have a negative expected value as a known outcome? If one can find bets where the expected value is generally positive should one not take those coins?

I do.

Where the hell do you find a gambling service that has a positive EV?

[kokojie]

The more you play, the more you're likely to lose them all. Don't play BTC gambling games to try and make you rick or "turn 0.24 btc into 0.25 btc for a nice number, they're not worth it. Only gamble if you want to lose your coins.

But gambling is the single solitary way I have made my coins.  I started from zero and have piled up dozens and dozens of BTC, all from gambling.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say not to place bets that have a negative expected value as a known outcome? If one can find bets where the expected value is generally positive should one not take those coins?

I do.

Where the hell do you find a gambling service that has a positive EV?

If you have a good martingale strategy and a bit of good luck, you can play for tens of thousands of rounds, before you lose it all. If you walk away with your winnings before then, you have won.

[DannyHamilton]

. . .Only gamble if you want to lose your coins.

. . . Wouldn't it be more accurate to say not to place bets that have a negative expected value as a known outcome? . . .

Where the hell do you find a gambling service that has a positive EV?

I believe he is referring to poker.  If he is being honest, then it would seem that he is a skilled player who has enough of an edge to overcome the rake.

[dooglus]

Where the hell do you find a gambling service that has a positive EV?

I can think of 4 examples, all of which have worked for me:

* play on a poker site when you're good enough relative to the other players that you win enough to beat the rake.
* play on a site that offers enough bonuses and incentives to make it +EV to play there
* play on a site that allows you to count cards at blackjack.
* play on a site which allows you to place bets against other players, rather than against the house.  spot good value bets and profit from them.  sometimes it's possible to use multiple sites to create a no-lose situation.  For example I once bet on "Michael" to win some TV reality show on one site, and bet that he wouldn't win on another site.  The odds available on the two sites were out of whack with each other, meaning that whatever happened I made a profit.  When I phoned the betting company that I had won the bet against asking how  I could withdraw my winnings, they seemed to suggest that nobody had ever asked that before, and that I didn't need to - I could simply bet my winnings on another event instead!  This was before the days of Bitcoin.

All of the above can offer a +EV gambling experience.  Using "a good martingale strategy" never changes your expectation.  If the odds are in the house's favour then changing your bet size doesn't change that.  You'll still lose everything if you play long enough.  With a +EV game, that's not necessarily true; it's still possible to lose everything due to a run of bad luck, but your expectation is to grow your bankroll, not shrink it.

[DannyHamilton]

Where the hell do you find a gambling service that has a positive EV?

* play on a site which allows you to place bets against other players, rather than against the house.  spot good value bets and profit from them. . .

I believe that this example is called "arbitrage" and is occasionally used in sports betting (or other gambling where the payoff odds on the same event can differ between multiple bookmakers).

[dooglus]

* play on a site which allows you to place bets against other players, rather than against the house.  spot good value bets and profit from them. . .

I believe that this example is called "arbitrage" and is occasionally used in sports betting (or other gambling where the payoff odds on the same event can differ between multiple bookmakers).

I think if you're placing two complimentary bets which cancel each other out, leaving you a guaranteed profit, that's arbitrage.  If you find a site that's offering a 10-1 payout for an event which you are pretty sure will happen around 50% of the time, that's not arbitrage; that's just taking advantage of someone estimating the true odds incorrectly.

[fcmatt]

Some people think they are special and odds do not apply to them.

[b!z]

Some people think they are special and odds do not apply to them.

Very well said post. I agree.

[dustintrammell]

I'm pretty sure there's no winning strategy for BlackJack at bitZino.  It's a game of skill, but no matter how good you are at it, the house edge is still positive.

Tell that to my balance (:  The trick with BlackJack is knowing when to split, when to double, when to take no cards and let the dealer bust, etc.  It's less easy to play at bitZino due to it being a one-on-one game with the dealer, but it's still possible.  I'm looking forward to them adding more seats to the table so that multiple players can play against the dealer.

[dustintrammell]

Where the hell do you find a gambling service that has a positive EV?

As I mentioned in my earlier post, MY OWN SITE, BitDraw, currently has many raffle games running that have no tickets purchased.  If you purchase the only ticket, you are guaranteed to win, and the prize is at least twice what a single ticket costs.  Have fun (:

[TTBit]

Should I stop drinking coca-cola unless I am drinking for entertainment? After all, I can drink water for much less, if not free.

One step further: What if I am gambling for a coke? Plug for my site: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=121920.0 With that, you pay 60% of a coke's price for a 60% chance at a coke. Am I still gambling?

One more step: Do you buy insurance on your house in case it burns down? Aren't you hoping to put down a little bit of money up front, and if the odds go your way, you get a new house? Surely we can all agree that home insurance is a losing bet for individuals (gamblers) and a winning bet for the casino (insurance company)? Would you advocate people "Stop buying insurance for your house!"