Gambling; Bringing a higher EV to obtain BTC?

[Zaih]

Most house edges for Bitcoin casino's are ~1.5%. For a lot of people, in order to obtain BTC, you can look at commissions and such totaling well over this. If looking at things in regard to expected return or your expected value, gambling in order to obtain bitcoins would be more feasible in the long run. Sure, there's no variance involved in buying off an exchange, but for those looking for a risk, gambling could be a nice alternative. Gambling is frowned down upon due to the fact that you can never win, but in fact you can when viewing it this way. I understand that expected value in regard to gambling is additive (No, not addicting, additive), so in order to achieve this higher expected value, the less you bet the better.

Obviously some people can be smarter or more efficient when buying their BTC in order to avoid commissions and other means such as the sometimes large ranges between the bid and ask. For them, this doesn't apply. But for people like me, who are looking at large commissions when purchasing BTC (Due to personal conditions), and enjoy a risk, this is a cool way to look at things.

By all means, i don't recommend doing this. It's rly just variance vs EV, and your paying more for a lower (Well 0) variance.

Feel free to point out any flaws in my logic by the way.

If I'm not making much sense & your interested, have a read of the wiki pages.

Variance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variance
Expected Value: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value

[blockbet.net]

Yes, it does make sense, I used to do that when I was younger (and to some extent, still do).

Let's say you want to buy something that costs 10 BTC, but you've only got 8. You could buy more bitcoins at an exchange, but you'd have to pay fees. You could maybe borrow bitcoins and pay interest. Or you could simply wait, but you don't want to.

Why not look for a game where you could quickly win that 2 BTC? You need to think a bit what kind or risk/reward suits your needs, but basically if you're willing to bet 6 BTC to win 2, you should have a high likelihood of winning and being able to buy your thing. You might bet on a good football team to win at home against a lesser opponent, that would usually be a likely outcome. If you lose, you lose. It's at least nice to be able to blame it on the players who couldn't score.

Of course this is not a good strategy for making important life decisions, but it can add a bit of fun and randomness in your life for smaller things. And as always, you should never bet with anything that you can't afford to lose.

[edit] In my example 10 bitcoins is nowadays a lot of money though, I just used it to simplify the process.

[Stunna]

I can see a reasonable amount of logic to this.

As a gambler I personally will settle for convenience and casinos offer this. The house edge doesn't greatly effect your odds if you do a few bets, chances are you won't lose to that.

I do find it interesting that there are a lot of people who speculate the market and some don't remotely view it as gambling even though the risks of that are far greater in my opinion.

[Zaih]

Glad to see some people agree! Thanks for the replies!

[Bitcoinm]

Yeah, if I need say, an extra .04 Bitcoins for something I'll do some quick bets starting at .01BTC to try and get it real quick.