Does martingale really works?

[Farmer17]

He linked the accounts for us after I spotted that the players were playing very similarly and asked him about it.

I see.

It's often the way that players like to talk when they're winning but go quiet when they lose, making it harder to know who is really still 'up'.

Very true.
If my bets for the coming World Cup go well, I will tell my friends how much profit I get.
On the other hand, I won't tell them I am stupid and lose 10 btc lol.

[Farmer17]

Here's Balotelli.  I was forgetting - he switched from using martingale to using what he called "nakowa style" and lost everything very quickly:

Holy shit, how much was 1 btc worth when he was 1000 btc up?

[dooglus]

Here's Balotelli.  I was forgetting - he switched from using martingale to using what he called "nakowa style" and lost everything very quickly:

And here's Diablo.  Not such a classic martingale, and dominated by a single lucky 500 BTC win...

[dooglus]

Holy shit, how much was 1 btc worth when he was 1000 btc up?

It was around the end of September 2013 so a little over $100.

[NakedPony]

wow awesome graphs.
thanks for sharing 

some people are crazy gamblers....

[ondratra]

We've seen bigger martingale wins.  A guy called something like Balotelli took us for hundreds of coins.  Diablo too.

I'll dig up their charts if I can find their userids.

Here's Balotelli.  I was forgetting - he switched from using martingale to using what he called "nakowa style" and lost everything very quickly:

Imho ~220.000 bets isn't exactly "very quickly"

[a1choi]

We've seen bigger martingale wins.  A guy called something like Balotelli took us for hundreds of coins.  Diablo too.

I'll dig up their charts if I can find their userids.

Here's Balotelli.  I was forgetting - he switched from using martingale to using what he called "nakowa style" and lost everything very quickly:

Imho ~220.000 bets isn't exactly "very quickly"

no from the graph, it seems like it only took about 10K bets (maybe only 5K) to Lose it all.  from the top to the bottom..  quick quickly it seems..

[dooglus]

you should make a thread with graphs like these...I could read their stories/battles with the investors/site for hours!

One last one for now - the biggest of them all - nakowa.

It's hard to plot a complete chart of his play because he switched accounts constantly, and I think he tended to try to disassociate himself from any losing accounts.  But here's just one of his accounts at play:



And a (particularly lucky) sample of the bets that made up that session:

[Joca97]

you should make a thread with graphs like these...I could read their stories/battles with the investors/site for hours!

One last one for now - the biggest of them all - nakowa.

It's hard to plot a complete chart of his play because he switched accounts constantly, and I think he tended to try to disassociate himself from any losing accounts.  But here's just one of his accounts at play:



And a (particularly lucky) sample of the bets that made up that session:

if this is all in btc then this guy is aweosme

i said if its btc

[BayAreaCoins]

you should make a thread with graphs like these...I could read their stories/battles with the investors/site for hours!

One last one for now - the biggest of them all - nakowa.

It's hard to plot a complete chart of his play because he switched accounts constantly, and I think he tended to try to disassociate himself from any losing accounts.  But here's just one of his accounts at play:



And a (particularly lucky) sample of the bets that made up that session:

if this is all in btc then this guy is aweosme

i said if its btc

They aren't Litecoins.

[alani123]

So this graph indicates the betting profit of nakowa's account? With how manny bitcoins was this account begin?

[sed]

If you wanna get to the bottom of it, read the wikipedia article.  It's pretty good.

Overall, the key to defeating martingale (if you are the house) is to place a bet limit.  Once there's a highest bet possible, the martingale player has to lose as soon as their local loss streak takes them to the point of butting up against the bet limit.

Note that if you consider a player with a non-finite amount of fundage and no bet limit the martingale is going to clean out the house eventually.  However, these conditions aren't met in real life

[mdzedzej]

martingaling works if you are lucky as hell lol

[dooglus]

So this graph indicates the betting profit of nakowa's account? With how manny bitcoins was this account begin?

The same as every other account: 0.

Edit: but as you can see the chart nearly touches -8000 BTC at one point - so it's safe to say he had at least that many coins to play with.

[dooglus]

He would have also had enough to recover that much
If he dropped 8k in my opinion he would need at least 1k to get it all back...
My conclusion, he had 12k, went down 8k and recovered

You only need enough for one more bet once you reach the bottom of your chart (by definition, pretty much).

He could have been down to his last 45.5 BTC, and managed to make it all back from there.

But since people seem to care, here's his list of deposits and withdrawals:

Sep 29 07:45:20 deposit 38.06930556
Sep 29 07:55:26 deposit 4.22228728
Sep 29 08:41:32 deposit 158
Sep 29 08:54:03 deposit 300
Sep 29 09:10:10 deposit 500
Sep 29 09:40:51 deposit 1000
Sep 29 11:09:13 deposit 1500
Sep 29 11:37:54 deposit 1550
Sep 29 11:54:40 deposit 3400
Oct  1 07:20:31 withdraw 500.0006
[...]

The deposits sum to 8450.29159284 BTC.  So he was pretty close to busting at -8k.

[cp1]

If you wanna get to the bottom of it, read the wikipedia article.  It's pretty good.

Overall, the key to defeating martingale (if you are the house) is to place a bet limit.  Once there's a highest bet possible, the martingale player has to lose as soon as their local loss streak takes them to the point of butting up against the bet limit.

Note that if you consider a player with a non-finite amount of fundage and no bet limit the martingale is going to clean out the house eventually.  However, these conditions aren't met in real life

That's not why there are betting limits.  It's because of Kelly and in person, because of status.

[BigMac]

extremely interesting...when was this?
90BTC is a heck of an amount to win with today's prices, let alone being 90BTC down and continuing to play!

We see quite a few players with lots of coins to throw around.  I guess there are lots of early adoptors still around.

steven played from mid Feb to the end of Apr.
march player the first half of May.
the 1st charlie played in the middle of May and the 2nd at the end of May.

We've seen bigger martingale wins.  A guy called something like Balotelli took us for hundreds of coins.  Diablo too.

I'll dig up their charts if I can find their userids.

you should make a thread with graphs like these...I could read their stories/battles with the investors/site for hours!

People will be more aware of the risk and failure of martingales.
That would probably not bring the best result to the site lol.

[BigMac]

martingaling works if you are lucky as hell lol

All kinds of "strategies" works if you are lucky as hell, but some works more likely, some less likely.

[BigMac]

If you wanna get to the bottom of it, read the wikipedia article.  It's pretty good.

Overall, the key to defeating martingale (if you are the house) is to place a bet limit.  Once there's a highest bet possible, the martingale player has to lose as soon as their local loss streak takes them to the point of butting up against the bet limit.

Note that if you consider a player with a non-finite amount of fundage and no bet limit the martingale is going to clean out the house eventually.  However, these conditions aren't met in real life

That's not why there are betting limits.  It's because of Kelly and in person, because of status.

This.

At 1% house edge, the Kelly criterion is exactly 1%, and there is the original max win for JD.
You could check the wiki page about it for details. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion

[sed]

If you wanna get to the bottom of it, read the wikipedia article.  It's pretty good.

Overall, the key to defeating martingale (if you are the house) is to place a bet limit.  Once there's a highest bet possible, the martingale player has to lose as soon as their local loss streak takes them to the point of butting up against the bet limit.

Note that if you consider a player with a non-finite amount of fundage and no bet limit the martingale is going to clean out the house eventually.  However, these conditions aren't met in real life

That's not why there are betting limits.  It's because of Kelly and in person, because of status.

?

Who's Kelly?

In person, because of status?  I don't think this is right.