Does martingale really works?

[dooglus]

For those who say Martingale "never works", I woke up this morning to find that Just-Dice had lost 100 BTC overnight.

Looking into it, I see it was a single big player who won it, and he won it using Martingale.

Here's a chart showing his profit over the last 6 hours:



So while it's a bad idea to Martingale, it's not fair to say it never works!

Edit: here's a chart showing the effect his play had on the overall Just-Dice profits for the week.  He wiped out all the profits we made since last Sunday...



Edit2: for those who prefer numbers to pictures, here's a list of all his Martingale sequences.  Note how random it appears.  He's not always resetting to the same starting point, but always doubles on loss (except for on the 4th line, where he went bust and had to redeposit, and the last but one line where I guess he was getting tired?):

-2 4
-2 4
-4 8
-10 -20 -10.944 40
-2 4
-2 4
-2 -4 -8 16
-4 -8 -16 32
-5 10
1
1
-1 2
-1 2
2
-2 -4 -8 16
-0.5 1
-0.5 -1 2
-2 4
-0.10002784 0.20005568
-1 -2 4
1
-1 -2 4
1
-4 8
1
-1 -2 4
1
-1 -2 4
-1 2
2
2
-2 4
2
2
-2 -4 8
-2 4
2
-2 -4 -8 -16 -32 64
2
-2 -4 8
-1 2
1
1
-1 2
2
-2 4
-4 -8 16
-2 -4 8
-1 -2 -4 -8 -16 32
1
-1 -2 -4 -8 16
1
1
1
-1 -2 -4 -8 16
1
-1 -2 -4 8
-1 2
-1 -2 -4 8
-1 2
-2 -4 -8 16
1
-1 -0.5 -1 -4 8
-2 -4 -8 -16 32

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[omahapoker]

well damn, there goes my bet that JD will make 600BTC profit this month

[dooglus]

well damn, there goes my bet that JD will make 600BTC profit this month

Not necessarily.

He could come back and lose it all.

It wouldn't be the first time a Martingale player thought they were invincible (and were wrong).

[boumalo]

well damn, there goes my bet that JD will make 600BTC profit this month

Not necessarily.

He could come back and lose it all.

It wouldn't be the first time a Martingale player thought they were invincible (and were wrong).

And it wouldn't be the last as well

He got a nice run, he must have felt pretty good at the end of his play; he was risking about 100BTC and won 100BTC

[David Latapie]

What's the average yearly profit (well, sort of, since JD is less than one year) on JD? I heard of 56% with coumpounded interests. Extrapolating from the last three months (14399 on March 1, 17550 on June 1), this would give 87%
If we were ruling out the Nawaka incident, what would be the % of profit?
Reason I ask is that I'd like to have BTC on JD to buy some other alt only with the profit. But for this to happen, I need to evaluate how many BTC I must invest to get generate the amount of profit I need to reach my target amount of alt to buy.

Thanks

[sed]

Martingaling decreases the amount you can win and decreases the chances of you losing.  You'll never win big though but may lose big.

For some people who get a big come up from the psychological edge of winning, then martingales are where it is.  If winning a tiny amount does nothing for you, then they're kind of stupid.  All martingales do is shift around variance.  Whether you consider that "working" or not I can't say, but it sure doesn't make you a winning bettor.

This is pretty interesting.  I'm not sure I fully understand what "shift around the variance" means in this context.  But I think you're right about winning vs winning big.

[PacoMartin]

What's the average yearly profit (well, sort of, since JD is less than one year) on JD? I heard of 56% with coumpounded interests.

I thought dooglus said 43%, but I can't find the quote. He did say that bets were limited to a profit of 1% of the bank until the bank got knocked around by the Nawaka incident. He then cut the max bet so that you can't make a profit over 0.5% of the amount invested.

Tom Breitling describes a similar story in his book. As you may know, the Golden Nugget casino was Steve Wynn's original investment in the 1970's. Although Steve sold his corporation in 2000, the Golden Nugget was kept for nostalgia. In 2003 Tom and his partner, Tim, decided to purchase the Golden Nugget and bring back a little of 1950's glamour.

Tim wanted to raise the max bet at the casino to attract whales. It worked for about 10 months, then a big gambler walked in and won $8.5 million in two weeks (the story is posted on his website).
http://www.tombreitling.com/book/
That was enough to seriously injure profits for the quarter and scare their investors. They had no choice but to reduce that possibility by limiting large bets.

Tim and Tom only owned the casino for a year, before selling it to Landry's corporation, operators of several well known restaurant chains. The important point is that while Tim and Tom were certainly very successful (they sold their previous business for $100 million at age 30), there are always people out there with a lot more money.

If you want to know the profit leaving out the Nawaka incident, it might be interesting, but I think it would be a mistake to think that something similar is now impossible. Reducing the max bet greatly reduces the probability, but it is never impossible.

[boumalo]

What's the average yearly profit (well, sort of, since JD is less than one year) on JD? I heard of 56% with coumpounded interests.

I thought dooglus said 43%, but I can't find the quote. He did say that bets were limited to a profit of 1% of the bank until the bank got knocked around by the Nawaka incident. He then cut the max bet so that you can't make a profit over 0.5% of the amount invested.

Tom Breitling describes a similar story in his book. As you may know, the Golden Nugget casino was Steve Wynn's original investment in the 1970's. Although Steve sold his corporation in 2000, the Golden Nugget was kept for nostalgia. In 2003 Tom and his partner, Tim, decided to purchase the Golden Nugget and bring back a little of 1950's glamour.

Tim wanted to raise the max bet at the casino to attract whales. It worked for about 10 months, then a big gambler walked in and won $8.5 million in two weeks (the story is posted on his website).
http://www.tombreitling.com/book/
That was enough to seriously injure profits for the quarter and scare their investors. They had no choice but to reduce that possibility by limiting large bets.

Tim and Tom only owned the casino for a year, before selling it to Landry's corporation, operators of several well known restaurant chains. The important point is that while Tim and Tom were certainly very successful (they sold their previous business for $100 million at age 30), there are always people out there with a lot more money.

If you want to know the profit leaving out the Nawaka incident, it might be interesting, but I think it would be a mistake to think that something similar is now impossible. Reducing the max bet greatly reduces the probability, but it is never impossible.

They sold expedia for 100m$ EDIT : they sold their travelling business to expedia for 100m

"But that’s only the start. Breitling and Poster use their earnings to buy the legendary Golden Nugget in downtown Las Vegas, nearly get taken down by a high roller on a $25 million winning streak, overcome a series of adversity, and a little more than a year after buying the iconic hotel sell it at another profit of more than $100 million. “A great read, and a true rags to riches American success story,” Ben Mezrich, the bestselling author of Bringing Down the House, describes it. “The narrative goes down smooth as a good scotch, with a rhythm that would have made Sinatra proud!”"

To know the site profit without the Nawaka winnings you just add the Nakawa winnings to how much has been won, his final winnings are believed to be in an order of magnitude of 3000BTC if I remember correctly EDIT : he probably won around 10,000BTC from JD

[dooglus]

What's the average yearly profit (well, sort of, since JD is less than one year) on JD? I heard of 56% with coumpounded interests. Extrapolating from the last three months (14399 on March 1, 17550 on June 1), this would give 87%
If we were ruling out the Nawaka incident, what would be the % of profit?
Reason I ask is that I'd like to have BTC on JD to buy some other alt only with the profit. But for this to happen, I need to evaluate how many BTC I must invest to get generate the amount of profit I need to reach my target amount of alt to buy.

Thanks

Compounding isn't really relevant.  Your profits are automatically added to your share of the bankroll, but so are everyone else's, so your share of the bankroll, and thus share of the profits remains constant.

Over the last year everyone who was with us the whole year made about 43%, but that's in the past.  In the future it could get better or worse.

[dooglus]

They sold expedia for 100m$

I think they sold their travel company *to* expedia.

To know the site profit without the Nawaka winnings you just add the Nakawa winnings to how much has been won, his final winnings are believed to be in an order of magnitude of 3000BTC if I remember correctly

I don't have exact numbers, because I don't know for sure which accounts were his.  But I estimate that he risked 2.5 million BTC and won 10k BTC.  The 2.5 million he risked should have netted the house 25k BTC.

So the current profit is 35k BTC short of where it should be, due to the BTC he won (10k) and the BTC he should have lost and didn't (25k).

That's probably where you're getting the '30000' number from.

[dooglus]

Another in the anecdotal series of "Does martingale really works?"

This time I present evidence for the "no, it bloody doesn't!" side of the argument:





Edit2: here's how this loss fits in with the rest of the week's gains and losses so far on JD:



Edit: here are the actual profits and losses.  Note that he's playing at 45% chance to win, with a payout of 2.2x, so the positive profits are 20% higher than the corresponding negative ones (-0.01 and +0.012 for example):

-0.01 -0.02 0.048
0.012
0.012
-0.01 -0.02 0.048
-0.01 0.024
-0.01 0.024
-0.01 -0.02 -0.04 -0.08 -0.16 -0.32 -0.64 1.536
0.012
-0.01 0.024
-0.01 0.024
-0.01 -0.02 0.048
0.012
0.012
-0.01 -0.02 -0.04 -0.08 -0.16 -0.32 -0.64 -1.28 -2.56 6.144
-0.1 -0.2 0.48
-0.1 0.24
0.12
0.12
0.12
0.12
-0.1 0.24
0.012
-0.01 -0.02 0.048
0.012
-0.01 -0.02 -0.04 0.096
0.012
0.012
-0.01 -0.02 0.048
-0.01 0.024
0.012
-0.01 -0.02 0.048
0.012
0.012
0.012
0.012
0.012
0.012
-0.01 0.024
-0.01 -0.02 -0.04 -0.08 -0.16 0.384
-0.01 -0.02 0.048
0.12
-0.1 -0.2 0.48
-0.01 0.024
-0.01 -0.02 0.048
-0.01 0.024
-0.01 0.024
0.012
0.012
0.012
-0.01 0.024
-0.01 -0.02 0.048
0.012
0.012
0.012
-0.01 -0.02 0.048
-0.1 0.24
0.12
0.12
0.12
-0.1 -0.2 0.48
-0.1 -0.2 -0.4 0.96
-0.1 -0.2 0.48
0.12
-0.1 0.24
0.12
-0.1 0.24
0.00012
0.00012
-0.0001 -0.0002 -0.0004 -0.0008 -0.0016 -0.0032 -0.0064 -0.0128 0.03072
0.00012
-0.0001 -0.0002 0.00048
0.00012
0.00012
-0.0001 0.00024
0.00012
-0.0001 -0.0002 0.00048
-0.0001 0.00024
0.00012
0.00012
0.00012
-0.0001 -0.0002 0.00048
-0.001 -0.002 -0.004 -0.008 0.0192
0.0012
0.0012
0.0012
-0.001 -0.002 0.0048
0.0012
0.0012
0.0012
0.0012
-0.001 -0.002 0.0048
-0.001 -0.002 -0.004 -0.008 0.0192
-0.001 0.0024
-0.001 -0.002 -0.004 -0.008 -0.016 0.0384
-0.001 -0.002 0.0048
-0.001 -0.002 0.0048
-0.001 0.0024
-0.001 -0.002 0.0048
0.0012
0.0012
-0.001 0.0024
-0.001 -0.002 0.0048
-0.001 0.0024
-0.001 0.0024
-0.001 -0.002 0.0048
-0.001 -0.002 0.0048
-0.001 0.0024
0.0012
-0.001 0.0024
0.0012
0.0012
-0.001 -0.002 0.0048
-0.001 0.0024
-0.001 0.0024
-0.001 -0.002 0.0048
0.0012
0.0012
0.0012
0.0012
0.0012
0.0012
-0.001 0.0024
0.0012
-0.001 0.0024
-0.001 0.0024
0.0012
0.0012
-0.001 0.0024
-0.001 0.0024
-0.001 0.0024
0.0012
-0.001 0.0024
0.0012
-0.001 -0.002 -0.004 0.0096
0.0012
-0.001 -0.002 -0.004 -0.008 -0.016 -0.032 0.0768
-0.001 0.0024
-0.001 -0.002 -0.004 0.0096
0.0012
0.0012
0.0012
0.0012
0.0012
-0.001 -0.002 0.0048
0.0012
0.0012
-0.001 -0.002 0.0048
-0.001 -0.002 -0.004 0.0096
0.0012
0.0012
0.0012
0.0012
-0.001 0.0024
-0.001 0.0024
-0.001 0.0024
0.0012
-0.001 0.0024
-0.001 -0.002 0.0048
-0.001 0.0024
0.0012
0.0012
0.0012
0.0012
0.0012
0.0012
-0.001 -0.002 0.0048
-0.001 0.0024
0.12
0.12
0.12
0.12
0.12
-0.1 0.24
-0.1 -0.2 0.48
0.12
-0.1 0.24
-0.1 0.24
0.12
-0.1 -0.2 -0.4 -0.8 1.92
-0.1 0.24
0.12
-0.1 -0.2 0.48
-0.1 -0.2 -0.4 -0.8 -1.6 -3.2 7.68
0.12
0.12
0.12
-0.001 0.0024
0.0012
-0.001 0.0024
-0.001 0.0024
-0.001 0.0024
-0.001 0.0024
-0.001 -0.002 0.0048
0.0012
0.0012
-0.001 -0.002 -0.004 -0.008 -0.016 -0.032 -0.064 -0.128 -0.256 -0.512 -1.024 -2.048 -4.096 -8.192 -16.384 -32.768

[omahapoker]

dooglus



I'm going to be investing in every betting site that allows investing and will be bloging daily on my results

http://cryptobettingindex.com/


cant wait to report how i do with just-dice and doge-dice



also, congrats on upcoming 600,000,000 bets at doge-dice.com


i look at every dice site every day for reaseach.


ive noticed from doge dice sites the traffic has gone way down in the last or so .



have you noticed that for doge-dice?



seems to me that doge is slowly dying out


time for you to start another dice site. a fresh new coin that everyone loves

[dooglus]

I'm going to be investing in every betting site that allows investing and will be bloging daily on my results

Please be careful out there.  A lot of people make clones of JD as short term scams.  The plan seems to be:

1) take 'investment'
2) run away

It's simple, but effective.

Alternatively this works too:

1) take 'investment'
2) get 'hacked'

Don't risk significant amounts with people you don't trust.

[dooglus]

ive noticed from doge dice sites the traffic has gone way down in the last or so .

have you noticed that foe doge-dice?

seems to me that doge is slowly dying out

I think the novelty is wearing off for sure.

Also, most of the people who had large amounts of coins to lose have already lost them...

[omahapoker]

I'm going to be investing in every betting site that allows investing and will be bloging daily on my results

Please be careful out there.  A lot of people make clones of JD as short term scams.  The plan seems to be:

1) take 'investment'
2) run away

It's simple, but effective.

Alternatively this works too:

1) take 'investment'
2) get 'hacked'

Don't risk significant amounts with people you don't trust.

i'm small time. i'm talking about 0.01BTC at every site


by doing 0.01 i can give examples of what people would make if it was

0.01
0.1
1

[Zombie23]

I'm not talking about the probability of the next one. I'm saying with a extremely high number of bets, which is why i just chose 1000 that if you graph it out (depending on the house edge) 49.5% will be wins, and 50.5% will be loses. I understand every single event is independent of the previous ones, but the numbers at high values should always hover around the 49.5 and 50.5 mark.

So you agree that after 1000 tails, heads is no more probable? Then you must understand that this does not help you with betting at all. It is of no use predicting the outcome of any single bet, they are all the same. I mean, if you for some reason try to get a long streak of losses, you will probably have had a similar amount of wins and winning streaks before that. The statistics do go like that. But that will not affect anything you do in the future.

It is the same as if you never had the previous results. It is analogous to flipping a coin. The history just does not matter.

Or are you saying that the history somehow matters? Because trying to get losing streaks before betting big suggests that, and only that. Am I correct? If not, what is the reason for trying to get a losing streak if it did not (supposedly) matter for future bets?

If you look at the single event, it is an independent event, but if you look at all the bets as a whole, or a high number of events, the history does matter. If the game is truly fair, the results should be at exactly 49.5 to 50.5. If the numbers are off on either side, you can predict either a period of a higher amount of wins or losses, as the statistics HAVE TO balance out.

[nimda]

For those who say Martingale "never works", I woke up this morning to find that Just-Dice had lost 100 BTC overnight.

Looking into it, I see it was a single big player who won it, and he won it using Martingale.

Here's a chart showing his profit over the last 6 hours:

https://i.imgur.com/3GymqSB.png

First, I love how martingale charts look. A perfect martingale will be a straight line with periodic drops of varying magnitude, where deeper drops are exponentially more rare.

Second, is there any way to calculate the probability of a bust on a martingale procession while taking into account the ever-increasing bankroll it provides?

[dooglus]

First, I love how martingale charts look. A perfect martingale will be a straight line with periodic drops of varying magnitude, where deeper drops are exponentially more rare.

Second, is there any way to calculate the probability of a bust on a martingale procession while taking into account the ever-increasing bankroll it provides?

I think it wouldn't be exactly straight, even connecting the peaks, because a:
  -1 -2 +4
and a
  -1 -2 -4 -8 -16 +32
both add 1 to the total bankroll, but take different numbers of steps to do so.

I've seen people play like:
 -1 -3 -7 -15 -31 +63
before, which *does* lead to a perfect straight line, since the net gain is equal to the number of steps.  The 6 numbers in the previous line sum to 6.  It's equivalent to starting a new martingale of size 1 each bet:

First bet, bet 1 (and lose)
Second bet, bet 2 for the first martingale, and 1 for the new one you're starting: so 3 in total
Third bet, bet 4 for the first, 2 for the 2nd and 1 for the new one: 7 in total
...
Sixth bet: bet 32 for the 1st, 16 for the 2nd, ..., and 1 for the new one and this time we win, finishing off all 6 concurrent martingales at once.

I think the first person I noticed playing this way was the owner of the BTC Guild poll, Eleuthria.  It didn't work out too well for him in the end, and unfortunately I can't remember his account number to show the chart.

Edit: I forgot your 2nd question.  I'm sure there must be, but I don't know of it.  The number of rolls you can withstand before busting only goes up in whole numbers.  Most wins don't help you survive longer, because they don't give you enough extra to make a whole extra bet.  So I'm not sure how to work out the probability.  Other than that the probability of busting is 1 if you play long enough...

[dooglus]

If the numbers are off on either side, you can predict either a period of a higher amount of wins or losses, as the statistics HAVE TO balance out.

This is your fundamental misunderstanding.

The statistics don't have to balance out in the way you think they do.  They balance out, but in a way that gives you no predictive power.

Here's why they really balance out:

Suppose you flip a coin 10 times and it comes up heads only twice.  20% when it's meant to be 50% is way off.  So you would say "keep playing and it has to balance out".  Which is kind of true, but not for the reason you think.

If I play a thousand more times, I expect to get about 500 heads and 500 tails.  That brings the totals to 502 heads and 508 tails.

Now 49.7% of the flips have been heads.  Yay, it has "balanced out" from 20% heads to 49.7% heads even though we saw exactly 500 of both heads and tails.

And that's why it "balances out".  Not because you can predict an excess of tails in the coming rolls to balance it, but because you can predict that the 2 vs 8 weirdness you saw at the start will become insignificant over time as you flip more and more times.

[kuverty]

For those who say Martingale "never works", I woke up this morning to find that Just-Dice had lost 100 BTC overnight.

Looking into it, I see it was a single big player who won it, and he won it using Martingale.

Here's a chart showing his profit over the last 6 hours:

https://i.imgur.com/3GymqSB.png

First, I love how martingale charts look. A perfect martingale will be a straight line with periodic drops of varying magnitude, where deeper drops are exponentially more rare.

Second, is there any way to calculate the probability of a bust on a martingale procession while taking into account the ever-increasing bankroll it provides?

Possible to calculate? Of course such a simple thing is. But that ever-increasing bank roll won't matter much, the gains are very small. What is the probability you'd like to know? It might be so that an exact calculation is unfeasible but also that it would be unnecessary because we could have a very good approximation. The probability of going bust if you keep going on indefinitely is of course 100 % so what probability would you like to know?

And of course, a simulation is possible always with these dice games and that's fun to run a few, too. It's possible to run such a simulation with no previous programming experience or math knowledge, if you are willing to look up the basic things and think about it for a while. Python is a great beginner language for example, it's like today's BASIC except that it's suitable for a lot more advanced programming.