Why is it so hard to leave

[Noyd]

Had a nice big bankroll this morning and decided, thats it for today!
But when my plans for tonight got cancelled i started playing a little, lost some money on 2 really bad beats. I put in some more and didnt catch any cards worth playing for about an hour and the blinds eat the most off it up. I been waiting for so long now to get some cards that i couldnt quite, Long story short.. a lost a bit and then decided, F* it.. im moving to higher table and try to win some back (and i won some of it back) Continued to play on 2 tables and was ready to quite and take the losses.. And i get dealt pocket pairs on both tables. Oki lets se the flop.. Caught trips on table and lost it to a loose player that caught a straight. Overpaired the other table and lost it to A-A. Dont know if i should laugh or cry haha, If i take it a little slower i know i can win it back.. but daamn, I toke a hard lesson in Self diciplne today

And i now im not the only one playing like this so share your storys please to make me feel a little bit better

[Les_Worm]

Moving to higher levels when you aren't properly bankrolled is probably the worst mistake in poker; a mistake that I have made many times before.

Also, if the blinds were eating much of your bankroll then you definately need to move down.

[richardwe]

Moving to higher levels when you aren't properly bankrolled is probably the worst mistake in poker; a mistake that I have made many times before.

Also, if the blinds were eating much of your bankroll then you definately need to move down.

Agree I had kind of the same problem playing roulette

betting on black and keep doubling your bet until you win, after 7 times black still didnt come up and I lost way more than I planned to...

[hagakure]

I have used that same strategy on roulette...and lost my ass. You have to be ready to risk thousands sometimes to play that way.

The biggest lesson this thread can teach is what Les said...never, never, never move up thinking you will win some back. I have made that mistake myself moving up to the worst place in the world to play poker...the 1/2 tables at party. Only, when I did it, I lost and bought right back in. Did I drop down when I bought back in? Nope, I stayed at the 1/2 tables and played with a determined sense of vengeance to "win some back". Did I? No. Did I buy back in yet again? Yes. Did I repeat the same events as described above AGAIN? Yep.

Then I found FTR and realized the wonders of BR management.

[Cocco_Bill]

to play roulette that way is a sure way of going bust

[Greedo017]

the double your bet idea works well in theory but if you have the roll to be doing it right, the amount you're gonna be winning will be insignificant. aka, it takes 50000 to safely start with a one cent bet (not exactly, but you get the idea)

[Cocco_Bill]

the double your bet idea works well in theory but if you have the roll to be doing it right, the amount you're gonna be winning will be insignificant. aka, it takes 50000 to safely start with a one cent bet (not exactly, but you get the idea)

It works in theory IF and ONLY IF you have an infinite amount of money and there is no upper bound to the amount you are allowed to bet. Try simulating it with any finit amount of money and you will always end up bust.

What you are effectively doing is getting the same -EV offered by roulette at a higher risk each time you double your bet which is completely independant of earlier bets.

You earn absolutely nothing by doing this!!

[Greedo017]

well, i can't exactly say i agree with you there. true, it only works with infinite money and no upper limit.

but, let's say you start by betting 1 cent. every time you double it. you start with a bankroll of 80,000.

.01-.02-.04-.08-.16-.32-.64-1.28-2.5-5-10-20-40-80-160-320-640-1280-2500-5000-10000-20000-40000.

while, true, each bet has a 50-50 chance of coming up, the odds of 23 straight of one color in a row are .000000238.

True, while this will happen sometimes, if you honestly think it will happen to you, i'm surprised you do any sort of gambling at all.

[a500lbgorilla]

When has "Fuck it! Let's just..." ever been followed by a great idea? A good idea? An idea with some merit? A bad idea?

-'rilla

[owhynot]

When has "Fuck it! Let's just..." ever been followed by a great idea? A good idea? An idea with some merit? A bad idea?

-'rilla

ok - ive butted heads w/ rilla on other posts, but i have to admit i was lmao w/ this quote, probably because it hit so close to home - well said..

[SmackinYaUp]

Look, just pretend you know what youre doing at the games with 50-100 blinds, go all in a couple times preflop with rags and get your 150 bucks back. Easy!

[Cocco_Bill]

well, i can't exactly say i agree with you there. true, it only works with infinite money and no upper limit.

but, let's say you start by betting 1 cent. every time you double it. you start with a bankroll of 80,000.

.01-.02-.04-.08-.16-.32-.64-1.28-2.5-5-10-20-40-80-160-320-640-1280-2500-5000-10000-20000-40000.

while, true, each bet has a 50-50 chance of coming up, the odds of 23 straight of one color in a row are .000000238.

True, while this will happen sometimes, if you honestly think it will happen to you, i'm surprised you do any sort of gambling at all.

If we had a casino with 100000 new customers a day playing one hour exactly the structure you presented for a whole year, they would make a lot of money! In fact they would make as much as the house edge in the game played!

Now the overwhelming majority of these dayly 100000 customers would walk away with a very small profit as they will be winning 1 cent at a time, but the few that do bust out by losing 23 times in a row will more than make up for this.

The house edge remains the house edge, this system changes nothing.

[Aces]

well, i can't exactly say i agree with you there. true, it only works with infinite money and no upper limit.

but, let's say you start by betting 1 cent. every time you double it. you start with a bankroll of 80,000.

.01-.02-.04-.08-.16-.32-.64-1.28-2.5-5-10-20-40-80-160-320-640-1280-2500-5000-10000-20000-40000.

while, true, each bet has a 50-50 chance of coming up, the odds of 23 straight of one color in a row are .000000238.

True, while this will happen sometimes, if you honestly think it will happen to you, i'm surprised you do any sort of gambling at all.

If we had a casino with 100000 new customers a day playing one hour exactly the structure you presented for a whole year, they would make a lot of money! In fact they would make as much as the house edge in the game played!

Now the overwhelming majority of these dayly 100000 customers would walk away with a very small profit as they will be winning 1 cent at a time, but the few that do bust out by losing 23 times in a row will more than make up for this.

The house edge remains the house edge, this system changes nothing.

Well stated, Cocco. Amazing how many people can't grasp this concept.

[hagakure]

The casino understands that concept quite well, that's why the game is still being played. With very very few exceptions those games are still alive in casinos today because they can't be beat by the masses on a regular basis.

Plain and simple, if a game is easy to crack by your average gambler, it doesn't survive. It probably doesn't make it into a legit casino in the first place.

[face]

If you had an infinite bankroll and there were no limits on how much you can bet, the strategy of betting X, then 2X, then 4X, etc., will win you X * payout when you win (which will happen eventually), as long as time is finite.

For example, bet 1 on black, paying 1 to 1. Lose. Bet 2. Lose. Bet 4. Lose. Bet 8. Lose. Bet 16. Lose. Bet 32. Win 32. Total losses = 1+2+4+8+16 = 31. Total winnings = 32. Net profit = 1.

Let's assume all 100,000 customers are playing this system, and they are bankrolled to double until $512, or 10 bets. The chance of someone losing 10 bets on a color in roulette in a row is .525 ^ 10, or .00159. This means that 159 of our wily customers per day will each lose 1023 dollars for a net to the casino of $162,657, more than covering the $99,841 the house pays out to its reasonably lucky patrons.

However, if each customer could afford 20 bets, the house would lose most days. This is because the chance of losing 20 bets in a row on a color is .00000253, meaning 253 people out of 100,000,000. However, during every 10 days the house is open, around 2.53 customers will lose all 20 bets, costing each of them $2,097,151, for an EV for the house/10 days of $4,305,794.56 ($5,305,792.03 - $999,997.47). This is an even bigger win for the house, but notice that now they have to wait longer for it. Also, for some samples of 10 days, they will not recoup their losses because not one customer will lose all 20 bets.

If each customer could afford to double 1000 times, and there were no limits on the tables, the chance of someone losing is 1.44312319 * 10^-280. So, even if someone played this game every second from the dawn of the universe to the projected date of the big bang, around 3.2 * 10^21 seconds, the chances are almost nil that the casino would recoup one dollar on the game (although with infinite time, the edge is still there). Of course, if every roulette player was carrying around a bankroll of 2.143017 * 10^301 dollars, or 10^173 times the number of neutrons that could be jammed in the universe, I guess the laws of time and space are right out the window.

In conclusion, if casinos limit their top bet on one color of roulette at anywhere less than 134,217,728 or so, even if everyone in the world could afford to drop 268,435,455 on the table, 2.8 in a hundred million (not unreasonable for the life of a big casino) would more than foot the bill for the rest of the winners.

[Zangief]

So, even if someone played this game every second from the dawn of the universe to the projected date of the big bang, around 3.2 * 10^21 seconds, the chances are almost nil that the casino would recoup one dollar on the game (although with infinite time, the edge is still there).

Nice post, I love it when people work out these crazy numbers and come to some unexpected conclusion.

You mean "big crunch" not "big bang" above, right?

If so, I didn't know that the big crunch was actually projected. I thought it was still an open question as to whether there would be a crunch or not. Has this been "solved"?

[Cocco_Bill]

Let's assume all 100,000 customers are playing this system, and they are bankrolled to double until $512, or 10 bets. The chance of someone losing 10 bets on a color in roulette in a row is .525 ^ 10, or .00159. This means that 159 of our wily customers per day will each lose 1023 dollars for a net to the casino of $162,657, more than covering the $99,841 the house pays out to its reasonably lucky patrons.

I still stand by that its the house edge the casino earns in the long term. Those 100000 people who played one orbit of this system to earn a dollar will have wagered an average total of (162657-99841)/(house edge=0.025)= ~ 2,5 million$

This would be consistent with the fundamental concepts of probability theory I've learned.

Lets see. With no house edge it would be 0.5^10 chance of losing 10 times= 0.0009765. So 97.65 customers would lose their 1024$ ~ 100000$ compared to (100000-97.6)~100000 people winning a dollar.

[whileone]

red or black in roulette is not even money. there's green ones in there too.
you don't get a 50% chance to double your money. it's like a 46% or 48% chance. since you're allready loosing, why not just bet on 1 that pays 8-1 so you don't have to double your bet size very often? the reason is, you don't have infinite money. you have whats in your wallet. It dosn't really matter if the casino wins or loses, every time someone bets 1 dollar on red, the casino wins 4 cents. if it happens to land on black, the casino sets the money aside, to pay out whoever hits red. if it lands on red they take the money out of the kitty and pay off the bettor. if it lands on green, they put the money in thier pocket.

every time you are making a -EV bet you are losing money. sure, the ball may land on red this time, but thats a 4 cent debt you owe "luck". sooner or later "luck" will come knocking and take it's cash back.

play roulette if you think its fun, i piss away money on movies because i think its a fun way to pass the time, it's not a way to get rich.

[face]

So, even if someone played this game every second from the dawn of the universe to the projected date of the big bang, around 3.2 * 10^21 seconds, the chances are almost nil that the casino would recoup one dollar on the game (although with infinite time, the edge is still there).

You mean "big crunch" not "big bang" above, right?

If so, I didn't know that the big crunch was actually projected. I thought it was still an open question as to whether there would be a crunch or not. Has this been "solved"?

Yeah, I actually meant big whimper, or the amount of seconds until every particle in the universe is either projected to be in a black hole or decayed into photons through gamma decay. The time that I got, 3.2 * 10^21 seconds, was pulled from a web page I can't find as of now. However, I just found some data on wikipedia which can tell us how old in seconds the universe will be at the time of its death. (Sorry, this is so damn dorky, but I like it and at least someone else is interested.)

For the time of death, I will briefly quote wikipedia: "In 10^40 years, all matter that isn't in a Black Hole is expected to have decayed into gamma ray photons through proton decay, which marks the end of the Degenerate Era and the beginning of the Black Hole era."

So, how many seconds in 10^40 years? Using google's trusty converter, we get 3.1556926 × 10 ^ 47 seconds as the life, in seconds, of the universe as we know it (with matter of any kind). Sorry about the bad numbers above, but the point holds. I believe the prevailing theory is that the universe will go dark and cold and exapand forever rather than contracting again in a big crunch. However, IANAP, so this could be bullshit.

Also, I completely with Cocco_Bill's post above. The house edge never goes away, if and only if they could stay open forever. If people had infinite or very, very large bankrolls, and there was no limit on the size of bets, but time was finite (either by bang, crunch or whimper), then the house could have their edge but not enough time would exist in the universe for them to realize it. In other words, the long run is just too long given the universe as it is.

In terms of real world roulette, with real world bankrolls, the house wins. They have a huge edge 1:1 payouts when you're only 47.5% to hit. You recoup .475 cents on each dollar wagered and lose .525, for a negative EV of .05 for you and a positive EV of .05 for the house.

[eeeee]

When has "Fuck it! Let's just..." ever been followed by a great idea? A good idea? An idea with some merit? A bad idea?

-'rilla

The definition of profundity.

[Greedo017]

great point by rilla. i think everyone goes up in limits when they shouldn't at some point, but then you lose, and you realize to really make "keepable" money you need to be playing within your limits.

and, of course the house would still come out ahead at its regular rate after infinite time. But, the odds of a streak of red or black reaching a certain point are phenomenally low. low enough that you can expect it will not happen to you in your lifetime. If donald trump played by this method, he'd come out way ahead. if 10000 donald trumps played by this method for 10000 years, the house would be up.

[mxmastermike]

Well in roulette there's a 0 on the wheel that is neither red or black so re/black are each less than 50%

[ChezJ]

are you guys complete idiots? have you never noticed the green numbers 0 and 00 on the roulette wheel?? they are there for a very specific reason: to fuck morons who think they can just double their bets every time they miss on black or red.

roulette is one of the most -EV games ever invented. FTR is for people who are seeking to make +EV decisions.

ChezJ

[Zangief]

I thought green counted as black because it is the opposite of red?

No? Green counts as red? Oh, I get it.

[Cocco_Bill]

I thought green counted as black because it is the opposite of red?

No? Green counts as red? Oh, I get it.

I thought so too! Thank god ChezJ is here to correct us comlete idiots!