Thought I had a good roulette strategy - (I'm an idiot)

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You never see a poor bookie do you...wonder why.

There is no sure way to beat the bookies, it doesn't exist.

I do very small footy bets...you win some, you lose some...And when I say small i mean 20p-30p accas...

Yes there are ways to beat the bookies. I've personally made £500 over the last couple of weeks from the bookies and know people making thousands.

Obviously when it comes to roulette there is no way you win in the long term though.
 
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Having a roulette strategy is akin to having a lottery strategy. Both are games of pure chance.

Strong first post, BTW.
There are strategies but most rely on unlimited tables and unlimited funds to come out ahead, one of which is a bookie limit the other is a personal limit. At some point you would hit one of them.
Often tables are around 10x limit so if you are doing the double down technique then and then lose 8-10 times you will hit the limit and then the either walk away or try and pull it back (and lose more).
Basically all gambling games like this are weighted towards the bookies, if you are good at some games then you can tilt the odds but its generally still in the favour of the bookies (as if it was truely beatable it would be gone very fast).
Poker is the obvious exception as the house has nothing to do with it apart from taking a cut.
 
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House always win. If they didn't they'd be out of business pretty quickly. My father in law goes casino on occasions and we keep telling him its a mugs game but he keeps on winning and going back. Worryingly his bets are getting bigger and bigger...
 
Soldato
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If it was red, I'd bet red again and so forth till it was black - I'd then put double on black and if black came out I'd do a normal stake on black again until red came out then double up on red again etc etc

I've never understood why people flip between the colours... it's not like landing on black means the next spin is more likely to land on red :p

Having a roulette strategy is akin to having a lottery strategy. Both are games of pure chance.

There is a lottery "strategy"... but it's geared towards maximising your winnings if you do win, rather than increasing your chances of winning (which is impossible other than buying more tickets).
 
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I don't even know if I'm addicted, I'm not wasting money which I need for bills - it's just disposable income and I can happily walk past a bookies/casino without feeling the urge. It's just when I am actually there I just turn into someone I'm not.

You clearly do know that you have a problem otherwise you wouldnt be ashamed and trying to hide your real name.
 
Caporegime
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The strategy of doubling the bet each time will lose theoretically works assuming there are no limits to betting and you have a huge/unlimited amount of money. In the real world however, it doesn't work and a row of bad luck will take all your money.

doesn't necessarily work in theory depending on the criteria - do you mean for an individual, for people playing in general - do people only ever play once in their life and stop the first time they've had a win....
 
Caporegime
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Having a roulette strategy is akin to having a lottery strategy. Both are games of pure chance.

Strong first post, BTW.

nah - you can get a changes in expected value with lotteries and situations where its possible to profit - its rather a skewed distribution so those situations require you to buy rather a lot of tickets... regardless there are plenty of times when it becomes a +ev bet - though if you're not buying a significant number of tickets you're unlikely to end up in profit (unless you live for thousands of years and only ever bet when a +ev situation presents itself).


roulette on the other hand has a fixed expected value and for most bets the expected value is the same (there are a few minor differences) but essentially whether you bet on red/black or on specific numbers etc.. you face the same negative expected value
 
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The house always win whatever the game is, although I found that roulette is the quickest way to lose money. Went to a casino last year as part of a stag weekend with £50 budget. I stuck a chip on 14/17 repeatedly and neither of those 2 numbers came up after some 30-odd spins. I then managed to recoup most of my losses on the slot machines, mainly on one called Book of Ra. Best game in the casino however was 3-card brag. Lost about £8 there but that £8 lasted me for like an hour. All in all, a good night out, although I would only go to a casino again if I was part of a large group.
 
Soldato
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nah - you can get a changes in expected value with lotteries and situations where its possible to profit - its rather a skewed distribution so those situations require you to buy rather a lot of tickets...

Well, the only way it's possible to guarantee* a profit in a lottery is to buy a ticket for every possible combination.

For example, in the case of euromillions, there are 76,275,360 possible combinations. (according to the first hit on Google, I cba to work it out myself :p)

At a cost of £2/ticket, buying a ticket for every combination on anything above a £152,550,720 jackpot will be profit.*



*There are a few provisos here:

a) this only works if you are the only person to win, if you have to split the jackpot then you will obviously lose at least half of the money.
b) I can't even being to imagine how you would cope with the logistics of buying 76 million lottery tickets (to put that into context, over a week that's just over 126 tickets per second)
c) if you had £152,550,720 available cash to buy those lottery tickets, I highly doubt you'd be playing the lottery... :p
 
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Yes there are ways to beat the bookies. I've personally made £500 over the last couple of weeks from the bookies and know people making thousands.

Obviously when it comes to roulette there is no way you win in the long term though.

Just not 100% of the time...
 
Soldato
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The only games I play in a Casino are for entertainment, light bets & never believe I'll actually come out with more money than I went in with.

I set a £50 limit for the night & every-time I win more than £50 I take back half my initial pot. Playing games of chance which are rigged against the punter is a foolish way to make money.
 
Caporegime
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Well, the only way it's possible to guarantee* a profit in a lottery is to buy a ticket for every possible combination.

you don't have to guarantee a profit for it to be worthwhile - buying a significant number of tickets can be profitable - also don't forget to include all the other prizes you'll win with a significant number of purchases... obviously it still needs to be sufficient for you to have a reasonable chance at the jackpot so with something like the euromillions you'd still need to spend a few million and be willing to take on significant risk - still its a +ev bet.

has happened in smaller state lotteries in the US with less potential combinations - people have made money from spending a six figure sum buying XX% of tickets each time there have been sufficient rollovers to make buying any ticket a +ev proposition.
 
Soldato
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you don't have to guarantee a profit for it to be worthwhile - buying a significant number of tickets can be profitable - also don't forget to include all the other prizes you'll win with a significant number of purchases... obviously it still needs to be sufficient for you to have a reasonable chance at the jackpot so with something like the euromillions you'd still need to spend a few million and be willing to take on significant risk - still its a +ev bet.

has happened in smaller state lotteries in the US with less potential combinations - people have made money from spending a six figure sum buying XX% of tickets each time there have been sufficient rollovers to make buying any ticket a +ev proposition.

Playing the lottery is only "worthwhile" if you win ;)

If you don't buy every possible combination then it's still possible for you to lose a significant amount of money.

If you were to buy 35m tickets, then sure you're increasing your odds of winning to ~50%, but there's still a 50% chance that you'll lose that £70m "investment".

Again, if you can afford to lose £70m a couple of times/month, I'm pretty sure there are more productive things you could be doing with that money ;)

And yes, the smaller prizes do have an effect on the overall profitability, but when you're talking about spending 10s of millions on tickets, a £500k prize is pretty insignificant.
 
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