Thought I had a good roulette strategy - (I'm an idiot)
- Thread starter rawrt123
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Soldato
Shock horror the house wins
Playing the lottery is only "worthwhile" if you win
no its worthwhile if, accounting for variance, you have a good chance of winning
doesn't really matter - so long as its a +ev proposition then it can be worthwhile... obviously you'd want sufficient bankroll to be able to do this on several occasions
you need to re-think that bit - there are plenty of combinations of prizes
its the quick buck mentality at the time of playing that they are in it for
Soldato
If you have infinite money I have a strategy for roulette that cannot fail.
Soldato
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This.
I've used the same strategy a few times as theoretically, its flawless.. but only providing you have an unlimited ceiling.
I once got a 12 straight run of blacks.. was so annoyed!
Can easily escalate into 'big bets' from nothing.
£5
£10
£20
£40
£80
£160
Soldato
Strategy for roulette, that's a new one.
I watched a documentary last night about how high-rollers in the US do as much as they can to minimize the house edge at Blackjack. Even with umpteen special rules agreed by the punter, there is still a .352% house edge. He won $15 million doing so though.
I watched a documentary last night about how high-rollers in the US do as much as they can to minimize the house edge at Blackjack. Even with umpteen special rules agreed by the punter, there is still a .352% house edge. He won $15 million doing so though.
Soldato
Well, yes, but if you have a big enough bankroll to soak up several losses of £70mil, then why are you playing the lottery?
although, I'll concede that for lower costs/less possible combinations, it could be feasible in some circumstances.
The problem would be that those circumstances don't arise too often, so if you lose the first time, you could be waiting months/years for another suitable situation - how many times have we had a Euromillions jackpot over £100m in the last 2 years for example? 3, 4?
The second highest prize in Euromillions is 5 + 1, lottery site estimates ~£200k win for that.
How many combinations are there which would give you that? 110 if my calculations are correct, so a maximum win of £22,000,000 provided you got every single one.
Not even half of your original stake back
I realise that other lotteries will potentially have better odds, but it's still ultimately leaving it up to luck.
Lets look at it another way.
If your boss turned round to you tomorrow and said, from now on, instead of paying you X every month, every pay day we'll flip a coin, and if it comes up tails we'll pay you X*2, if it comes up heads, then we'll pay you nothing, would you be happy with it?
Soldato
Martengale roulette system is a sure loss way to play.
pfft, i had a streak of 14 blacks on ladbrokes whilst trying to wager bonus money, the laws of probability dont come into it when playing online
Well, yes, but if you have a big enough bankroll to soak up several losses of £70mil, then why are you playing the lottery?
you seem to think people with a few million just decide they don't want to make money any more... anyway it doesn't have to be the euromillions nor does it have to be an individual and its has happened before, with success, at smaller lotteries - including the Irish lotto (80% of possible tickets purchased) and US State lotteries - one couple (retired statisticians IIRC) paid off their local off license to close for 48 hours while they bought up a significant % of the possible combinations of a lottery following some rollovers.
it works in theory for larger combinations too - obviously there are practical limitations re: buying tickets which would prevent it or make it very tricky in the case of the euro millions. If there was a euro lottery API and no restrictions on buying all possible ticket combinations then there are investors out there who'd jump on it - an +ev rollover event would be guaranteed to be won the next week.
The second highest prize in Euromillions is 5 + 1, lottery site estimates ~£200k win for that.
How many combinations are there which would give you that? 110 if my calculations are correct, so a maximum win of £22,000,000 provided you got every single one.
Not even half of your original stake back
come on - we've moved beyond thinking about just the jackpot to now thinking about the jackpot + the prize below... perhaps we can consider the level below that too and the next one etc..etc..
the jackpot is 32% of the prize pool in each week's takings... obviously with a rollover it presents a larger % however you'd still get back a significant chunk of your spend from all the other winning tickets you'd have. 18% of the prize fund is the match 2+0 tickets another 17.6% is the match 2 + 1 tickets etc..etc...
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Man of Honour
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
People do it because they don't understand even the very basics of probability. I think it's related to the human tendency to interpret patterns into everything regardless of whether they're really there.
if he moved to >2 then yes...
we're talking about +ev scenarios here - your current analogy doesn't fit - its just adding variance.
Caporegime
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
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...
There was a precedent for that in the Irish lottery, a syndicate waited for the jackpot to be big enough and then bought tickets like mad. They didn't buy all the combination but they bought enough and they won and came out in profit.
I think at the time the Irish lottery had less balls so the odds were higher than the 14million to 1 that ours is.
Soldato
Open a casino. That's the only viable strat
Soldato
I'm fairly sure Euro Millions does some funky stuff with how prizes are distributed to avoid a situation in which you can beat the system, can't remember the exact ins and outs.
Soldato
pfft, i had a streak of 14 blacks on ladbrokes whilst trying to wager bonus money, the laws of probability dont come into it when playing online
I might be missing something, but roulette at a bookies? (unless you're talking about Ladbrokes as an online gambling site...)
he will be - by bonus money he means the signup bonus on the web site (these used to be a lot more lucrative/exploitable than they currently are - could make a few grand from them a decade ago)