This is about gambling.

Here’s the situation.

I lost a bet of 10k. I bet another 10k in hope that I would win and cover the previous loss. But I ended up losing, now I’ve lost 20k. I bet another 10k in hope that I would get 2 wins in a row and cover my losses. And so on.

The more I lose the harder it becomes to cover my losses. But “Given time, what can happen will happen”. Does this rule hold when the chance of it (covering all my previous losses) happening gets smaller each subsequent unsuccessful try?

just bumume I have infinite flezz and infinite time.

probably not

gamblebot is rigged to give somewhat deterministic results

even with the best strategy card, people have lost lots of flezz

i’ve seen gamblebot bust and/or get lower than me

twice or more in a row,

when i’m on a winning streak

i’ve also seen it while on a losing streak

so it’s not necessarily unique to one of those situations

i doubt the game is actually programmed to make “luck” worse as u play and lose more

so it is probably just coincidence

despite this, i always exit and reset if gamblebot wins over 60,000 flezz from me

(out of superstition)

Casinos make money because the odds are always stacked in their favor. From a statistical standpoint, every time you play you get a fraction of your bet back.

In a PROPER game of blackjack, the dealer has a, what, 0.5% advantage over you? That means that if you bet 1,000 1 at a time, you’ll walk away from that table with an average of 995.

You guys aren’t actually answering my questions

No this isn’t about scoops. No I’m not talking about the odds of winning each game, but the odds of recovering my previous losses. Yes this is a general question.

Pavilion Posted:

Gamble-Bot’s rigged; you’ll still find yourself in debt no matter what vast amount of flezz and time you expend.

bumuming that the chances are equal (ex. 50/50), you really shouldn’t be losing anything as the losses and wins cancel each other out. It differs, however:

“The figure on the following page … shows the result of a computer simulated sequence of ten thousand tosses of a fair coin. ... we feel that the probability of each result is equal. This feeling is indeed true — but only over the long term.” -pg. 42-3, Chance by Amir D. Aczel

Log in to see images!

Looking at that graph, what goes up must come down and vice versa. If I stop playing at 4000, I make profit.

But the chances of winning blackjack isn’t 50/50 so maybe this graph could be misleading.

Well, if it helps you have the same odds of at least winning as before. The outcome of the last gamble will not affect the next one. In other words, if you lost the bet one million times in a row, the odds of you winning the next one are exactly the same as the first time.

Inertia Posted:

I somewhat feel like I’m being made fun of by creationists.

Just statisticians.

(Actually if there were any here they would be prompt in first extensively explaining you’re exact odds of winning, and then extensively explaining exactly how every other statistician is wrong)

Inertia Posted:

You guys aren’t actually answering my questions

No this isn’t about scoops. No I’m not talking about the odds of winning each game, but the odds of recovering my previous losses. Yes this is a general question.

If this isn’t actually game related, why did you post this in the “game discussion” forum?

Bill_Murray_Fan_7383 Posted:

Well, I’m not a math major, so I don’t understand the math behind it, and I don’t know how to make it any clearer.

In the example I provided, the chance of a reaction happening in the atmosphere is fairly constant – so stretched across a period of time, it becomes more likely to occur.

But in gambling, the chance of breaking even isn’t stable – every time you lose, the chances become smaller, and, statistically, you’ll lose more often then you’ll win. So when you stretch that across a period of time, the chances don’t become anymore likely – in fact, they become less likely.

That is, if I understand this all correctly.

Every time you lose, your chances of winning are still exactly the same. Say there is a 60% chance of you losing; as you play more and more games, you can look at you overall win/loss record and see that you are going to have lost about 60% of the time, giving you a negative net. Especially as you approach infinity the actual odds become closer to the expected odds of winning.

Therefore, you would have to know, how often it is that you win at gambling, which is another statistic entirely.

Inertia Posted:

Cause well, it’s originally about covering my loss of flezz from gambling… Well, forum placement is not a big deal.

I’ve thought about how the chance gets smaller over time. So given infinite time, the probability of me covering my losses may actually be infinitesimal instead of 1.. Is that correct?

It still depends on the overall chance of winning on a small scale, and even so statistics do not work that way. It is entirely possible, albeit highly unlikely, that you could win every single game you ever play, into infinity.