Correct me if I am wrong but...

So Ive been playing on this one site recently, its a dice rolling BTC betting website. I was using the martingale method of betting which means, if you lose once you double your bet to recoup your losses, and gain a little ect.


I figured that if I bet with only minuscule amounts of bitcoins and just kept the bot running I would eventually be up a couple bucks.


It worked for a little while but then this happened.



Yes, 15 consecutive losses. What are the odds of that?

I was talking in chat, and almost everyone seemed to agree that losing 15 times in a row is a 50/50 chance because I was playing 50/50 dice...

Well... that's pretty stupid. So I looked it up myself and found this.




That seems a lot more accurate to me. I think the site is rigged so you lose so many times in a row after a while (maybe)


Grix, this is not what I use all the bitcoins I buy from you for, only a small amount of them.

Its possible that they game you until they are sure you are doubling every loss and then put you on a lose streak to reap a bunch of profit. 15 losses in a row is very surprising.

I have to remind you though that when gambling every play is an individual event and should be though of as such. Instead of thinking what are the chances of me getting another fail after I already have 10 or whatever you should think of it as an individual event with a 50/50 chance. If you start thinking oh man I have to win after all these loss and decide to put in a really big bet you are playing right in to gambler fallacy.

benmwv said:

Its possible that they game you until they are sure you are doubling every loss and then put you on a lose streak to reap a bunch of profit. 15 losses in a row is very surprising.

I have to remind you though that when gambling every play is an individual event and should be though of as such. Instead of thinking what are the chances of me getting another fail after I already have 10 or whatever you should think of it as an individual event with a 50/50 chance. If you start thinking oh man I have to win after all these loss and decide to put in a really big bet you are playing right in to gambler fallacy.

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Ben beat me to it big time. You can dig a really deep hole with that kind of thinking because you start to get mnore and more desparate to make back what you gambled away, thinking again and again that this next time will be it. It has to!

A big part of playing any betting game is knowing when to simply walk away. You will rarely end up ahead. Games aren't meant to be won enough to be profitable, just enough to be addicting and give you an adrenaline rush.

Lastly, maybe don't let a bot automatically handle your money in a betting situation. That just sounds scary haha.

Exactly what Ben said, and allow me to further his arguments with some cold facts,

Neglect of probability - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Just-world hypothesis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

TL: DR version:

Your gambling "strategy" is a fail in logic from set-go. It is founded on the basic idea that if you lose one throw, second, third, that somehow the world is bound to owe you a "win", that somehow it is overdue because it didn't happen for some time.

This is NOT how gambling works.

And if you are complaining that the system is rigged, remember that it is rigged in such a way that the company doesn't go bankrupt in 5 minutes.

Gambling in real physical world where you do have physical dice or a ball landing or whatever, is in itself a rigged game where you DO. NOT. Get free money out of nothing. It is NOT made to give you money if you succeed in following arbitrary rule set. It is a business, and as such set up only to make money under the false pretense of possibility of giving you some.

And then you step into the wonderful world of computer programming. Do you truly believe they left the possibility of them going bankrupt to a random number generator?

Only a state-wide lottery appears to be fair through the world. All privately owned gambling facilities and GOD FORBID, gambling websites (where they might as well simply display nothing but "You win" or "Try again" messages on your screen, remember, animations and graphics are simply that) are a business.

For the love of your wallet, save yourself some money, and don't donate it to people through gambling.

So in short, do I believe it is possible do have 15 loses in a row?

I believe it's not POSSIBLE to have enogh wins to recoup losses.

Disclaimer: I am in no possible way trying to insult you or belittle you or trying to do anything else except help you. Sorry if you see it in any other way

Stay away from gambling on the web! I don't know if they have casinos in Ohio but if you haven't tried it yet, go to a casino and play the slots. You can often win some, the problem is people win and keep playing and lose what they win. You have to know when to quit.

Alan

Pi R Squared said:

Stay away from gambling on the web! I don't know if they have casinos in Ohio but if you haven't tried it yet, go to a casino and play the slots. You can often win some, the problem is people win and keep playing and lose what they win. You have to know when to quit.

Alan

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Better yet, stay away from gambling completely. I once knew someone who won $1,000 from a slot machine and 30 minutes later she spent it all on the same machine and walked away broke

-Alex

Martingale systems may work for a while, but when they don't work, you are really screwed and can lose a ton of money very fast. Systematized betting against a house edge will simply not work in the long run. The probability of a loss streak is small but not zero, sooner or later it will happen. Better stop before you end up like this guy: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/com...alling_themselves_theymos_is_gambling/ci16cx2

Grix said:

Martingale systems may work for a while, but when they don't work, you are really screwed and can lose a ton of money very fast. Systematized betting against a house edge will simply not work in the long run. The probability of a loss streak is small but not zero, sooner or later it will happen. Better stop before you end up like this guy: dooglus comments on Someone calling themselves "theymos" is gambling like mad on Just-Dice

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He lost 91 bitcoins in the span of 2 minutes?
How much is 1 BTC in $US again?!

Anyway yeah. Statistics and probability are a bitch.

Theoretically you can place 1 bet every second from now until the death of the universe, and lose every single one of them, and not a single law of the universe is broken, except the ones gamblers make up telling themselves that "they gotta win with this strategy".

Eudaimonium said:

He lost 91 bitcoins in the span of 2 minutes?
How much is 1 BTC in $US again?!

Anyway yeah. Statistics and probability are a bitch.

Theoretically you can place 1 bet every second from now until the death of the universe, and lose every single one of them, and not a single law of the universe is broken, except the ones gamblers make up telling themselves that "they gotta win with this strategy".

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That's $57690 at today's rate
Not quite 91 btc in 2 minutes though, 50 of them he had lost at a few weeks earlier from a similar streak.

Word to the wise,

You will, no exceptions, at some point into gambling activity of any kind say to yourself "I just wish I was back at the stat with my money".

You're there NOW. DON'T start it.

@OP. I don't think there is any indication that this was rigged. There is a very reasonable probability that someone will get 15 losses in a row on a 50/50 game. If you play 2^15 (32,768) times, then you are just as likely as not to have experienced a 15-in-a-row loss one of those times. Of course it's the guy who has one of these "impossible" loss streaks that reports it to the world - in this case you are that guy. The double-down martingale strategy is a classic gambling fail since you can and will very quickly hit 1 of the following limits:
1. The house cap - you can't double the next bet to recoup losses since they won't let you bet that high
2. Your bankroll - you literally go bankrupt and cannot afford to cover the next bet
3. You give up to cut your losses.

Of these 3, the last one seems like the gutless stupid one since you could have won back everything with just one more bet, but it is the best of the 3 since it results in the lowest loss. Obviously, as others have said, this means the best option of all is to stop and cut your losses before the first bet.

Imagine a lottery where you could buy a $20 ticket for a 1 in 32,000 chance to win $1,000,000 dollars with each ticket (not bad odds eh?). Would you buy one? If you had enough money would you buy 32,000 of them? If there could be multiple winning tickets and no limit to the number of $1,000,000 payouts would you spend $6.4 million to get 320,000 tickets knowing that in all likelihood you will have somewhere close to 10 winning tickets? Would you laugh all the way to the bank at the schlub who sold you the tickets? Welcome to the real world. You are the house, and the schlubs selling you the tickets are your patrons.

In the situation you described with the online dice game you've been selling these tickets to the house hoping for a bunch of small payouts (the $20 ticket price) which is almost guaranteed each time you play with your martingale strategy! Now they finally got a winning ticket, which we all knew of course they would since they buy so very many of them. Just don't do it bro. I learned my lesson when I was 10 playing one of those coin pusher games at the carnival. I spent 20 bucks winning back 10 before I realized that half the coins fall out the sides. That was a lot of money for a kid with a 50 cent/week allowance. Glad I learned when the stakes were so low relatively speaking.

FlutterPie said:

That seems a lot more accurate to me. I think the site is rigged so you lose so many times in a row after a while (maybe)

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Possibly, but that's the gamble, and unfortunately it's how statistics (and randomness) work. Past bets, even if you lost many times in a row, have no bearing AT ALL on the next bet. People often fall into the trap of "oh, my luck must change so I'll roll again" but the fact is you're no more likely to get a win after rolling 15 times just because the last 15 times were all losses. It's clever psychology based on the fallacy that is "luck" and is why the high up people in betting are very rich.

trencheel303 said:

Possibly, but that's the gamble, and unfortunately it's how statistics (and randomness) work. Past bets, even if you lost many times in a row, have no bearing AT ALL on the next bet. People often fall into the trap of "oh, my luck must change so I'll roll again" but the fact is you're no more likely to get a win after rolling 15 times just because the last 15 times were all losses. It's clever psychology based on the fallacy that is "luck" and is why the high up people in betting are very rich.

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You are assuming that a gambling site is run by a program that simulates the laws of probability correctly. Why, exactly? If you see FlutterPie's losing streak and you want to place a bet about his future performance, would you choose to bet that:
a) "he would win or lose according to strict probability"
or that
b) "he would keep losing because the program that runs the gambling site is cheating"
?

Be aware of the difference between data that are generated via a random process, and data that are generated by a potentially malicious counter-party.

Both options are potentially correct, or potentially incorrect. It depends. Need more data. We don't know how much flutterpie has played, and even then, we could only get a "gut feel" whether or not it is legit or scammy.

Basically, we can't be sure this is a scam or legit. This outcome is possible, either if it is legit or scam.

BShanahan14rulz said:

Need more data. We don't know how much flutterpie has played, and even then, we could only get a "gut feel" whether or not it is legit or scammy.

Basically, we can't be sure this is a scam or legit. This outcome is possible, either if it is legit or scam.

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It's more than a gut feel, considering that when you gamble online, the same entity that generates the outcomes is also your opponent. It's like being the defendant at a trial where the same person is the judge, prosecutor, jury and executioner.