Will this method of winning at Roulette work?

[Profanity]

Roulette is a game where you bet on numbers but you can also bet on the 2 colours which are red and black which are supposedly as random as betting for heads or tails on a coin.

If that were the case then you could just keep betting increasing amounts on the same colour each time (odds 2-1), for example:
1st turn - you bet 5 pounds on red and lose
2nd turn - you bet 10 pounds on red and lose
3rd turn - you bet 15 pounds on red and lose
eventually a red must come along for the machine to be random, so:
4th turn - you bet 20 pounds on red and win 40 pounds

So if it's as random as heads or tails then wouldn't this method ensure you of not losing any money?

Can someone please explain to me why it wouldn't work?

 

[Demiurge]

The trials are independent. That you lost the first doesn't make it more likely that you will win the second.

 

[Taliesin]

Well you paid 50 pounds and won 40.. so you lost 10

You have a 18/37 chance of winning, because the joker doesnt count. Theoretically it should be possible to always make profit by trippling your bet. Start with 2, then bet 6, then bet 18 and so on. So if you win at the second turn you'll have won 12 but spent 8, at the third turn you'll have spent 26 but won 36.. the only problems are your money and the table limit.. if you reach one you're proper fucked

The probability of the event is a tricky thing.. the event as such doesnt change so it is always as likely to win or to lose, but the connections of the events shape the probability you want. So you losing 4 times in a row is (19/37)^4 = 0.0695. So you have a 1-(19/37)^4 = 0.9304 => 93% chance of winning at least once in those 4 turns.. I dont see why it shouldnt work

 

[Demiurge]

Originally, martingale referred to a class of betting strategies popular in 18th century France. The simplest of these strategies was designed for a game in which the gambler wins his stake if a coin comes up heads and loses it if the coin comes up tails. The strategy had the gambler double his bet after every loss, so that the first win would recover all previous losses plus win a profit equal to the original stake. Since a gambler with infinite wealth is guaranteed to eventually flip heads, the martingale betting strategy was seen as a sure thing by those who practiced it. Unfortunately, none of these practitioners in fact possessed infinite wealth, and the exponential growth of the bets would quickly bankrupt those foolish enough to use the martingale after even a moderately long run of bad luck.
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Analysis

Suppose that someone applies the martingale betting system at an American roulette table, with 0 and 00 values; a bet on either red or black will win 18 times out of each 38. If the player's initial bankroll is $160 and the betting unit is $10, the player will make a win in approximately 96% of sessions, gaining an average of $4.30 from each winning session. In the remaining 4% of sessions, the player will "bust", exhausting his bankroll, for a loss of $160. It follows then that the average session losses of a gambler employing this strategy are $2.27. Given a larger bankroll, the odds of making a win before running out of cash increase; however, the average winnings grow more slowly than the average losses, so the game remains a losing proposition.

In practice, casinos avert the martingale systems by imposing upper table limits.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_(roulette_system)

I didn't know shit about roulette before consulting wikipedia. It's not 50/50, but I figured it wouldn't be.

 

[Taliesin]

I thought there was only one joker in roulette, not two.. but maybe that's european?

Id also like to see how the author comes up with those numbers, they feel a little random, although I doubt they are. Ah well, probabilities suck

 

[Demiurge]

I thought there was only one joker in roulette, not two.. but maybe that's european?

Id also like to see how the author comes up with those numbers, they feel a little random, although I doubt they are. Ah well, probabilities suck

It looks to me like binomial probability.

 

[chris-o-fer]

as demi had said, the spins do not gaurentee any certain outcome, they're all independent. i say try it anyways, take a chance!

 

[Taliesin]

There's never a garantuee But as I showed, the chance to win at least once in 4 spins is over 93%

 

[Demiurge]

You guys want to break him so he can't access the internet.

 

[chris-o-fer]