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Comment by nullflux | Hacker News Reader

That same site has an interesting article on Martingale betting systems: http://wizardofodds.com/gambling/betting-systems/

IIRC, a martingale strategy will eventually destroy you because it requires an exponentially sustainable bankroll to maintain the same risk of ruin.

Also, 3,650 hands is far too small of a sample size for a game with such a small edge and you are probably just witnessing positive variance. See where the law of large numbers leads you and run your simulation for 500,000 hands.

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Yes, Martingale's doesn't raise your expected value above zero/negative for any games of chance. Towards infinity, it won't change your outcome -- you will still eventually loose all your money.

If you factor in the times the player went bankrupt, your win percent probably won't look so hot.

Though it did (in the simulation). The accumulated winnings with the limits on bankrupt and cashing out at 1500 created a over time win percentage in a otherwise negative-biased game?

By definition, if there is negative expected value, simply changing your betting strategy won't help. Any short term fluctuations would be from "luck".

The famous MIT black jack team was able to 'take down the casino' by counting cards and waiting for expected value to swing positive, and then placing large bets at that time. If the game is truly random and negative (like all well-constructed casino games should be) then there should never been an opportunity for positive expected value.

I'll clean up my code a bit and post it on pastebin, there's probably a mistake in my logic somewhere.

Overall; I agree [and having played my share of a variety of strategies] I found the data to be confusing, hence my peaked curiosity. :-)

Note that's 3,650 decks / 28,470 hands (not counting "War" hands).

As it was run twice, it's closer to 56,940. (using two different alg.)

Rerunning it (now) produces minimal differences, even at a 1,000 year setup. (3-5% variation)

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