Martingale plus advantage

A martingale will break even if there is no max bet, you have an umlimited BR, and the bet is even up.

How much advantage must one have for a martingale to be a credible way to enhance one's profits when there is a max bet limit? for example, if a bet is 10-1 in your favor, I doubt if losing ten times in a row is much of a concern. Can a simulation be run that shows where the risk becomes acceptable?

Technically, any advantage is enough to give the martingale system a potential for profit. Even wildly betting random amounts will give you a +EV situation. As far as credibility, that’s another story (as we’ll soon see).

Unless doubling your bet ten times causes you to go broke! In some cases you may not be playing with a long-term advantage. Your short-term advantage is still there on every hand but you are not likely to succeed using this strategy. For example, if you start with a $5 bet then you would have to bet $5,120 on that 11th hand in order to win $5. That’s a huge amount of risk for such a little reward. High SD + Small EV = Big ROR.

The martingale system is risky because it is so far from optimal. The small minimum bets will reduce your profit during winning streaks while the huge bets will increase your chances of going broke during the losing streaks. The system is designed to be very risky and not very profitable. It is designed to show a small profit fairly often, but because of the high level of risk it requires that many of the bets are very small and therefore not very rewarding. There are two ways to make the risk acceptable:

1) Use such a small minimum bet that you barely make any money.

2) Use a “surrender point” where you give up and start the progression over after a certain number of losses. Basically you are turning the system into more of an “aggregate flat bet” than a true martingale. The lower the surrender point, the more optimal it becomes until it eventually turns into flat betting. Less Martingale = More Optimal.

The concept of proportional betting is just the opposite. It has you betting the “right” amount all the time instead of betting too high or too low. It is designed to maximize profit and minimize risk. A nice benefit of this is that is also reduces your long-term risk. Your chances of success are much higher and so are your expected profits.

In that sense, the Martingale system may be effective but it is never as credible as other systems.

-Sonny-

I bought Hoyle Casino 2007 a couple of weeks back. This is the betting system I tried using on the game.

I gave myself a $300 bankroll, and was placing $5 minimum bets, and doubling to $10, $20, and $40 upon losing. If I did manage to lose the $40 bet, I would "surrender" back down to $5.

Just last night I worked my way up from $300 to $900 in about 2-3 hours. I am not always this lucky (got a few blackjacks on those $40 bets), and I don't know if I would try this with real money. However, every time I have played using this strategy, I have always had a "good night". I have yet to end the night with less than I started.

Basically, I am betting that I will win 15 hands, before losing four in a row (not taking natural 21's in to account). Sometimes I do lose four in a row, and it is certainly a setback. However, my bankroll seems to rise over time fairly consistently.

I can't say whether it is better or worse than flat betting, but it certainly (in my humble opinion) makes the game more interesting.

By the way, this is my first post on this forum. I am practicing Basic Strategy on my computer game before I try playing in the real world. Hopefully this will lessen the chances of being nicknamed Clark Griswold after a visit to the casino.

Edit: After re-reading this post, I wanted to clarify that I don't think this is a "can't lose" strategy. Obviously, a big losing streak could still kill your bankroll, even with a "surrender limit". I only wanted to say that I have had good luck with it so far (on my PC), and I think it makes a fun game.

My thought was that with sufficient advantage the odds of ever incurring ten (or six or wherever you set it) consecutive losses become acceptable for all practical purposes.

I use a similar system for online play...(will not mention which site), and is common for me to turn that $200 into $6000. Have done this numerous times...in fact, got really lucky one time and turned $120 into $7700. Once I hit this amount I cash out and keep around $500 to play with and repeat the process.....Have generated a bankroll of around $30000 doing this...Is this luck? I think so.

Yes, there is certainly luck involved with that. Not long after I posted my previously post, I finally had a night that ended with me having less virtual money than I started with (not by much however). Overall, I have found that I do better using this method than I do by flat betting. However, I haven't been playing that long, so it is impossible for me to judge what kind of long term results I would have.

That is the beauty of playing with virtual money though. I can experiment without any loss.

Actually, it is very easy to judge what your long-term results will be. Just multiply the amount you wagered by the house edge. If you bet $10 on 500 hands with a house edge of 0.5% then you would expect to lose 500 * $10 * 0.005 = $25. If you played those same hands with a $10-$20-$40-$80-$160 martingale then your average bet would have been about $33, giving you a long-term EV of 500 * $33 * 0.005 = $82.50.

The Martingale might be fun, but is it worth tripling your losses? And just imagine how much worse you would be if you didn’t stop after 4 losses!

-Sonny-

experienced players vs new players

When I say experienced, I am not saying advantage players and perhaps not even basic strategy players, just players who have played a lot of blackjack hands over their lifetime.
These players with years in the game are rarely the guy who comes on here and says that he can win with a martingale system. Not surprisingly at all, it is generally the relatively new player who mentions this progression.

The reason for this, is the reason for not playing a martingale. Consecutive losing hands! When you are new at this game, the thought of losing 5 hands in a row seems very remote, and then it happens. The thought of 8 in a row and then it happens. Well 10 in a row must be a million to one, well it is really more like 1,500-1 and it also happens. Twenty in a row happens also but that at least is remote (happened to me 3 times in 30 years).
So you lose 5, 8, and then 10 in a row and you leave the casino saying, that is impossible, The XYZ Casino has figured out how to cheat me!
Well they did not cheat you, you just received a lession in extreme variance.

So a couple of things have happened. If you had been playing a martingale, you are now about broke. If you were thinking about it or ever do in the future, you are now equipted with the ability to ask yourself the question, "what happens if I lose more than 10 hands in a row again?"
Or you have stopped playing because you believe the casino cheated you.
At this point, you are either experienced enough to not play martingale or you do not play at all.

ihate17

I like to use a negative progression in a posi-count,
and a positive progression in a neg-count. For camo purposes.

I sometimes like to look like a steaming martingale man with the big bets out. zg

I take it you have been somewhat successful using this strategy?

Martingale does not 'enhance' ones profit. Betting to the kelly criterion is the mathematically optimal bet. Betting martingale is only going to increase your risk of ruin, it is nothing but betting over kelly bets.

i've only logged roughly 100 hours of casino play and have lost ~12 hands in a row on two occasions already, neither event was pretty, but they were both memorable!

Hey, no big deal, I was just wondering how you got that average bet amount?

And, even, if you or anyone could point me to any sim results of a Blackjack Martingale system with well-defined rules of when starts over in a sequence of 5 or whatever number of doubled bets before one starts over etc.

It just seems I usually see it applied to roulette or craps or a coin-flip where one starts over after winning exactly one unit.

Like u bet $5, split to 4 hands, double all of them, lose 2, win 1, and push the other, what does one bet next now that you are down 2 units? Stuff like that.

Approx once every 20 hour period

I read in a blackjack book years ago that you should expect a losing streak of 10 or more hands about once every 20 or so hours of blackjack play, so perhaps you are ahead of the curve.

ihate17