Hi friends!

In continuation to my previous post, let's delve more into the popular betting strategies on gambling dapps.

Many people think that they can get rich through gambling and come up with various strategies for increasing their winning chances. Even players who play for fun too adopt some or the other strategy while gambling.

Compared to offline casinos; when you are playing on an online gaming website with truly fair and randomized outcomes, there ain't any chance to win by some bias or by any kind in connivance with the dealer. So all wins and loses are purely on a random basis.

Still, human mind comes up with smart ideas to give their best try. As I was telling you yesterday, when I played the Dice game for a long enough time, I began finding patterns in the past outcomes and was trying to predict the future outcomes on that basis. E.g. if I bet for under 50 and the result is over 50 for 2 or 3 times continuously, I'll rationalize that my next bet has a greater probability to win for rolling number under 50.

This is what we call Gambler's Fallacy or the Fallacy of the Maturity of Chances or the Finite Supply Fallacy. In reality, on a scale of 0 to 100, there is always a 50% probability when betting at no. 50 irrespective of the past results. Same is applicable to a coin flip or a roulette wheel.

Monte Carlo Fallacy

This fallacy is popularly also known as Monte Carlo Fallacy because of an interesting and unforgettable incident that occurred at Monte Carlo Casino on 18th August, 1913. In the rare of the rarest occurrence on this particular day, in the game of a roulette, the ball repeatedly fell in the black ...for 26 times in a row! Now this is a very rare possibility but still a possibility. According to probability theory, this incident may happen once in 66.6 million times if the game is perfectly fair.

On this particular night, gamblers lost millions of francs as they kept betting against black.They reasoned that a long streak of black is causing an imbalance against red and must be followed by a long streak of red. So they kept betting on red and accumulated huge losses. Of course people eventually won on red in the 27th spin. But they lost most of their winning in the successive spins as they again bet on red, thinking that it's the turn for red streak now. It is a false belief that past behaviour influences future behaviour. If it was so, then the casino is not fair!

It should always be remembered that in random outcomes, each outcome is independent of the past outcome.

This is what is true as of now because casinos don't have quantum computers at this point of time 😊. Well, you may like to watch this interesting TED talk where Sohini Ghose demonstrates how Las Vegas casinos can win almost every time if they employed quantum computers:

Quantum computing explained in 10 minutes

In her live demo only 3% participants could win when playing against the quantum computer.

Sorry to digress a little but this fact was just for fun. Here we are talking about provably fair and truly randomized outcomes. So when you bet on any random number, your chances of win or loss are random too and you don't have any edge. So how do gamblers play?

Martingale Strategy

To overcome their risks, I came to know of a gambling strategy called Martingale betting system about a couple of decades back.

That was a time when single-digit daily lottery was legal in India. One could buy a pack of 10 lottery tickets with one assured prize. Actually, tickets were serially numbered in the pack with their last digits ending with 0 to 9. The tickets were priced for rupee 1. And all ticket numbers bearing the same last digit as the last digit of the jackpot number used to win 10 rupee prize. So there were 1 to 10 odds for winning 10x prize. Many people used to buy a random ticket in the hope they will win some day.

A story of 2 rich bros from Chandni Chowk

I learned about two brothers from Chandni Chowk in old Delhi. They were from a very rich family. Their strategy was to buy 1 ticket for their lucky number. And if they lose, they will buy 2 tickets next day, both ending in the same number as before. And for each successive loss, they will double their wagered amount but will buy all tickets ending with their lucky number. The idea was that whenever their lucky number wins, they will cover up all their losses and win the prize.

Since they had deep pockets, they could continue it for several days, weeks and months. But we forget that there is a limit to everything. One day, they were running from shop to shop and one lottery market to the other to buy all the tickets ending with their lucky number. But the stock is limited and widely distributed, it wasn't easy to get as many tickets as you desire ...and then they finally loss ...a big chunk of money!

Welcome to Martingale betting system!
I guess you got the idea what this system is about.

In dice game, people wager some amount at 2x win multiplier. and if they loss, they will double their wagered amount and will keep doubling it until they win. But what if you don't have deep pockets? Because losing streak can be very long at times. And even if you had deep pockets, most casinos have a maximum limit for a single bet as casinos too have a limited bankroll. So if you hit that maximum without a win, you are sure to loss all you wagered thus far.

Recall Wheat & Chessboard Story

With Martingale system, the total wagered amount soon reaches astronomical figures in case you ain't aware of the quick growth of an exponential sequence. Do remember that story about wheat and chessboard problem where you start with just one grain of wheat in first square but doubling it in every square needs 1645 times the total global wheat production to fill the whole chessboard!

But still people play with this betting strategy and ultimately lose their money. There are several automated bots that allow people to auto-bet with this strategy. Try it and see for yourself how soon you will lose your money.

Anti-martingale Strategy

This is the reverse Martingale strategy. In Martingale, bettor keep increasing its bet after every loss until he / she wins. But in Anti-martingale, a bettor keeps increasing the bet after every win and decreases the bet after every loss. The idea is to get the maximum benefit out of a winning streak and minimize the losses during a losing streak. But this strategy is mostly applied in trading markets like stocks where the upward moving bull and the downward moving bear cycles are fairly long. That's not the case in random betting games. Nevertheless, Anti-martingale system is focused on minimizing the losses. That means, you are doomed to loss some money at the least because bull cycle will be followed by bear cycle i.e. after enjoying the winning streak you will some day fall prey to losing streak too.

Theoretically people think that they will stop playing once they win in a winning streak. But characteristic of greed is such that it increases with every gain. And when you keep feeding your greed with every successive win, you won't be able to quit as no one knows which one is the last win!

Well friends, this post is again getting longer and I'll need to stop here now. The gist is all betting strategy will eventually result in a loss and there is no such strategy that can bring sure-shot gains for you. I'll like to discuss some other aspects of this game and how you can actually earn some profit from online casinos in my next post.

Until then ...stay away from gambling 😜