Annoymous gambling poll - Martingale system

[thetank]

They say all gamblers have tried it at some point, I was wondering how true this is?

You can check two boxes, one in the yes or no, the second conditional on what your answer was.

If you answer yes, please answer one of the options 4-7
If you answer no, please answer one of the options 9 or 10
If you fancy yourself as a funny bugger, feel free to check box 3 or 8.



For those unsure what the Martingale system is....

You play roulette, for example, and bet 1 unit on black.

If you lose, you bet 2 units next time
If you win, you have netted a 1 unit profit.

You bet 2 units on black...

If you lose, you bet 4 units next time
If you win, you have netted a 1 unit profit (-1+2)

You bet 4 units on black....

If you lose, you bet 8 units next time
If you win, you have netted a 1 unit profit (-1-2+4)

so on and so forth, till you run out of money, or win 1 unit.

[ifm]

Never heard of it so this means i'm not a degenerate yes?

[thetank]

Or have never been a degenerate yes.

[taximan007]

Ah, i didn't realise it had a name.

I have to say i have never really enjoyed casino games (bore me to tears), but on a few occasions in the past i have accompanied a friend who loves the places.

Whilst there yes i did use this system, i would wait until there had been 5 consecutive BLACK numbers, then i would place £20 on RED, and it worked out to be very profitable (although no thrill)

[Swordpoker]

I voted 'NO' but.....

Like lots of folk, I thought I'd invented the system. Fortunately I ran the idea past a Maths teacher friend of mine who quickly talked me out of using it.

[UpTheMariners]

if the tables didn't have a maximum bet limit then it would be worth doing.

[thetank]

Bankrolls are usually finite too

[Dale]

Every now and again I get talking to someone, mention that I play poker and they start telling me about this system to beat the casino games.
It is ALWAYS the martingale or a take on it.
Some people take a lot of convincing that it's bad and I'm not that great at explaining stuff so the conversation usualy ends with them still saying "yeah i know,,, but the chances of losing are almost impossible" 

[Swordpoker]

By the way....

'Martingales' are the little leather straps on swords to stop them flying out of your hand. I suppose then I use a Martingale system quite often 

[Horneris]

"I came up with it myself, thought I was invincible and it nearly ruined me"


Back in my heavier gambling days, i managed to run it upto £80 on red. I was so nervous it would lose, because if that lost i would have had to withdraw £160 from my bank as i had no more cash. It started with a tenner and i was sure i couldnt lose.

Luckily, i won on £80, but i promised myself never again.

[Zebediah]

I said no to the system, I do have a system though not structured exactly.
I spell out the word of the day one letter at a time with each spin.

[raab11]

I know guys with very deep pockets who use something similiar on the gg's.

u decide you want say $100 profit for the day.
u bet the amount that will give u said profit depending on the price. i.e if its 10-1 u need to bet $10
if the horse wins your done for the day, if it loses you are now down $10 and have to change your stake accordingly.
so next race the horse u fancy is 2-1 so u have to bet $55 again if u win u pocket the $100
if u lose again your now down $65 so now u need to win $165 and so on...

the guys i know who do this are loaded so i dont know why they even bother as a hundred a day is not really worth the bother. they say it keeps them interested!!???

btw they were once in the hole for over 23000 chasing 8 days money

however if u can handle the ridiculous swings, in other words you dont rreally need the money, it works

give it a go, nice way to spend those poker profits. anyway spending all your time in front of your pc is unhealthy, get down the bookies NOW.

[Weblomaniac]

I've used the Martingale system on Greyhounds, overall i won more than I lost but I did take a hammering a couple of times and had to reduce my bet sizes and build up again slowly. I would use it along with some other criteria too though.

Basically if the dog was the most favoured by the racing post website, and it was the bookies favourite it would qualify as one to bet on, otherwise, look at the next race. ( I also tried using some trap No based probability stuff too)

It was quite fun and frantic because there are greyhound races during the day and evening and usually 4 venues running simultaneously. So I would sit at my PC with multiple bookies sites and betfair open checking odds and multiple copies of the racing post site open at different pages (one for each venue I was following) So the time induced panic of tracking your races, finding the next qualifying dog and the thrill of watching the text commentry from the race, whilst updating your spreadsheet and re-calculating bet sizes made it quite fun.

Most of the time my starting bet on a sequence of races would be equal to the minimum bet on the particular bookie (e.g. Betfair £2). If I went through a losing streak of say 7 losers in a row and the bets were getting too scary I would split the sequence in two or three and start say 3 new sequences at 1/3 of what the next big bet on the original sequence had been. It gets very scary if you have lots of losses and have multiple open losing sequences though.

I must conclude this and say I was doing this at small stakes and I was doing it mainly as a test to see if it could work as a system. The fact that I haven't done this in over a year should tell you something  I ended up a bit, but came so close to disaster a few times.

In my opinion.... martingale systems are fun and can work sometimes..... but in the longterm you will lose your bankroll bigtime. When you also take into account the fact that you have a finite bankroll and there will be upper limits on the size of bets you can place imposed by the bookie, I have to conclude that they are not a viable long term profit system.

I'd love somebody to prove wrong though !!!

[boldie]

the martingale system essentially promotes people playing outside their bankroll.
If you have 4000 dollars you simply shouldn't bet 200$. and chasing losses is always a bad thing

[KingPoker]

wow what a dangerous system. Surely anyone with a brain couldnt follow this. It just seems to take balls not brains and as mentioned surely cannot be considered a viable system. Then again im not stupid enough to play roulette in the first place!