A Red Dog-esque Roulette Question

[Tal]

You are playing on one of those silly fruit machine, electronic roulette wheel machines in a bookies.

For those not familiar with the order of the numbers, it looks like this:



You are betting, let's say, number 5 and a couple either side.

Spin 1: Zero
Spin 2: Zero
Spin 3: Zero

How many more identical spins before:

a) You add zero to your bets;
b) You place your entire single spin stake on zero;
c) You empty your pockets onto one spin on zero?

[TightEnd]

a b and c are irrelevant, a gamblers fallacy that the last spin has any relevance to this

i din't play them but wouldn't alter "strategy" such as it is at all

[Woodsey]

Who cares, I'm lumping on 8 and all its doubles and corners regardless...

[Tal]

a b and c are irrelevant, a gamblers fallacy that the last spin has any relevance to this

i din't play them but wouldn't alter "strategy" such as it is at all

Not quite.

The point of this example being a machine as opposed to a physical wheel is there is a possibility the RNG is malfunctioning and the machine is replaying the same spin.

Over the table, as it were, absolutely. After ten identical virtual spins, would you still be cursing your luck or trying to make some?

[TightEnd]

i see

do the FBOTs malfunction with regularity?

[Graham C]

After 1 more I'd probably do A, if that came on, b would be next.  I'd probably do B a few more times but C would follow shortly after but only because I don't generally carry that much cash around with me.     It's like that story from the US where the two guys had a system for getting one of the machines to pay out double, a great earner whilst they kept it fairly low key but when they tried to go big it went wrong.  I'd want to keep it quiet so keeping on b would probably be the best option.

[Tal]

i see

do the FBOTs malfunction with regularity?

I assume not! It is a machine, though.

I was reminded recently of a story involving (I think) Mad Marty spotting a roulette wheel in an old European casino where the sunlight had warped the wooden wheel in one section, which seemingly he and his friends spotted before the House. Just thinking of a virtual equivalent.

[cambridgealex]

A Maths geek's favourite party trick is asking "If I flip this coin and it lands on heads, is it more or less likely to land on heads the next time, or still 50/50?"

Everyone pipes up "50/50, previous flips make no difference"

But he points out that the one previous flip makes it ever so slightly more likely that the coin is biased in favour of heads, as at no point did he say the coin was fair. If he flipped 30 heads, at odds of roughly 1billion to one for a fair coin, you'd be mad not to assume the coin was biased and the next one would be heads too. So the same logic applies to just one previous flip.

[bookiebasher]

The maximum you can put on a single number when playing a FOBT is £13.80.

You cannot win more than £500 on a single spin.

[kinboshi]

Reminds me of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/r/rosencrantz-and-guildenstern-are-dead-script.html

[The Camel]

When I was a kid I found one of those machines where you roll a 2p down a slide and if landed without touching 2 straight lines you won 6p.

The slide had been broken and you could maneouver it so you rolled your 2p down and it hit the side wall and landed between the lines 19/20 times.

I was in heaven.

My Dad finally pulled me away after 2 1/2 hours and I had a shopping bag full of 2p's

A happy day!

Malfunctions do happen sometimes!

[MintTrav]

A Maths geek's favourite party trick is asking "If I flip this coin and it lands on heads, is it more or less likely to land on heads the next time, or still 50/50?"

Everyone pipes up "50/50, previous flips make no difference"

But he points out that the one previous flip makes it ever so slightly more likely that the coin is biased in favour of heads, as at no point did he say the coin was fair. If he flipped 30 heads, at odds of roughly 1billion to one for a fair coin, you'd be mad not to assume the coin was biased and the next one would be heads too. So the same logic applies to just one previous flip.

Exactly. If you extend it further, it is actually impossible for an unbiased coin to come down heads 100 times in a row, but people will still argue that there is a minute chance it could happen.