Would the Martingale work in this situation?

[yoolykeme]

Hi, I was at the casino last night, and noticed something. They have a Baccarat game with a $10 min/$50,000max. Is this spread large enough to justify the "unlimited bankroll/no max bet" theory that says that Martingale would work if there were no table limits and you had an unlimited bankroll?

My initial read says that if you lose 10 in a row, youre toast. And this is assuming you always play the 'player,' where no commission is taken out.

Anyway, I know that this is silly, please someone just tell me why. Thanks /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[LetYouDown]

Martingale doesn't work...period. Like you said, unlimited bankroll, and no table limit are the only ways to guarantee it will work.

[SheetWise]

I just ran a simulation of 1MM hands, using $1 and $50,000 as limits -

Longest run for the Bank, 19 hands.
Longest run for the player, 18 hands.
Player 44.7, Bank 45.8, Tie 9.5
Handle 18,806,750
Biggest Win 201,916
Biggest Loss 605,550
Result after 1MM, -392,101
There were at least 13 unrecoverable progressions.

Conclusion - If you are willing to play this strategy at least 8 hours a day, I can get you free rooms and a plane ticket.

SheetWise

[pzhon]

[ QUOTE ]
Is this spread large enough to justify the "unlimited bankroll/no max bet" theory that says that Martingale would work if there were no table limits and you had an unlimited bankroll?

[/ QUOTE ]
If you are allowed to use really large negative numbers, can you choose negative numbers that add up to a positive number? No. This is -EV.

The people who say that a martingale would work with an unlimited bankroll are misleading you. First, this doesn't correctly model any real situation, unlike good mathematical models. Second, if you have an infinite amount of money, you can say that you make money by giving money away, too, since infinity-1 = infinity+1. Again, that doesn't apply to any real situation.

The probability you double your money before going bankrupt is always less than 1/2.

[randomstumbl]

When people say you need an infinite bankroll, they mean infinite. If the spread was $1 to $1,000,000,000,000,000,000 it wouldn't matter. You'd still have the exact same odds for winning or losing. All the Martingale does is change the frequency of wins and losses by changing their magnitude.

The reason it works with an infinite bankroll is that you never quit until you're ahead. You'll eventually lose everything if there's some number of losses that you would have to quit after (such as exhausting the world's supply of money).