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Old 08-19-2005, 03:12 PM
BruceZ BruceZ is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2002
Posts: 1,636
Default Re: Calculate your winrate and bankroll requirements with this

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That's the point: all these risk of ruin calculations are only right if we play forever.

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Not so. Many people mistakenly believe that it makes a big difference if you play forever vs. only a few hundred hours. Risk of ruin is a short-term phenomenon for a significant winner. If he doesn't go broke in the first few hundred hours, chances are he never will. This is because once he doubles his bankroll, his risk of ruin is squared, e.g. 1% becomes 0.01%. So his risk of ruin for playing forever is about the same as playing for a few hundred hours. This is for a player who reinvests all his winnings in his bankroll. A player who spends all his winnings will go broke once he hits a big enough losing streak, and how long that takes depends on the size of his bankroll.
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