Is using a Martingale system with a bonus a good idea?

[celiboy]

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MArtingaling actually increases your EV slightly, (you are making fewer, but bigger bets) but it also increases your variance exponentially! So if you can withstand the variance then by all means martingale, reverse martingale, martingale+1, martingale +10, whichever...

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How does it increase EV by increasing your bet size? If you're a 48-52 dog, if you bet $1 you're losing $.02 per bet, if you bet $1000, you're losing $20 per bet, you still lose 2 cents on the dollar.

It seems that with this system, you're just hoping for the variance to bail you out. I think it's based on the gambler's fallacy.

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For casinos where busting out "forgives" the remainder of your WR (most of them, but not Crypto casinos, for example), betting big does indeed increase your EV. This is because betting big = bigger chance of busting out = smaller WR requirement. However, this is at the cost of higher variance.

One should find a "happy medium" between acceptable variance (depends on your bankroll and your "psychological" bankroll) and WR clearing rate when determining optimal bet size.

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Yea the Cryptos do not forgive your WR if you bust out, but why does this matter? In the following month if you meet the previous months' WR you still get last month's bonus

For instance last month I cleared a busted August bonus and the September bonus for $180 in bonus (90 for each month), so you can always "catch up" on the uncleared WR.

[HesseJam]

This can't be right. If you busted, you lost the bonus. So you'll get the 90$ bonus next month but it will be balanced with your loss of $90. Right?

No. you still have to clear last months bonus before you start on this months.

[fluff]

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Yea the Cryptos do not forgive your WR if you bust out, but why does this matter?

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It matters specifically when answering the question "How does busting out increase EV?". Answer: Because your remaining WR is forgiven. So if your WR is not forgiven, then busting out doesn't increase EV.

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In the following month if you meet the previous months' WR you still get last month's bonus

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That's not true. If you bust out last month and make another deposit this month (and getting another bonus), after meeting one bonus WR, you get one bonus released. You can call it "last month's bonus" but then you don't get "this month's bonus".

To get two bonuses (and any winnings on top of that) you have to wager both months WR.

[Rudbaeck]

Once you are done with all the really easy bonuses you should start to treat them all as if they were sticky.

Lets start out slow and see if this can be made clear. You have four sites that all offer a bonus of 100% to $250. But the wager requirement is so high, and the lowest house advantage games are not allowed, so you expect to lose atleast $250 back to the house by the time you've cleared this bonus.

The new whore might very well think that this bonus is worthless. But it's not!

Instead you deposit to all four. Now you have $500 in each of four casinos. Now you bet huge until you either reach $2000 or bust on each of the four. On average your reach $2000 on one of them and bust the other three. You only pay house advantage on the site that reached $2000 as you clear it with more modest bets.

So in total you made $750 from combining four 'worthless' bonuses.

You can calculate the optimal target with a nice formula by Izverg: T=2B/3+sqrt(2*B*R)

T is target, B is bonus amount, R is a fraction of your bankroll. For the 'average' risktaker you should use 25% of your total roll as R in the above equation.

You try to reach T or bust. This actually increases EV of all bonuses somewhat, and the EV of many bonuses by alot. And it does huge, amazing wonders for your hourly rate.

Notice that T is the total balance you're supposed to reach. So for low percent sticky bonuses you need a big roll to take advantage of them.