Betting Strategies: Should I Play or Run Away?

Initializing live version
Download to Desktop

Requires a Wolfram Notebook System

Interact on desktop, mobile and cloud with the free Wolfram Player or other Wolfram Language products.

This Demonstration shows the effectiveness of common betting strategies against different winning probabilities, with presets for roulette supplied.

Contributed by: Crystal Wang (August 2012)
(Mathematica Summer Camp 2012)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA


Snapshots


Details

constant bet: always bet the same amount of money

Kelly criterion: current winnings (see [1])

constant fraction: always bet a fixed fraction of the total amount of money in hand

martingale: bet the same after a win; double the bet after a loss (so all money lost will be returned after a win)

anti-martingale: bet less after a loss, more after a win (to keep going on "winning streaks" and to minimize losses on "losing streaks")

pay out odds: uses decimal odds form (2.0 means if you stake 10 dollars, you get 20 dollars back, including the 10 you bet)

25 trials: gives you the average money won by 25 people playing the specified number of games

Roulette and other information from [2] and [3].

References

[1] Wikipedia. "Kelly Criterion." (Aug 3, 2012) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion.

[2] M. Shackleford. "Wizard of Odds." (Aug 3, 2012) wizardofodds.com.

[3] Wikipedia. "Roulette." (Aug 3, 2012) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roulette.



Feedback (field required)
Email (field required) Name
Occupation Organization
Note: Your message & contact information may be shared with the author of any specific Demonstration for which you give feedback.
Send