Betting Strategies: Should I Play or Run Away?

Initializing live version

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

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.


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