This is very important to understand. Most players go bust because there is nothing stopping them from betting their entire bankroll in one hit. Nakowa will take longer to bust because he cannot in any way risk 5,000 on 2x payout at once.
I'd like to challenge that idea. If your purpose is to go from 5000 to 10000 on a casino with a 1% house edge, can it be shown - statistically, that it is a better idea to play 1 unit 5000 times at 2x, or 5000 units 1 time at 2x?
Forget about what your intuition is telling you and look at it from a mathematical point of view. You have precisely the same risk when you are making 5000 2x bets with martingale as you have if you make a single large bet. Slicing things up into smaller bits makes the risk "less" in your mind, but you forget the fact that you are making so many more bets that combined they make up as big a "risk" of losing your bankroll as that single large bet.
This guy nakowa could just as well have gone to 10000 by placing that large 5000 2x bet, it would have saved him time (for the same outcome, win or lose the bank). The only reason I think he didn't is because of the house cap on bet size.
-Michael