Quote from: Rampion on September 25, 2013, 03:58:21 PM

Quote from: mechs on September 25, 2013, 03:49:03 PM

Quote from: Rampion on September 25, 2013, 03:37:52 PM

Quote from: Bitsinmyhead on September 25, 2013, 03:23:33 PM

Quote from: Rampion on September 25, 2013, 02:22:28 PM

Agreed. Max bet at 1% was the only real chance of Nakowa going busto when he starts with his 300BTC bets. I'd rather lose my whole investment because of an incredible (and very unlikely) strike of bad luck, than just taking down the max bet which practically means that we won't be recovering our losses for months...

You are forgetting a very important benefit of lowering the max bet. With a lower max bet he will not be able to win as much by cheating before it statistically becomes obvious that he is. Depending on how large you currently think the chances of him cheating is, it might actually be +EV to let him continue with a 0.25% max bet...

I've watched Nakowa gambling, and I'm obviously not 100% sure that he is not cheating, but I'm willing to bet my whole investment (which anyhow I can afford to lose) on the fact the he is NOT cheating, and thus I'd let him play with max profit 1% of the bankroll until he eventually go busto with his 300BTC bets.

In fact, today I've watched him for at least 2 hours in a row. He is losing big time at the moment. I have the impression that if the max profit would not have been lowered, today he would be down many thousands and not just a few hundreds. I have the impression he would have started to push the max bet to recover his losses, which he is actually doing with 60BTC and 70BTC bets (the actual max profit), which eventually would have led him to lose a lot more. Of course this is wild speculation and impossible to know, but given the fact that nakowa has already won +15k coins from the site when the max bet was 4 times higher, lowering the max bet in my opinion is something that plays in his favor, because he won't be able to lose everything as easily as he won it - in fact it will be 4 times harder for him to lose everything, than it was to win it in the first place.

That's how I see it...

He is down 1000 BTC, he would bet that amount in 5 second before. The change has reduced variance.

Sure, but our only chance to quickly recoup the 25% losses Nakowa inflicted to us in just a few days was precisely variance, and lowering the max profit to 0.25% just killed that chance. I see this matter very coldly: nakowa is either

a) cheating, or
b) a degenerate gambler that won't stop until he loses everything.

After having analyzed both the character and his "gambling style", I see no evidence whatsoever for a), and anyhow if he is cheating lowering max bet won't help at all. On the contrary, I've seen a LOT of evidence for b), both in what he writes ("I'm not a gambler", "I spot patterns", "it's difficult to quit when you always win", etc.) and in how he plays, and thus I'd coldly and rationally prefer to let math and gambling addiction do their thing until the law of big numbers takes us where we should be.

Unfortunately math has been unkind to J-D - I think we should give up the idea of getting it all back quickly. We need less variance so the #s can eventually work in J-D's favor over the long-term without the bankroll being devestated and investors fleeing due to short-term variance.