Post
Topic
Board Gambling discussion
Re: (Bustabit) How often do long streaks of red come?
by
deisik
on 06/02/2020, 06:21:12 UTC
This line of thinking is common, but completely false. It leads to the creation of betting systems such as Martingale, where people think "As long as I keep going, I'll definitely get a green eventually". Each roll is completely independent of other rolls, and the Martingale system bankrupts people daily

To make things clear, I do not deny that rolls are independent of each other

Buy if we assume that (a correct assumption anyway), then, as I see it, we shouldn't calculate the odds of hitting 20 reds (or blacks, or whatever) as such calculation (and probability thus obtained) makes no sense in the real world. And that gives us a clue why so many people fall for this infamous Gambler's fallacy

People understand (purely mathematically) how to calculate the probability of hitting 20 consecutive losses, and that makes them feel that the rolls and their outcomes are somehow linked to each other. In other words, if it were explained that this probability is only an abstraction, people would be more cautious with martingale and similar strategies