Probability

Probability is a very interesting thing. When it comes to something that involves 50/50 odds, people like to make illogical assumptions.

If one option has occurred a lot consecutively, they feel inclined to believe that the odds of the other option must now be higher to compensate.

The only way to avoid this influence, is if you use a random number generator to pick your choices.

Today a situation occurred whilst I was using the martingale strategy and playing a roulette minigame.

The martingale strategy is to always double your bet after every loss and resetting your bet to the original amount after every win. If you bet 10 and lose, you next bet 20. If you win, your next bet is once again 10, (if you lost it increases to 40).

[Using the martingale strategy, you run the risk of losing everything. The odds depend on how many doublings you can handle. You however stand to gain, with a very high likelihood, your starting bet amount every time.]

In this situation I only bet on either red or black (both having nearly 50% odds of occurring). I started off using a number generator to pick my bets and earned a hefty sum. Eventually there was a point where red occurred 5 times in a row. Thus I bet a decent sum on black. It once again ended up being red, so I increased my bet significantly and bet on black again. This went on for a bit.

Eventually red showed up 11 times in a row and I went broke (no real consequences were incurred). To add insult to injury, of the last 21 results, 18 had been red.

So in summary, just use a random number generator to avoid bias.