Topic: A Little Example How Matingale Doesn't Work Even In Sportsbetting and Trading - page 3. (Read 625 times)

I think martingale was designed to boost the profits of casinos and bookies.

The concept of players doubling the size of their bets when they lose is exactly what casinos and books want them to do.

A better basic strategy could be to double the size of your bets when you win and halve the size of your bets when you lose. At least such a system might have a chance of better leveraging/de-leveraging both winning and losing streaks.

Martingale doesn't amount to much aside from blindly throwing at mathematical problems. Then doubling the amount of money thrown at them.

I've actually tried using martingale a long time ago with forex trading.

Basically I took a popular pair like EURUSD or USDJPY and basically decided to do a simple "Moving Average" trading strategy.

Basically when price touched a certain moving average like the 100MA I would go long and after backtesting it proved that "its impossible to lose 20 times in a row with this strategy" however that was not the case.

Basically one issue was, slippage, or missing trades. Because the backtest didn't take into account either.

Another was that sometimes you can enter a position, and there would be some horrible news event like "Trump getting elected" and your stop loss won't activate properly and with 1 trade you end up losing a large portion of your account because if you had 3-4 losses prior and you were martingale, you were already trading at 4X your regular base volume trade.

Another issue is human error. Like you don't exit the trade in time, or you get emotional and exit too early or exit too late. Basically you take 5 pip profit instead of 100 pip.

Basically not worth it. Because eventually you will lose like 6-7 times and then your positions will be so large that you will get emotional, second guess yourself and go bust just like in dice.

If we look at the history of Martingale strategy we will see, it was originated in France back in 18th century. This strategy was mainly invested to be used in coin flipping games. In today's world, Martingale is more often used in forex market and probably a lot of people are also getting benefitted from this strategy because forex is not a game of luck while gambling is a pure game of luck!

Even wikipedia says the below statement about Matringale:
"None of the gamblers possessed infinite wealth, and the exponential growth of the bets would eventually bankrupt unlucky gamblers who choose to use the Martingale."

Martingale may work only if you are extremely luck and having consecutive wins. Otherwise not!

yeah mate , in general I just gave an example that I faced and the losing streak may be over 20 bets in a row
so as I stated it's just to prove that even if you have the edge and even if you are doing value bets martingale will only eat the bankroll
cause sometimes you will still lose money repeatedly even you are betting good value bets

so the key to success with gambling is to stick to money management while choosing value bets , martingale will fail even if the player has an edge

The reason people think it works is the simple heads and tails game. In your example a gambler needed 7 consecutive losses to run out of money. Take a coin and throw it in the air 7 times and choose one side. Your side will win at least once. In games like this one or roulette where you're betting on the same color you potentially could make some money but it would require a lot of games and a huge bankroll. Online, in casinos that depend on seeds, you will only lose.

so we all know how many topics were created here about martingale , and I guess the majority agreed that it's impossible to win with it longterm when the players are using it with dice or any other -EV game

but also I saw many comments were people were saying that martingale can only be profitable if someone used it with +EV games , like sportsbetting or trading
many people started to mention that in the mega threads about martingale without even realizing how bad it's

in this thread I will try to make it clear how martingale is the worst thing to do even if you are a good sportsbettor or trader

as you know I follow sportstipsters and recently one of the tipsters I follow had a terrible downswing where he just couldn't pick a winner for 16 picks in a row !!

here is a screenshot for the run he/they had :
https://prnt.sc/kxnxt2

so let's assume you are following them with 100 units bankroll , so if you are betting 100 a game you should have 10,000 bankroll

Bet 1 : X1.95   Staked 100         result -100

Bet 2 : X3.95   Staked 67.797    results -167.797

Bet 3 : X1.83   Staked 322.647   results -490.444

Bet 4 : X1.88   Staked 670.959   results -1,161.403

Bet 5 : X2.36   Staked 927.502   results -2,088.905

Bet 6 : X1.76  Staked  2,880.138 results -4,969.043

Bet 7 : X1.87  Staked  5,826.900  results -10,795.943

Busted the whole bankroll , but let's assume the bettor has money lets see how bad chasing that 100 profit will cost him

Bet 8 : X3.40  Staked  4.539.976  results -15,335.919

Bet 9 : X2.00  Staked  15,335.919  results -30,671.838

Bet 10 : X2.19 Staked 25,858.687  results  -56,530.525

Bet 11 : X1.65 Staked 87,123.884  results  -143,654.409

Bet 12 : X2.34 Staked 107,279.410 results -250,933.819

Bet 13 : X2.50 Staked 167,355.879 results -418,289.698

Bet 14 : VOID

Bet 15 : X2.06 Staked 394,707.262 results -812,996.960

Bet 16 : X1.80 Staked 1,016,371.200 results -1,829,368.160


AND CONGRATULATIONS YOU JUST BUSTED AROUND 2 MILLIONS CHASING AND TRYING TO WIN 100 !!!!


now of course some people may say that no it works , but this tipster may be extremly bad
the answer is no !! the tipster is really good and he is profitable over the long run

here is a screenshot for the overall stats
https://prnt.sc/kxo4l9

so you can see that this tipster is actually profitable and if you followed him betting the way he bets you would end up profiting


so I hope some of people here learned a lesson , the way to win in sportbetting and trading is simply to make good bets and trades
you should stick to strict bankroll management and in case you are really betting or trading good you will end up profiting

so martingale is a big NO , chasing the past loss is way too dangerous

also you may say this run is rare , but the tipster confirmed that it's normal and it usually happens once a year ( sometimes twice ) so can you really afford losing that big and busting your bankroll once a year ??