Topic: A Little Example How Matingale Doesn't Work Even In Sportsbetting and Trading (Read 627 times)

Every newbie would really think about this from the start but as we grow to this, we understand that doesn't really work and its just throwing you to have lesser chance of winning and will help you to gain more chance of losing. I can't understand why there are still people who are advising it, that may be perfectly working for it but for majority it doesn't.

There are some strategies that will work in some games, probably one of the most known strategies when it comes to a gambling game is counting cards in blackjack, however people have the completely mistaken idea that having a winning strategy means that you are going to win every single time in a casino and that is simply not true, a winning strategy means that you have an advantage over the house under very specific circumstances.

But even then you cannot go crazy and bet all your money every time because you are going to lose it very fast, and it is my opinion that this is by far one of the biggest reasons of why people fail even when they have an advantage, because even when they have an advantage they decide to risk too much capital in each bet.

The thing is there really isn't any "strategy" If there is then there will be people who will win almost everytime when they gamble. People just want to believe in something so that they can enjoy more and have a positive view on what they are doing. It's in human nature. They tell theirselves what to believe so that they can ignore the fact that gambling is a way to loose money.

I think some people would just realize that once they experienced It. When I just got into the gambling world, I thought that gambling could be overcome with the martingale strategy, but as I progress through the days, I learned that it doesn't honestly work in the long run. I'm a strategic martingale user that will not depend on it.

When I'm still unaware of this, I'd believe that martingale works but the fact is it doesn't really work. To those folks out there that still believe with this strategy, wake up and don't spread a strategy that really don't work for most unless you want to see misfortune of others.

Martingale doesnt work no matter which gambling field it would be used. It isnt bad to use it but we should really know how to control the risk but if you are a type of
person that do always love to chase loss just like on a typical dice game then you would still end on the same fate. Thats losing streak scenario on sports is really rare but once
you have been timing out then busting your entire bankroll would be easy.

Anyone who needs examples or explanation on why martingale doesn't work doesn't really know what martingale is. Anyone with their right mind knows what martingale is and how you can lose if you can't win couple times in a row. If you don't win 17 wagers in a row do you really believe martingale can save you? No chance.

If you want to win with gambling work than go and start your own casino or invest in an already successful and trusted casino, there is no other way of winning for sure in gambling. House always wins is a saying not just for intimidation but for mathematical reasons. Martingale works until it doesn't.

If it doesn't work on games like dice and color games where they claim martingale works but it doesn't, why try it out on sports betting and specially in trading. In trading, it requires technical analysis and thorough research. It may require a good strategy on when to buy and when to sell but definitely I will not Buy or Sell because of martingale strategy. It just doesn't make sense if used in trading specially on a bear market that we are experiencing right now.

Im just speculous about someone even trying to make it work...

Off course it would not been possible according with those facts.

This is a very good post by the OP, this shows to everyone that having a winning system at gambling or at any other activity is simply not enough, you need to manage your risk as well and martingale is probably the worst thing that you can do for your risk, for example one of the very first things that you're going to learn if you read a good book about trading is that you need to keep your losses small, once you lose you need to accept that fact, it seems to me that those that like to apply the martingale system do it because they simply cannot accept that they lost a bet or a trade and that is ridiculous, because there is no trader or gambler that wins every single time, as long as you win more than what you lose and you manage your risk effectively you will earn money.

I agree with you. Even if we are trying to get a small profit on martingale, we are risking a large amount for that.The hope to recover all the risked amount we keep on playing and end up busting entire balance.

Absolutely, I’ve been a member of a couple of poker forums for a while and I read others, like twoplustwo, and I’ve never seen anyone recommending martingale, not even trying it.

At the end of the day, as long as you are using martingale to gamble, whether it is real gambling, sport betting, or trading as you so called it, at the end of the day, you are still going to lose as you keep moving on.

Someone made an analogy like for instance, you betting 1 satoshi and increasing your bet if you lose every time simply shows, you keep doubling your chances to lose everything quickly over just 1 satoshi winning and looking at the profit and loss ratio when it comes to gambling or martingale, it is something that no one in their sane mind should ever believe would work for them in anything.

yeah mate you can check the threads here in the forum that discuss martingale and you would see many people mentioning that maringale doesn't work just because the game has -EV but it will work with other types of gambling
and as I remember I said in the past if martingale do really work with +EV games then you would see poker players doing it as well , like playing certain heads up sit n go and if they lose they enter a double buy in game and so on but we all know that professional players stick to the same buy in level that they are playing till they win a certain amount of money then they move up the stakes when they have bigger bankroll to afford the run

so it doesn't work with trading , sportsbetting and poker even if the one using it is really good with what he is doing

I am amazed at how people believe stupid things. If you are able to play EV+ in EV+ games, why the hell are going to try martingale?


That’s the main point, increased risk for reduced profit (compared to the risk, although the potential profit remains the same every bet).

But you know what? People will keep trying martingale, no matter how well you explain it and how many times.

Interesting read. I've used the martingale method in the past with sportsbetting, trading, and dice, yet it's never qutie worked out for me. I always lost money from going on long loss streaks, and I ended up never using the method again. This was back in 2015, and from that point on I always just gambled without using specific, rigid methods, and I've had more fun since then. I know many sites lure in newbies claiming that Martingale and other methods are legitimate based off of crude and often wrong math, but hopefully this thread clears things up and helps people realize that such methods generally don't work.

while yeah I haven't seen a broke bookie but that doesn't mean that beating them is impossible
there are plenty of professional sportsbettors around , and in this example actually you can see that the tipster had decent ROI over a decent large sample of picks

I don't believe in Martingale too in Sportsbetting and the reason is not that you cannot win in the long run with it but it simply isn't worth it. Some persons on gambling forums in the internet has said to always play the same team with odds of 2.5 whenever it has these odds, and also to keep chasing it, even if it is a team that rarely wins, they say you should hunt them even when playing outside their home with odds like 7.5 and you can use double chance to make it more than 2.

Still I don't think it is worth to risk your bankroll to chase a single win.

A simple merit thrown at your way as a gesture of gratitude for this example.  Why did I say that? That's because many people started a thread like this and almost all of them are with the same topic/concept/idea regarding gambling and martingale but what separated this thread from those generic ones are the examples (screenshots) that he provided. With those screenshots, he provided the evidence that we need to check to verify if his claims are indeed applicable and correct in real life. Those losses are real and proved it point that a losing streak will always graze your path as a gambler and if you're using martingale, you'll definitely lose huge amount of money and will be in deep sh*t.

Good job mate. 

No betting strategy works in the long term, they tend to be based on predicted or statistical outcomes, rather than looking at the cold hard odds. All you can do is minimize your risk, most casinos have table limits in place preventing you from really bending the odds to your favor. People should think of betting strategies as loss minimization strategies, rather than winning strategies, because in the end you will eventually lose.

Yes, it's accurate and I agree that the 1% house edge can be neglected in such calculations. Contrary to popular belief, house edge doesn't play that big of a part, especially if it's only 1%. For example with wagered amount of 1.5 BTC  on one dice site my negative profit should be -0.015 BTC because of their HE. But in fact it is over than -0.05 BTC, mostly because of my unfortunate use of martingale.



Indeed it is unlikely to hit 15 reds in row playing with 49.5% win chance within 100 rolls. However, with the help of dice bots people are making dozens of thousands rolls within one day. And then they are surprised at losing the entire bankroll! It should come as no shock actually.

None of these so called strategies are ever sure fire ways to win time after time. I’ve never seen a broke bookie or casino & that’s for a reason. So many people think they can beat the system & sure it might work for a period but long term gambling is, well, gambling.

Enjoy your times of winning but don’t be stupid & only gamble with what you can afford to lose. No strategy will keep you in the green forever.

Yeah, I find that most tipsters don't reveal the units or scales for betting, which for me isn't really helpful because a winning percentage simply isn't enough, especially when you've got no way to find out what the odds were or the unit of bets were. Digging deeper you find some tipsters have a higher percentage of wins on very low payouts - which of course just means they pick the bookie favourite more often.

Good luck on finding your value and +EV. I'm also always on the lookout. I know over the long run I don't particularly do well, but I do tend to make good small profits by taking enhanced odds or backing a single player/team when I feel they're on fire.

The thing is that at the end long streaks of losses are bound to take you out eventually anyway as you keep trying to chase winning and then losing more just to recover the first. At the end you are more like doubling your chances of losing more every time you use the martingale strategy or any strategy at all when it comes to gambling.

I like the fact that the OP also made mention of trading which I believe most people who trade today simply does not even have any strategy to trade at all, and with that they are just gambling, and if the strategy anyone would ever come with when it comes to trading is martingale strategy, they are just going to get ruined eventually, most especially if it is even marginal trading.

The reason why Martingale is heavily used in dice is because most people (myself included) don't think its possible to hit 15+ losses in a row. We basically do the rough probability in our heads and realise that, its most likely not going to happen anytime soon.

Basically what are the chances of getting 5 losses in a row? 1 in 32
Seems like its pretty common

What are the chances of getting 10 losses in a row? 1 in 1024
Seems like its a rare chance.

What about 15 losses in a row? 1 in 32,768?
Seems like impossible to hit.

So basically we think that, "I will only do 100 rolls or less, its not practical for me to lose 15 times in a row" and basically the method works until it doesn't.

I didn't take into account house edge but it would only slightly skew the results, the general probability is still accurate.

yeah mate , actually some of the tipsters I follow use a scale between 1 to 10 for the games they choose so followers can know how much to bet and not keep betting the same amount over and over again
obviously when a tipster sees more value he should ask followers to bet more , but thats not martingale as he won't do that to chase the previous loss

Well done on this demonstration, Sy! Sorry didn't see it earlier but this is just one of many prime examples of how you could very easily and very quickly bust on martingale with sportsbetting.

The best tipsters never martingale, they may increase units bets occasionally when they see really good odds on an outcome they're confident in but it's consistency that good tipsters seek, not the eventuality of picking the right favourite.

Doing martingale on sports also tempts you to look for odds rather than go for the matches you know well... And that's leaving it to luck, which really isn't how a tipster works.

For me, sportsbetting relies on a small selection of sports or games and predicting the form of a player or team over the long term.

Actually, we don't forget, but rather we don't want to stop because we already lost a lot and we want to recover with the next bet which we think should be a winning one. I know this from my own experience, it's impossible to stop when you lost almost half of your bankroll.


Many people talk about huge bankroll which is needed for martingale to be successful, but few of them realize that even very big one wouldn't save them from losing all their balance in a matter of seconds. For example, with just one satoshi as initial bet you can lose over 1.3 BTC when hitting 27 reds in a row.

Like an actual strategy, martingale is like the easiest way to lose tons of money without even being aware of it in the process. It's really easy to keep doubling and waiting for a good result. However, now that I think of it, perhaps as a theoretical strategy, it does work in 100% of the cases? It's not applicable to real world, but suppose an infinite bankroll for, say dice. You, you take a standard martingale strategy by choosing something with about 50% chance of winning, and double the bet in case you lose. With an infinite bankroll and infinite number of random rolls of dice, eventually you will end up putting a huge sum of money on the option that will win, right? If it's odd or even, it can't be even all the time. It will come to the 'odd' at some point and you'll get your money back and will probably even win something, right? The reason it's dangerous and bad for real life is that the bankroll is not infinite and people end up with no money to continue the game at some unlucky point, devastated that they lost everything.

I like this word and yes, chasing the loss is not making us any chance to win, and even worst, we can get another loss, and this is why that we need to know when we need to stop the game. I don't know about using any strategy on the gambling games because I don't want to get confused with the strategy and I think I will it as a simple way to enjoy the game. And no matter you use Martingale or not, in the end, you are risking your money, and you will lose your money.

See, that's the reason why I don't understand that Martingale is so popular. If you have a large enough bankroll to survive a lot of losses, there would be far better ways to put that money into good use.
Something that will get you a better return with way less risk.

Every time I see people recommend Martingale, I really wonder how it can have such an appeal to people, while it's pretty obvious that it doesn't work.

It is a disaster, even with 50-50 chance, martingale already a bad strategy, with forex or sport gambling that got high house edge, it definitely not a good idea at all, martingale is not a good idea because in long run you will always lose the game, and it's not worth to spend a huge amount of money to win over small base bet, martingale maybe can work in short time and you need to put stop loss, but for long term, it's going to make you bankrupt really quickly

Mixing this over simplified system with Forex or sports gambling even seems like a disaster.   Like so not a good thing, they make movies about the failure visted upon the people who dont learn early thats a bad idea.

At the very least I would recommend only starting with a super low pennies bet but really dont do it at all.   The point with FOREX is that the odds will vary by various tides and influences that apply through a day.   Start of trading begins with Tokyo, then London then hands to New York and out of hours trading and other centres perhaps.   The point I'm making there is all those people of those countries vary, how can a bet be calculated by any simple system when its consistency is changing so much throughout.  

If you want to an incredibly bleak but also artful movie imo that includes an awful bet of this type, then watch Bad Lieutenant (1992) with Harvey Kietel .  Probably you shouldnt watch it but also it felt a very real depiction of the worst judgement

On a games like dice and color games, I think Martingale strategy will work but not 100%, but not on games like sports betting and card games this will not work. This is designed on games that relies only on what will be the outcome of the game without the use of strategies like in basketball, boxing, poker. In games like color game and dice all you need is just toss and your done. I guess that's where it will work.

When doing martingale we often forgets to stop when we are facing too much loses in a row. As you said, optimism in us makes us to bet more in hope of winning the next one. Keep trying will give us a win sooner or later but, to cover the loses we should have a huge bankroll which is not possible for normal gamblers to keep.

well yeah mate and I'm not talking about normal casino games like dice where you mathematically you will lose anyways
I'm talking about things that can generate you income if you are good , so if you are a successful sportsbettor or a good trader will you do your bets or trades only for few days ?
of course not since you are good you should be aiming to doing that as much as you can

and even in short term the bad variance may come at the very first try

so my point of this thread was just to prove than even if you are profitable with sportsbetting you will bust your whole bakroll with martinagle
as you can see the tipster I follow had a long losing period , but overall he is still profitable so imagine if he was martingaling how much money he would had lost 

If it's for a short-term, I think it's okay; it can be worth it but not all the time. In a sense, it's true; it depends on the amount you have bet and towards the thought of having more and still winning. It is a disaster and scary to do but what it could do is save your previous bet. I agree with Hydrogen that it could be another way around, but I haven't tried that. Usually what I do is double my bet every time I lose then reset. It's something to be worried about when using a martingale, but overall, you are risking something when gambling. There's always pros and cons.

I have a theory on why martingale is so attractive. In real life when we are doing something repeatedly, for example, trying to find a good job, we eventually succeed in most cases. It is so because in fact we are not doing the same thing over and over again. We are improving with every new attempt: we learn more stuff, we act more politely during a job interview, etc. Thus we are increasing our chances of success and that’s why we normally succeed after a certain amount of attempts.

Now, in gambling by making more attempts we are not improving anything. We can lose an unlimited amount of times in a row regardless of the number of previous attempts. But since human beings tend to be optimistic, our brain dismisses the reality and we think that in gambling we can also succeed after a certain amount of attempts as we do in real life when looking for a good job. This is a substitution error, if you will, and we must understand it for the avoidance of losing everything to martingale.

the thing is it really doesn't worth it , why to risk your whole bankroll to chase winning back little amount that you lost previously
as I said martingale is a disaster , it makes even the good sportsbettor and trader lose money at some point
these losing streaks are unavoidable , so the only way is to have a good staking plan and keep betting regularly and if you have an edge then long run you will win without risking your whole bankroll

I think it's a double-edged sword where you or the casino, in this case, the bookmaker, is at risk, of losing or winning. If you managed to try it, it's not always bad but having every bet losing? It's a low chance event, but it could happen still. As you said, it's a lesson that everyone should understand and not just try immediately. If someone is planning to do it, try doing a calculated martingale or somewhat modified to your liking, not only directly multiplying by two.

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 ??