Do you mind if I jump in here?
Thank you. I think an edited, generalized version of what you wrote should be stickied in the Gambling forum. (If something isn’t already...)
Stripping it down to simple mathematical terms and concrete examples puts the issue quite clearly in focus.
Using past results to predict future bets is like a lottery winner telling you to buy a ticket, because it worked for him. Gambling, and especially your chance to win/lose, isn't intuitive. People easily see patterns, while it's just random numbers. Winning once doesn't mean you'll win again. Winning many times doesn't mean anything either (as long as the game is fair, cheating can change this of course).
I sometimes have fun looking for patterns in hashes of arbitrary data, or in the output of /dev/random. At least I know it’s not real. If I want an extended intelligible pattern, such as the vanity addresses in my signature, then I need to bruteforce it—600 CPU-hours on slow laptop for those addresses. By analogy, flipping a coin many times until you get
n heads in a row.
Thinking aloud here:
Suppose I think that a gambling script which wins, say, 1000 times in a row should be possible. Of course! Not only is it possible: It is trivial. The problem is that depending on the odds of the game, it will need to
lose an astronomical number of times to hit an unbroken streak of 1000 wins in a row. (Rather like after trying many billions of losing keys, I got one with a corresponding address which spells “segwit”.)
So, I write this script (which essentially just plays the game repeatedly). Then I create a forum account called “Alia 2.0” (new and improved!), pay some girl to get /r/GirlsGoneBitcoin verified for me, and sell my script as the script which will win 1000 times in a row.
Does that sound like an “upgrade” on what happened here? I hope so. I always like to improve things.
What I think OP is seeking here is to know that my “Alia 2.0” alt would not obtain such a glowing mini-review from a widely respected person for the “guaranteed 1000 wins in a row [eventually]” script.
Aside: I feel a bit stupid now for not having paid more attention. Alia had many posts about gambling, wrapped in a sort of gambler’s talk I tended to tune out.
It would ordinarily be absurd to follow or scrutinize all the posts of users I like, if many of them are uninteresting to me. Maybe I should have here.
Anyway, after the scandal broke, I PMed a trustworthy gambling expert to ask for learning information. He sent back a bunch of Github links. Works for me. I’ll dig into them later. Perhaps you’ll see me in Gambling someday—though probably not any day soon.
Selling a winning script is like selling the goose with the golden eggs: if it would exist, you wouldn't need to sell it.
Sure, I do. Because although it wins, it will need to lose more than it wins on average—and I can’t afford that! However, it is probabilistically guaranteed that eventually, you will hit a really awesome winning streak. Also, the goose which lays golden eggs must be fed more gold than it lays in eggs. I will start a thread in Goods for that.
Edit: @MadZ: Re, “21% of her merit comes from just one user, nullius”: If you want to ask me about that in the Alia scam thread, I would reply there. (Short answer: Nobody gave her “free” merit; I could have given +48 in one shot to put the account up to 100, but would never do such a thing.) Otherwise, suffice it to say, I think it’s clear that that account will not be receiving much more merit from anyone—if any at all.
