Think of it this way: you have 3 dice, and you're trying to throw them all at 6 in one throw. The odds of doing this are 1 in 216.
After trying 10, 100 or 1000 times, the odds of throwing it at your next try are still exactly the same.
After trying 10, 100 or 1000 times, the odds of throwing it at your next try are still exactly the same.
I can see where the confusion can stem from, people seem to forget that individual rolls have no effect on future rolls as they are mutually exclusive. To calculate the true probability you can't add the probability. A common logical fallacy is people believe if the chance of getting a 6 when rolling a single dice is 1/6 then the probability of getting a 6 in six rolls is = 1/6 +1/6 +1/6 +1/6 +1/6 +1/6 = 1.
You need keep in mind the probability is always fixed to exactly 1/6 every single roll. Doesn't matter you roll non stop or if you roll once a year.
Yup, I got it now.
What I was imagining was that there could be a simple loop in the program. Start with the "first" private key (...001), go through the various hashing steps and see if you get a public address with the desired pattern. If not, then increment the private key by 1 (...002) and do the hashes again. That way, the attempted private keys would effectively get "burned" and not be reused.
It's like buying millions of lottery tickets in the same draw to try to cover as many numbers as possible. You might as well start with 1-2-3-4-5-6 and then 1-2-3-4-5-7 and so on methodically than to choose a bunch of random "pick 6" numbers. The chance to win is the same for any set of numbers, but there is a slight chance that a "pick 6" could be generated twice, thereby wasting the ticket (i.e. if you win, you would be splitting the jackpot with yourself). I suppose the "slight" chance is so slight that maybe it doesn't matter.
