I've played a similar strategy, and it did work for me. The key was to always start low, and work it up, bit by bit. I believe you always took the total amount you had lost and bet it plus some, or doubled it, depending on where you were. No matter when you did win, you always won all you had lost and then some, exponentially to the number of times you had lost.
The flaw I found:
You're playing with statistics.
There's a 50% chance you will win $1 when you play one "set".
75% Chance at $3
87.5% chance at ....?
etc etc etc.
The more rounds you can make, the larger percent chance you have to win.
The value I calculated was based on the amount you would win multiplied by the percent chance you have to win it.
If you take the value of 6 rounds, you have $XX, a good deal of money, but if you subtract that percent total from 100, you get the percent chance you will lose all in 6 rounds. (0.0156%) When you multiply that percentage times the amount you would lose if you passed 6 rounds, I believe it exceedes the amount you would have won in 6 rounds, statistically.
Sure it's a very small percentage, and it gets smaller and smaller the more rounds you are able to cover, (that's why you stay SMALL, don't get greedy or you cut your number of rounds rapidly) but there's always that chance you will lose it because you can't afford the last of a set. In reality, many patterns will earn you money at a steady rate for the most part, for hours on end possibly because you have not had the ill luck of a losing streak of 15 losses, but in theory it will happen. True, if you play for a couple days, 100 games or so, you should be safe, but you end up multiplying that small chance you will lose by the number of times you play a set. Play a week, you should be alright. Play a couple months? 0.0156% * 5000 games (random est.) gives you 78% chance of losing all if I am correct. (saying you quite at 6 rounds) But...the more rounds you can play, the safer you are, and if you keep adding the money so you can go more and more rounds, you may just be fine. (make sure there is no max bet. That just SUCKS.)
In the real world, you should be able to pull this off if you can start out with enough to cover 6-8 rounds. The key to not getting screwed by statistics is to take a steady wage out as time goes by, and you won't lose it. Believe me, if you are at 9, 10 rounds of losing in a row, you *know* you have to win the next time, no matter the cost, but at that point you still have a 50-50 chance of winning or losing all your money.
So yes, it can work, and yes it can be risky as well.
Bid:
1
4
8
15
30
60
120
240
480
960
Something of that sort should work if you have enough to cover.
Be safe if anyone tries it....I just may go for real money some time now that I think of it. Using strategies such as this I would be able to take $100 and play for an hour or two and earn a couple hundred more. It's always tempting to start out with 5 or 10 though, but that really kills you fast. Stick with the slow and steady because flukes do happen.
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