OK, so let me preface this by saying that this is kind of a bragging thread so if that bothers you, you should probably not bother reading on.
So I got an email from PartyPoker the other day (I'm not in the States, so I can still play there) offering me $50 to play with no deposit required. Now I hadn't touched my account there in months, probably not for at least 6 months.
Total: Non-cashable $50
I've always enjoyed some small stakes limit poker, I play mostly for fun but I'm good enough to win fairly consistently at the small stakes. So I figure I'd play a bit with my $50 at the .50/1 tables. With a bit of luck and a bit of good play, I built up to about $100...
Total: +$50
Then I got busy and the bonus was about to expire so I wagered the $50 freebie dollars on one hand of blackjack (as it would be lost anyway). I got lucky again and doubled up to $100. Took the $50 win and bet the freebie $50 again but lost it (the bonus system is a bit weird if you play around the bonus deadline).
Total: +$100
I kind of just left that as is for a while with a few small bets here and there that didn't really pay off, I was really just screwing around with the money since PartyPoker requires a minimum $500 cashout to send you a cheque.
Total: ~+$75
Then it occurred to me to use the Martingale betting strategy in Blackjack. For those of you who aren't aware, it's the strategy where you double your bet after every loss. Now, as we all know Blackjack is a -EV game where the house has an advantage (though a very small edge with perfect strategy). The fact that with perfect strategy you're only a very marginal dog is quite important when using the Martingale because it means the odds of you busting out are relatively low. Specifically, if we're about a 0.5% dog, that means that the odds of an n hand losing streak are (0.5025)^n. As you can see, that becomes pretty low, pretty quick.
If you were to play indefinitely, you would eventually lose because you would bump either into the upper limit for the table (in this case $500/bet) or you would lose your entire bankroll. In my case, however, it doesn't really matter because I didn't invest anything to begin with. If I lose it all, so be it.
So yesterday, I start playing this strategy. I got lucky and didn't hit any excessively long streaks too soon and started building up the bankroll... $75 became $150... $150 became $250... Eventually, I made it up to $500. I was about to cash out here, but decided to get a little greedy and played on, eventually making it up to about $650.
At this point I was getting bored (and tired, this took maybe 3-4 hours). So I cashed out CAD $500 and left the rest in my account. With the cash out fee and exchange rate, I actually cashed out about $520 to get my CAD $500.
Total: +$500
Today I decided to play a little more with it to see if I could push it further. Long story short, I used the same strategy and cashed out another $520. This time I didn't leave any money in the account since eventually the strategy is going to lose so I may as well quit while I'm ahead.
Total: +$1k
I'm thinking of writing a program to run some simulations to see what the statistics are for playing a Martingale with bonus money! I think it would be quite interesting.
Now, I just have to figure out what new toy(s) I want to spend this money on!
I haven't really read anything about people using this technique with bonus cash, is it a common strategy? It would seem to me that it could be quite successful given a reasonable size bonus; while the expectation value is negative, the probability distribution is split into 2 very distinct groups (bust out and very rich)
So I got an email from PartyPoker the other day (I'm not in the States, so I can still play there) offering me $50 to play with no deposit required. Now I hadn't touched my account there in months, probably not for at least 6 months.
Total: Non-cashable $50
I've always enjoyed some small stakes limit poker, I play mostly for fun but I'm good enough to win fairly consistently at the small stakes. So I figure I'd play a bit with my $50 at the .50/1 tables. With a bit of luck and a bit of good play, I built up to about $100...
Total: +$50
Then I got busy and the bonus was about to expire so I wagered the $50 freebie dollars on one hand of blackjack (as it would be lost anyway). I got lucky again and doubled up to $100. Took the $50 win and bet the freebie $50 again but lost it (the bonus system is a bit weird if you play around the bonus deadline).
Total: +$100
I kind of just left that as is for a while with a few small bets here and there that didn't really pay off, I was really just screwing around with the money since PartyPoker requires a minimum $500 cashout to send you a cheque.
Total: ~+$75
Then it occurred to me to use the Martingale betting strategy in Blackjack. For those of you who aren't aware, it's the strategy where you double your bet after every loss. Now, as we all know Blackjack is a -EV game where the house has an advantage (though a very small edge with perfect strategy). The fact that with perfect strategy you're only a very marginal dog is quite important when using the Martingale because it means the odds of you busting out are relatively low. Specifically, if we're about a 0.5% dog, that means that the odds of an n hand losing streak are (0.5025)^n. As you can see, that becomes pretty low, pretty quick.
If you were to play indefinitely, you would eventually lose because you would bump either into the upper limit for the table (in this case $500/bet) or you would lose your entire bankroll. In my case, however, it doesn't really matter because I didn't invest anything to begin with. If I lose it all, so be it.
So yesterday, I start playing this strategy. I got lucky and didn't hit any excessively long streaks too soon and started building up the bankroll... $75 became $150... $150 became $250... Eventually, I made it up to $500. I was about to cash out here, but decided to get a little greedy and played on, eventually making it up to about $650.
At this point I was getting bored (and tired, this took maybe 3-4 hours). So I cashed out CAD $500 and left the rest in my account. With the cash out fee and exchange rate, I actually cashed out about $520 to get my CAD $500.
Total: +$500
Today I decided to play a little more with it to see if I could push it further. Long story short, I used the same strategy and cashed out another $520. This time I didn't leave any money in the account since eventually the strategy is going to lose so I may as well quit while I'm ahead.
Total: +$1k
I'm thinking of writing a program to run some simulations to see what the statistics are for playing a Martingale with bonus money! I think it would be quite interesting.
Now, I just have to figure out what new toy(s) I want to spend this money on!
I haven't really read anything about people using this technique with bonus cash, is it a common strategy? It would seem to me that it could be quite successful given a reasonable size bonus; while the expectation value is negative, the probability distribution is split into 2 very distinct groups (bust out and very rich)