Originally Posted by
Mission146
Here are the most relevant aspects of the challenge as I understand them:
-The base bet amount from each side is $25,000.
-If RobSinger is successful in winning eight (or more) of ten sessions, with winning being defined as, "A session win total equal to, or greater than, $2,500," then he wins the bet and the $25,000. Furthermore, in the event of a net win and eight (or more) of ten sessions won, whoever bets against would be on the hook for the win.
-If RobSinger fails, then he would have to pay out the $25,000. In the event of a net loss, as I understand it, Singer would also have to pay out the amount lost in addition to the $25,000.
-Whoever bets against may set a cap of $100,000 as to the amount of winnings he/she/they would need to cover, so if I'm correct, $125,000 in escrow would cover the maximum potential liability.
-The highest denomination Video Poker would be $100.
I do have one question, and please forgive me if this has been addressed:
---If Singer wins eight or nine sessions, but loses money overall, would he still win the bet? If so, how would that be adjudicated? Would the amount lost overall just come off of the $25,000 owed him?
I'm going to say that Singer has anywhere from a slight to substantial advantage on this bet for a number of reasons:
1.) With a bankroll of 114 units ($500 bets) just on 9/6 JoB a player has a probability of either winning six (or more) units and stopping OR going bust in between 84.5%-85% to win the six units v. 15%-15.5% to go bust. Given the low end probability of 84.5%, by binomial distribution, the player would have a probability of 80.71% of winning eight (or more) out of ten such sessions. The player would also have a probability of 18-19% of winning all ten sessions.
Naturally, the player can accomplish that (winning eight or nine sessions) while losing money overall.
2.) Without a clearly defined and agreed upon minimum session stop loss, Singer could limit his exposure on what he may have to pay the, "No," bettor in excess of the 25k.
3.) Even if Singer's method reduces his probability of success in an individual session as opposed to just playing 9/6 Jacks at the $100 denomination, 74.142527672% is roughly the point that Singer would be 50/50 to win eight (or more) out of ten sessions. As far as that aspect of the bet is concerned, that would then be roughly the session win probability that would make it a break even proposition.
4.) At 84.5% session win probability, even if Singer lost the first session, he would still be about 58.224% to win either eight or nine of the remaining nine sessions. So, even a worst-case scenario would have him still looking decent to win the bet overall in terms of 8+ sessions.
Anyway, it's pretty clear that the, "No," is going to have a disadvantage on the bet, but that disadvantage doesn't have anything to do with the viability of the system. I think we can all agree, outside of some external factor, that 9/6 Jacks is not an advantageous game. But, there you go, nearly 85% to win a given session with a bankroll of 114 bets and a win goal of six bets.
In fact, a bankroll of just 42 units and a profit goal of six units gets you right in that 74% range of success probability per session. My guess is -50 units (-$25,000) is about where Singer would want to abandon ship on a session for the purposes of this bet, especially if it was only the first losing session. I'm guessing the abandon session amount would kind of be a floating thing, too, depending how everything else looks.
Anyway, the game could just be 9/6 JoB at the $100 denom, straight up, and the person taking the, "No," would have the worst of this bet.