Originally Posted by
a2a3dseddie
Originally Posted by
Alan Mendelson
EV is not a medium of exchange.
'Collecting positive EV' is just too abstract a concept for me to grasp.
How can it "carry over" from 1 play to the next or "accumulate" in any way?
Ok, well I can't do a poker analogy because I don't play poker. But here is a simple analogy that I can do.
New roulette wheel. 10 spots. 6 red, 4 black, all with the same 10% chance of the ball landing on them. Even money payout.
Should you choose to bet red, every spin you make will be at significant +EV.
Should you choose to bet black every spin at significant -EV.
So day 1 you play for 100 spins betting red. To your dismay 54 blacks came up and you lost for the day (short term result, equivalent to my $8800 short term one day loss). You lost despite playing at +EV.
So you do the same thing every day for a year. That is a total of 36,500 spins. (this represents long term results) At 36,500 spins all at +EV you will NOT be behind. It is NOT chance. IT is mathematics. That is accumulated +EV and the mathematics (Law of Large Numbers) guarantees you will be ahead and that you will actually be very close to total +EV for those 36,500. With such a large trial or sample size what you win will be very close to expectation. Guaranteed! Mathematical Guarantee.
So back to that first day. You lost (as I did the day mentioned), but you earned +EV for the day which is part of that larger amount of EV for the 365 days that
guarantees within reason what your results will be. So yeah, that +EV carries forward. It is part of the larger sample size that guarantees what results will be.