Martingale strategy: does doubling after a loss work?
Doubling the bet after each loss guarantees a profit.
Not trueShort answer
No. Doubling wins small amounts often and loses everything occasionally. A long enough losing streak always arrives, and the next bet then exceeds the bankroll or the table limit. The house edge stays the same on every bet.
Why
Every bet keeps the same negative expected value; doubling only changes the shape of losses.
How the lab will test this
Exact loss-streak probabilities plus seeded simulation against recorded outcome frequencies.
The bust table: a 1,000 bank at a base bet of 10
Martingale strategy doubles the bet after every loss and returns to the base bet after a paying bet. Start with a bank of 1,000 and a base bet of 10. Each loss doubles the next bet, so a losing run costs 10, then 20, then 40, and the table shows where the bank runs out.
Assumption for the chance columns: each bet is a 2x cash-out on Aviator, and its stated 97% return, a provider claim we have not yet sourced first-hand, holds. With rounds independent, a 2x cash-out then pays with probability 0.485 (97% ÷ 2) and loses with probability 0.515. These are consequences of a provider claim, not lab measurements, and the table is arithmetic, not advice.
| Losses in a row | Lost so far | Left in the bank | Next bet | Chance of this many losses in a row | About |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 10 | 990 | 20 | 0.5150 | 1 in 2 |
| 2 | 30 | 970 | 40 | 0.2652 | 1 in 4 |
| 3 | 70 | 930 | 80 | 0.1366 | 1 in 7 |
| 4 | 150 | 850 | 160 | 0.0703 | 1 in 14 |
| 5 | 310 | 690 | 320 | 0.0362 | 1 in 28 |
| 6 | 630 | 370 | 640 | 0.0187 | 1 in 54 |
After 6 losses in a row the run has lost 630 and the bank holds 370, but the next bet is 640. The doubling cannot continue. That run is not a rare edge case: from a fresh start at a bank of 1,000 it has probability 0.0187, about 1 in 54.
How often the run ends
Each cycle, from a fresh start to the next paying bet, adds 10 to the bank, unless the losing run first reaches a bet the bank cannot cover. Played as the simulator plays it, with the whole bank in play, the bank grows as cycles complete and the run that ends play grows with it: 6 losses in a row (losing 630) while the bank is below 1,270, then 7 in a row (losing 1,270). Under the assumption above, that Aviator's stated 97%, a provider claim we have not yet sourced first-hand, holds at a 2x cash-out, the chance of completing 100 cycles, a gain of 1,000, without meeting that run is 0.2972. The chance of meeting it first is 0.7028.
At a bank of 1,000, the average result of one cycle is 10 × 0.981343 − 630 × 0.018657 = −1.94. Small gains are frequent and the loss is rare but large, and the rare loss outweighs them. That is the shape the simulator shows over 1,000 sessions.
Stopping early does not change the average. The few players who meet the run lose 630 or more in a single run; the rest, who stop after a few cycles, leave a little ahead. Taken across everyone who plays the system, every cycle carries an expected loss.
Why doubling cannot remove the house edge
Every bet in the ladder has the same expected value. Under the same assumption, that Aviator's stated 97%, a provider claim we have not yet sourced first-hand, holds at a 2x cash-out, a bet of B returns 2B with probability 0.485, so its expected result is B × (2 × 0.485 − 1) = −0.03 × B. Doubling changes the size of each bet, not its odds. The more is staked, the more the house edge takes on average; the ladder only gathers the losses into one rare, large run.
The same holds for any game and any payout. A bet that pays even money with probability below one half loses on average, and no order of bets changes that. Only the stake changes, and martingale makes it grow fastest exactly when a run is going badly.
A bigger bank or a table limit
A larger bank buys only a few more rows, because the bets double. At a base bet of 10, under the same assumption:
| Bank | Losses in a row that end the run | Chance per cycle | About |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | 6 | 0.0187 | 1 in 54 |
| 10,000 | 9 | 0.0025 | 1 in 392 |
| 100,000 | 13 | 0.00018 | 1 in 5,578 |
A bank 100 times larger makes the ending run rarer, but each cycle still adds only 10, and the run, when it comes, costs most of the bank. Table limits cut the ladder shorter still: once the next doubled bet is above the table maximum, the doubling stops whatever the bank holds.
Try the doubling arithmetic
The simulator runs a two-outcome bet with a fixed house edge, over many sessions, and shows how often a long losing streak ends the run.
Games this applies to
Each game links to its own page, with its lab status and how its fairness can be checked.
- Certified RNG
- Provably fair
- Live physical draw
- Live physical draw
- Live physical draw
- Provably fair
- Provably fair
- Hash-committed
- Certified RNG
- Unverifiable
- Unverifiable
- Certified RNG
- Certified RNG
What players search for
Terms players use for this question. Listing a term is not an endorsement of any tool or site.
- Indonesian
- Filipino