VIP ToolsMartingale Simulation

Which game

The ladder

Balance

Before you start

Most you can lose
$1,400
70% of your balance
Longest you'd ride
700
spins before you bail
Runs that get the hit
75.8%
about 3 in 4
Break even on spin
350
of the first level

If you play BILLSKIE's ladder on keno at $1 a spin

$1 bets · 3 levels · $2,000 · no walk-away
3 in 4
Most runs end well.
About three quarters of the time the 350x turns up before you'd give up, and you walk away from that run with more than you started it with.
+$236
A typical win is small.
Not $350 — that's the payout, not the profit. By the time it lands you've usually paid a couple of hundred dollars in to get there. The middle win is $236.
1 in 4
The other quarter costs about $1,100.
When the hit never comes you've ridden the whole ladder and it's gone. One of those wipes out four and a half typical wins.
−$6
Every run costs you six dollars, on average.
Wins and losses averaged together. Play a hundred runs and you're about $600 down — not because you played it badly, but because that's what it costs to play.
61%
Play forty runs off $2,000 and you're probably broke.
Sixty-one out of a hundred people who keep going that long end with nothing. Thirty-five finish ahead. The middle person finishes at zero.
$3,981
You'll see a big number before you see zero.
The typical bankroll that ends at nothing goes past $3,981 first. That peak is the most dangerous screen in the whole strategy, because it's the one that feels like proof.

All six of those are true at once. It wins most of the time, and it takes your money. Those aren't in conflict — a run that wins 75% of the time and loses five times as much when it loses is exactly break-even before the house's cut, and slightly worse after it.

How long you'll be waiting

keno · 6 picks

Out of 100 people all starting a fresh run right now…

how many have got their hit by spin

The ten people still waiting at spin 1,150

A hundred people start with $2,000 and play forty runs

keno, $1 bets, 3 levels, no walk-away target
61
35
61 are broke. Nothing left. 35 finish ahead. Some of them well ahead. 4 are still playing, down on where they started.

The middle person out of the hundred finishes at exactly zero. That is what “the average player” means here — not somebody who lost a bit, somebody with nothing.

The run that ends it usually arrives at
session 10
of the forty you planned
Before that, the balance peaks near
$3,981
almost double what you sat down with
Where the middle person finishes
$0
35 in 100 finish ahead

Why it goes up first

Three runs in four end in profit, so early on you are almost certainly winning. Ten sessions of +$236 is +$2,360, and $2,000 becomes $4,360 without anything unusual happening. Nothing has gone right for you; that is just the ordinary run of the strategy.

Then one run doesn't hit. That's $1,048 off. Then another. By session ten the arithmetic has caught up, and the balance you'd got used to is gone — usually while you're betting bigger than you were at the start, because the number on screen said you could afford it.

The peak is the trap, not the crash. Almost everybody who ends at zero sees $3,981 first. If you have no rule for when to stop, that screen is the only one that would have told you to — and it looks exactly like the strategy working.

The one thing that changes the answer

Pick a number before you start, and stop when you reach it. That's it — it's the only choice on this whole site that moves the odds rather than reshuffling them.

Double your $2,000 47%
Triple it 31%
Five times it 19%
Ten times it 9%
Keep playing forever 0%

Chance of getting there before going broke, if you actually stop when you do — measured on limbo at 350x with the bet size that suits each target. Keno lands within a point or two of each row. The bottom row isn't a joke: with no stopping rule, everybody ends at zero eventually. It only takes long enough that most people never see it happen.

Keno or limbo

same ladder, same $2,000, same $1 opening bet
Keno · 6 picks Limbo at 350x What that means
Runs that win75.8% 86.1% Limbo wins more often — nearly 9 times in 10
A typical win+$236 +$193 but keno pays better when it does win
A bad day (worst 1 in 20)−$1,125 −$1,400 keno's 11x drip softens the fall; limbo has nothing
Spins in a typical run374304 limbo gets it over with sooner
What you bet in a typical run$598$450 less through the machine means less taken
What the run costs you −$6.00 −$4.49 a penny on every dollar, both games

Pick keno if…

you'd rather the losing runs hurt less. Four-of-six turns up every 42 spins and pays 11x, so even the runs that never hit hand back about a quarter of what you put in. A keno bust costs about $1,050; the same bust on limbo costs the full $1,400. You also have something happening on screen while you wait.

Pick limbo if…

you'd rather win more often and be done sooner. 350x comes up every 353 rolls instead of every 494, so nearly nine runs in ten end well and a typical run is 70 rolls shorter. The price is that when it fails there's no consolation — it takes the whole ladder.

Neither is better. They cost the same. Keno spends part of its payback on the 11x tier and part on the 350x; limbo spends all of it on the 350x. That's why limbo's big win comes round sooner — it isn't paying for anything else. Both hand the house about a penny per dollar, and no choice between them changes that.