Probability question

[Brady2Moss]

Say I want to do a 10 team parlay everyday...

The odds at even money are .5^10 = 1 in 1024

Does that mean if I bet a 10 team parlay 1024 times, I am guaranteed to hit it? (i dont think it is, just want to be sure)

How many do I have to bet to guarantee a win? Is it even possible to guarantee a win?

[smitch124]

Say I want to do a 10 team parlay everyday...

The odds at even money are .5^10 = 1 in 1024

Does that mean if I bet a 10 team parlay 1024 times, I am guaranteed to hit it? (i dont think it is, just want to be sure)

How many do I have to bet to guarantee a win? Is it even possible to guarantee a win?

No just means you would expect to win one time in 1024. If you saw Justins video on edge, and saw the normal curve around 100 coin flips. You would expect 50 heads out of 100.
But anything between 1 and 100 is possible its just less likely the further you get away from 50.

Same with your parlay, 1 win in the most likely. Anything on either side is possible just less likely.

[Nicky Santoro]

Say I want to do a 10 team parlay everyday...


How many do I have to bet to guarantee a win? Is it even possible to guarantee a win?

yeah, if you want to guarantee a win. just bet 1024 parlays and you will guarantee yourself a win.. because there are 1024 different combinations.


but the problem is if you bet 1024 parlays of 100 each, you might get only 700-1 on that 10 teamer.

so you wil lose 102,300 to get back 70,000 in wins.. so you'd lose 32,300.. not that good of an investment.

[VegasDave]

Never any guarantees... think on a smaller scale. You have a 1 in 6 chance of rolling a 4 on a die. Are you guaranteed to roll a 4 in 6 rolls? Of course not. The rolls won't be exactly 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 every time.

The best way to see how close to a "guarantee" you can come is to solve for odds that you DONT hit one and inverse it.

So... in 1 trial, you have a 1023/1024 chance of not hitting it. In 10 tries you have a (1023/1024)^10 chance of not hitting... or a .9902 (99.02%) of not hitting it. So you have a 1 - .9902 = .0098 chance of hitting it (0.98%)

So to answer your question...

(1023/1024)^1024 = 36.77% chance
Inversed...
You have a 63.23% chance of hitting one within 1024 trials. Certainly no guarantee.

[BigCap]

yeah, if you want to guarantee a win. just bet 1024 parlays and you will guarantee yourself a win.. because there are 1024 different combinations.


but the problem is if you bet 1024 parlays of 100 each, you might get only 700-1 on that 10 teamer.

so you wil lose 102,300 to get back 70,000 in wins.. so you'd lose 32,300.. not that good of an investment.

Ties win changes this significantly.

[Ganchrow]

Say I want to do a 10 team parlay everyday...

The odds at even money are .5^10 = 1 in 1024

Does that mean if I bet a 10 team parlay 1024 times, I am guaranteed to hit it? (i dont think it is, just want to be sure)

How many do I have to bet to guarantee a win? Is it even possible to guarantee a win?

As Nicky said, if you bet all the 1,024 combinations of a 10-team parlay you are guaranteed to win exactly 1 such parlay (ignoring ties), although of course due to the vig you'd win up a net money loser (at zero vig you'd break even).

If you bet 1,024 unrelated 10-team parlays then your probability of winning at least 1 such parlay would be given by:

p = 1 - ( 1 1,024 )¹⁰ ≈ 63.23%