Video Poker Forum

Webman suggested a new thread for basic principles of Martingale betting so I thought I'd get the ball rolling.  Here are a couple of links to information I found useful.  I'm not putting these forth as the "best of the best"; they're just two that I found quickly and that I felt were good ones, so additional sources of information are cheerfully welcome.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale ... ng_system)
 
 
http://wizardofodds.com/gambling/bettingsystems.html
 
The article in Wizard of Odds has a section a couple of pages down called "Don't Waste Your Money!".  That section should be required reading for anyone who may be considering paying for information on any kind of "magic" betting system (not just Martingale).  It's only a couple of paragraphs, and after reading about the kind of people who try to sell these systems, I felt positively...dirty.
 
Really - run, don't walk, to that section of his article. 
 

Wow seems to hit rs right in the old sissy sack. Snakeoil salesman is how he termed it. Magic!
I still just call him plain old bozo the fraud.

I'll tell you, oej, I felt so dirty after I read the Wizard's article that I actually went and washed my hands.  Then I cleaned my keyboard and monitor just to be safe.  "Myths", "fallacies", "delusions", "snake oil salesmen", "dirty business", "steal ideas from each other", "ridiculous", "mathematically challenged", "get rich quick", "scam", and "debunked" are all words and phrases he uses to expose their nefarious schemes. 
 
I hope I never read anything like that again. 

At least until your next e-letter!

Here's another little tidbit that demonstrates that changes to the amount being bet does not help in the least. It's an actual mathematical proof that progressive betting does nothing to improve one's odds.
 
http://www.bjmath.com/bjmath/progress/unfair.htm
 
Fa La La La La.... La la la la often claims that VP is a different animal because of the multiple pay lines. However, it's pretty easy to see that one does not have any better chance hitting a large winning hand at a higher denomination than a lower denomination. And, it's provable too.
 
Since all VP hands are independent/random the order of the hands played could be anything. So, you could just easily play all hands at the lowest denomination followed by all hands at the next denomination and so forth. In fact, you could start at the highest denomination and work backwards. Each set of hands at each denomination could have been done weeks/months/years apart and each set of hands would have the same mathematical odds of return ... that is, the actual return of the game being played. 
 
Once you understand that the order of the hands played is random, it is easy to see that order will not influence the expected result over time. It's actually the simply rules of addition that come into play.