Can you win with losing strategies?

Based on common sense even the question itself sounds slightly ridiculous at best, but as you might have (or maybe not) already figured, there's probably something in it. That's where Game Theory and Parrondo's paradox come into play. If you think about life in general, then sometimes, just sometimes, two minuses together can actually equal a plus. In engineering, if you put two unstable systems together, the combination can actually be a stable system. But that's not the only place where such paradox exists.

The same could be also applied to gambling. Two losing gambling games, when played after each other, can become a winning one. That's called Parrondo's paradox. The paradox was named by its creator Juan Parrondo who dicovered it back in 1996. The description of the paradox could be put like this - "There exist pairs of games, each with a higher probability of losing than winning, for which it is possible to construct a winning strategy by playing the games alternately."

I'm myself not so good at math, a good guess is that neither are you, but at least according to Wikipedia the paradox might work. Here's a simplified example of how it works:

Take two games, Game A and Game B, using the following rules:

- In Game A, you lose $1 every time you play.
- In Game B, you count how much money you have left. If it is an even number, you win $3. Otherwise you lose $5.

Say you begin with $100 in your pocket. If you start playing Game A exclusively, you will obviously lose all your money in 100 rounds. Similarly, if you decide to play Game B exclusively, you will also lose all your money in 100 rounds.

However, consider playing the games alternatively, starting with Game B, followed by A, then by B, and so on (BABABA...). It should be easy to see that you will steadily earn a total of $2 for every two games.

Thus, even though each game is a losing proposition if played alone, because the results of Game B are affected by Game A, the sequence in which the games are played can affect how often Game B earns you money, and subsequently the result is different from the case where either game is played by itself.

So based on this example, and Parrondo's paradox, as weird as it might sound, at least in theory, it is possible to win with losing strategies. If you feel like trying it out, first be sure to take advantage of Bistarz Promotions to get a decent first deposit bonus.