Gambler's ruin

Common card · No. 212407

In statistics, gambler's ruin is the fact that a gambler playing a game with non-positive expected value will eventually go bankrupt, regardless of their betting system. The concept was initially stated: A persistent gambler who raises his bet to a fixed fraction of the gambler's bankroll after a win, but does not reduce it after a loss, will eventually and inevitably go broke, even if each bet has a positive expected value. Another statement of the concept is that a persistent gambler with finite wealth, playing a fair game (that is, each bet has expected value of zero to both sides) will eventually and inevitably go broke against an opponent with infinite wealth. Such a situation can be modeled by a random walk on the real number line. In that context, it is probable that the gambler will, with virtual certainty, return to their point of origin, which means going broke, and is ruined an infinite number of times if the random walk continues forever. This is a corollary of a general theorem...

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