Well I have this in my mind for a long time and a week or so ago, the plan did turn into actions! For the one not familiar with the betting challenge, it is pretty straight forward. You do start with a base bet and if the bet is won, the complete pay-out is the ante for the next bet. So you are just rolling over until the goal has been reached. Depending on the starting bet, the odds used and some banking possibilities, you could need a rather big winning streak, in most cases stretching 20 or more.

Why?

Well I have been sports betting for a long time. Not constantly but with intervals. Each time at the start of a new football season I do load up some funds and see how far I get. Like 99% of the people the funds were gone at the end of the season. No problem for me because I do see it as a hobby. Nothing wrong with that in my opinion.

The strange thing is that almost all funds evaporate in a few weeks. This are the week that lady luck isn't at your side. Most of us do start to increase the ante, which is in most cases the beginning of the end!

Currently I am in such a period. But lessons learned. The stakes aren't increased and I am sitting most of the time on the side line, waiting for a bet which could start a winning streak again. So I was thinking and reading about the betting challenge and decided to give it a shot!

As a real crypto gambler I will do the challenge with Tron. I know there are other possibilities but you do have to start somewhere. I had some spare TRX around so it was obvious.

From where to where!

Well this is one of the most important decision to make. Your base bet does give an indication how fast it could go or how slow. Suppose that you do want to reach 1K and start with 50. If we take average odds of 1.2, 18 winning bets back to back are needed. If you would start the challenge from 100 a streak of only 14 bets would do the trick!

But starting with the complete bankroll probably isn't very smart at all. It is hard enough to complete the challenge, let alone to succeed from the first attempt!

I did reserve 250 TRX for this challenge and because I do want to give myself at least 5 attempts, my base bet will be 50 TRX.

My goal has been set on 5K TRX. Why? Well I don't know, just sounded like a nice ball park figure.

My simulator tell me that I would need 26 consecutive winning bets to complete the challenge with average odds of 1.2. I could go faster with higher odds but my test runs tell me that the average odds for me are between 1.2 and 1.25. 1.25 odds would require only 21 bets :)

While my secret goal is much higher, I will limit it on 5K. If and when I would succeed in this, I can withdraw some funds, start over again and start with a higher base bet.

Banking!

But wait I will make this challenge a little bit harder on myself. I am not going to roll over the complete 100% of the previous bet. I will bank 5% of the previous bet, hoping to grant myself some more attempt. This of course has the downside that the start of the streak will be less rewarding and that the ante don't climb as fast as without a banking mechanism. This more or less will require 2 extra bets.

But this also has some advantages, the higher the ante becomes, the tougher it will get to risk it all. While you do know that in fact only 50 TRX are at risk (aka the starting bet), your mind does tells you something different! And let's honest the mind is right in this case.

With a banking mechanism I will give myself an extra attempt after of winning streak of around 8 bets!

The records!

This is also a good real life case for me to get used to Apple's Numbers. I recently bought a macbook and have to admit that it takes some time to get used to Number. Compared to Excel, this is a complete different spreadsheet. And to be honest I doubt that I will ever convert my real betting record sheet to Numbers ever.

But like I said Numbers will be used to track my progress. I did create 3 worksheet to track it all and am still doubting if I will add a sport to it or not. Most bets will be Football and Tennis related.

Sheet 1 was the easiest one, this is where I do record the bets. But due to the banking mechanism it got a little bit more complicated than initially planned. I do have to enter, the date, ante, odds and win or loss and all the rest is automated. The sheet calculates the input for the next bet based on my banking mechanism. If I do get into a bigger winning streak, I only have to change 1 cell on sheet number 2.

Sheet number 2 tells me everything I do want to know. It give per attempt, the number of bets placed, the average odds used, the max ante and the profit/loss statement for that attempt.

It also gives me some overall stats like Current bankroll, attempts left, the longest winning streak, lowest odds loosing bet (the painful one) and so on!

Last but not least I also did create some kind of simulator. I only need to enter the starting bet, the average odds and the goal and I will show me how much bets are needed to reach the desired goal. Here I can turn on and off the banking mechanism!

I will report my progress on a frequent basis. This is a way to confront myself with some stupid bets!

Cheers,

Peter