Crypto Dice Betting — 3 Strategies to up your game.

In my last article, I covered the Folding@Home project and how you can make some crypto coin by folding proteins, similar to mining, but with a lot less upfront cost.

As I explored more ways to earn crypto, I came across BananoBet.com, “a Provably Fair dice game for Banano” as they quote on their Fairness page. Bitcoin has a similar betting site, but I can comfortably say that the buy in on those tables is a lot higher.

Before we begin, a warning. Betting is gambling and with gambling comes risk of losing it all. These strategies will help you play a bit more confidently, but remember: there’s always a chance to lose a portion of your bankroll. Never bet it all, unless you want to risk losing it all.

Edit: After a few weeks of trying out these strategies. I have an update at the bottom. :)

BananoBet.com

Basically, you bet your BAN currency on a dice roll to roll over or under a certain value. The more cushion you give for a roll, the lower the payout. The riskier the outcome, the more the payout. As you can see above, if you give yourself a 49.50% change of winning, you can double your money.

They have two betting options, Manual and Auto. With Manual, you will make each roll on your own and you can make adjustments to your bet. This would be like playing any dice or card game normally. The Auto feature allows you to setup betting rules based on a win or loss roll and have a max number of bets or continue betting until you hit Stop. This method offers quick gains but at much higher risk for error if you don’t have a good betting strategy in place. You may lose more than you want before you can pull out. ( See the options below )

For the purpose of this article, I will go through three strategies from a Manual betting perspective while allows you to make decisions to keep your losses at a minimum, while making that crypto wallet a little fatter.

Strategy 1: Martingale

The Martingale Betting Strategy is an established wagering system used by many gamblers. The idea behind this strategy is to anticipate the loss and counter it. You WILL lose a bet at some point, so how can you recoup your losses and get back on track? This is the simplest strategy to learn and use.

What to do:

1. Bet a small comfortable amount that you can afford.
2. If you win, continue betting the base bet.
3. If you lose, double your bet each round, until you win.
4. Once you win again, return to your base bet.

Step 3 is the key to this strategy, by doubling your bet, you are hoping to win back the amount you just lost. Let’s give you an example to picture this. Let’s say you start by betting 10 BAN as your base bet. You win your first roll, so you bet 10 BAN again. This time, you lose your 10 BAN bet. So, you increase your bet to 20 BAN. You lose your 20 BAN bet in the next roll. Again, you increase your bet to 40 BAN (2x your previous). You roll and win this time. You return your bet back to 10 BAN.

The important thing with this strategy is to wager money you are prepared to lose. So, figure out where you are comfortable starting and work up from there. If you have a smaller initial pool of crypto, I’d recommend betting a fraction of it. For example, I’ll take 100 BAN to the site and start off betting 5 BAN. Then as I start making profits, I may increase my base bet to 10.

Strategy 2: D’Alembert

Once you’ve grasped the Martingale Betting Strategy, you can try the D’Alembert Betting Strategy, since they’re very similar. This strategy is similar to the Martingale Strategy in that you increase your bet size after a loss. However, you also reduce your bet size after a win.

With this strategy you are being a bit more cautious with your bets. You’ll start by picking your base bet and then based on your win or loss, you will do the following:

1. Decide on a base bet and call this one unit. ( ex. 5 BAN )
2. If the roll is a loss, increase your base bet by one unit. ( + 5 BAN )
3. If the roll is a win, decrease your base bet. However, if you win at your base bet, then it remains the same for the next bet.

The goal of this strategy is to lock in your profits. This strategy will be a bit slower to see profits compared to the first strategy, but is intended to keep your profits a bit more secure, since you aren’t risking as much on each consecutive loss.

Let’s look at an example:

Let’s say you decide to make your base bet ( unit ) 5 BAN. Your first roll is a win, so you leave your bet at 5 BAN. You don’t decrease your bet past one unit. You roll again and lose. This time, you increase your bet by 5 BAN, or one unit. Don’t get this confused with doubling. The next roll, you lose again, so you increase your bet by another 5 BAN. Your current bet is now 15 BAN. You roll and win. Decrease your bet by 5 BAN, back to 10 BAN. Then continue this process.

With this strategy you can try to recoup your losses with less risk; however, this is a slower strategy, so if you’re looking for quick profits with bigger risks, you’ll probably want to try something else.

Strategy 3: Paroli

Unlike the first two strategies which focus on losing and recovering, the Paroli Betting Strategy is used to take advantage of winning streaks. The goal is to obtain 3 consecutive wins in a row, while doubling your bet with each win. With this strategy, you’ll start with a base bet ( unit ), like D’Alembert.

The Strategy:

1. Determine your base bet and call this one unit. ( ex. 10 BAN ).
2. If you lose any roll, return the bet to one unit. ( 10 BAN ).
3. If you win, double your bet to two units ( 20 BAN ).
4. If you win a second roll in a row, double your bet to four units ( 40 BAN ).
5. Regardless of your third roll outcome, reset your bet to one unit for the next 3 bets.

When you happen to get 3 consecutive wins in a roll, using this strategy, you will net a +7 unit profit. If you lose your 3rd roll, you will only come out with a -1 unit loss for the 3 bets. Below is a nice graphic to display the different outcomes and their net results for three bets using the Paroli method.

This strategy gives you some nice profits when you get those consecutive wins, while also giving you a definitive way to track your net gains/losses of each bet.

Which Strategy Should I Use?

Each of these strategies has their own strengths and weaknesses. No strategy is definitively better than the rest. It really comes down to how you like to play the game and what makes you comfortable.

If you like to take big risks, you might want to go with a Martingale strategy. Just be careful of those losing streaks! That’s why its important to pick a good base bet that you are comfortable doubling more than once.

If you’re more cautious and like to secure those profits, you’ll want to try the D’Alembert strategy. Just be ready for a longer game before cashing out.

If you don’t mind betting small and like a systemic approach with definitive outcomes, the Paroli method might be for you. Those winning streaks will secure you those nice profits, and even if you lose your third roll, you’ll only lose 1 unit.

No matter what route you decide to take, just remember to have fun and bet what you are comfortable losing. Happy gambling!

Tips from my experience

1. Work with a small percentage of your bankroll. Have 1000 BAN to work with? Only risk 100 of it. Otherwise you’ll go deep and lose it all with a bad run.
2. In line with the first tip, make your base bet a small percentage of what you decide to risk. This leaves room for the first two strategies to handle a losing streak and to double your bets with each loss. If you decide to bet 10 BAN and hit a losing streak, you’ll find yourself losing that 100 BAN pretty quick. Instead, bet 1 BAN or even .5 BAN. If you end up with 3–4 rounds of lost rolls, you can still bet a comfortable amount to secure a win.
3. Cash out when you’ve hit your initial buy in. If you put in 100 BAN to start with and you happen to hit 200 BAN, cash out that 100 BAN and secure your initial investment. Now you can choose to continue playing with the 100 BAN profit, or you can cash that out as well and call it a good day. Either way, you came out even for the day.

Stay Tuned

I will test each of the methods above, using the BananoBet site within similar constraints, and follow up with a blog about my results.

If you would like to contribute to my tests, feel free to send some BAN my way.

Wallet Address: ban_3cxtfnmuh6he9o4jihgix4xe4nf897q1gu77jrfde5qttzdwa654d4eghpt7

UPDATE!

2021–05–21

After weeks of gambling on BananoBet and other sites like Nanogames.io, I can tell you that you’ll eventually lose. I had some great win streaks where I doubled my bankroll and even withdrew my profits a few times, but ultimately, the game threw my a nice 14–16 loss streak which with any strategy, especially martingale.

I ultimately decided to take a different route. Being a software developer and wanting to put my skills to the test, I noticed that Nanogames.io allows you to utilize your own JavaScript algorithms for betting. They give you a nice little API to tap into to get results, view history, and make bets.

While some scripts are available on github or other sites, i found that none of them really did much better than Martingale. Some tried to approach the betting at more random, using prime number scaling, others tried to use statistics to guess the next bets, and some just did Martingale with fancier statistics output.

I’m currently developing and testing my own scripting to try and come up with a safer betting strategy that can run autonomously. I am considering writing up an article on how to analyze and test your own strategies using Python and a CSV of historical data.

Comment below if you would be interested in an article of that nature.