Thanks for the name "Martingale", I had wondered what this was called since an old gambler I met on a contract about 10 years ago described 'his' system. After

Thanks for the name "Martingale", I had wondered what this was called since an old gambler I met on a contract about 10 years ago described 'his' system. After a quick wikipedia rabbithole, I now grok the St Petersburg paradox, which is fascinating - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Petersburg_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Petersburg_paradox - but mostly tells me that the 'expected value' is not a good measure of whether you should bet on something, because games can be constructed in such a way that the expected value is infinite, but the chances of you even getting your stake back even at a $16 buy in are 1/8...