George vs John

It's a zero sum game, so unless each party is making different assumptions about the probabilities of the possible outcomes, your expected profit should equal their combined expected losses.
- Is Joe making a 5 to 1 bet with you, and is Gary making a 3 to 1 bet with you?
- Who is calculating the expected profits, and what probabilities have been assigned to each of the possible outcomes?
For example:
If Joe is calculating his expected profit based on 5-1 odds and he makes a 5-1 bet with you, his expected profit is 0. Likewise for Gary.
If your expected profit is based on 1-1 odds, your expected profit is twice what you bet Joe plus what you bet Gary.
Either a negative bet was placed, or you bet them each nothing.

If all expected profits are calculated based on 1-1 odds, with positive bets they both expect to lose and you expect to win.

Sorry mark,

But I made a mistake. Joe expects 5 to 3 that George Bush will win, instead of 5 to 1.

Whim

Featured: George vs John

"But I made a mistake"

"Joe expects"

Who the hell is Joe…? My money is on George. :wink:

No matter what the odds are, your expected profit is -1 times the sum of their expected profits. For them to be equal, they would both have to be zero.

I'm still confused.

You say that now... :wink:

Through experimentation, I have deduced that ones odds of winning are greatly enhanced by placing the wager after the result is known.

??????

A more educated strategy is to fully take advantage of the arbitrage instead of partially taking advantage of it.

Example: Bet Joe $12 to his $20 (3/5) that Kerry wins, and bet Gary $12 to his $36 (1/3) that Bush wins.

Bush wins, you win $24, Kerry wins, you win $8.

In fact, bet as much as you can with each of them.

Now, if you insist on giving them better odds than they are offering, then bet $1300 to $1900 with each, then your "guaranteed" profit is $600 (eventhough it could be infinite) and their's are $100 and $500 ($600 total) respectively.

I am not sure how this is considered a riddle, but hey, what do I know?

I always prefered John to George...and now it's a moot point because it's down to Paul and Ringo.....