Two translucent blue dice frozen mid-roll beside a tall stack of chips about to topple
Dice · Report

$61,000 a roll, one roll a second: two players, $5.8 million and the safest bet in dice

Illustration

A 1.2x dice bet wins about five times in six. On September 22 two players bet on it at up to $109,877 a roll, about one roll a second. Between them they put $5.8 million through dice, 42% of all the dice money we recorded in two days.

At 15:15:39 UTC on September 22, BINGOBONG rolled a dice bet of $61,430 at a 1.19x payout. It won. So did the next one, and the one after that. For 35 seconds, roughly once a second, they kept rolling about $61,300 at a time. Thirty-two rolls in a row won.

Each win paid only about $11,600. But 32 of them add up: +$371,824 in 35 seconds, on almost $2 million wagered. The 33rd roll, at 15:16:16, lost the full $61,289.

A 1.19x dice bet wins roughly 83% of the time. Thirty-two wins in a row at those odds happens less than once in 300 tries.

BINGOBONG's running dice profit, roll by roll
All 73 dice rolls we recorded, 14:44 to 15:41 UTC Sept 22. Each step along is one roll.
Running profit on dice

The last three seconds

At 15:21 they came back with $33,850 rolls and reached their peak, +$408,911, at 15:21:45. Two seconds later a loss took $33,854 of it back.

At 15:40:48 they started again at about $31,160 a roll. Ten rolls in eleven seconds: eight wins and two losses. Then, three seconds after the second loss, one roll of $109,877, more than three times the stake before it. It lost.

$109,877 on a single dice roll, the biggest losing bet we recorded outside slots.

That was their last roll. BINGOBONG finished the afternoon +$250,500 on 73 dice rolls and $3.29 million wagered. Duel's high-score table, updated the next morning, shows them at $6.48 million wagered all time and +$21,116.

93 seconds, $2.54 million

Two and a half hours later, at 17:51:38, asdasdas1111 did the same thing even faster. They rolled 74 times in 93 seconds at exactly 1.2x, stakes from $19,389 up to $76,665, $2.54 million in all.

Roll (UTC)StakedResultRunning total
17:51:38$19,391Won, +$3,951+$3,951
17:52:50$38,326Won+$117,902 (peak)
17:52:52$38,326Lost+$79,576
17:52:55$76,665Lost+$2,911
17:52:57–17:53:0911 rolls, $26k–$42k9 won, 2 lost−$7,202
17:53:11$31,759Lost−$38,961

At 17:52:50 they were $117,902 up. Two seconds later a $38,326 roll lost, and they doubled the next one to $76,665. That lost too. Five seconds after the peak they were down to +$2,911, and when they stopped at 17:53:11 they were $38,961 down.

The high-score table (updated 08:49 UTC Sept 23) has asdasdas1111 at $5.58 million wagered all time and −$215,954.

Why 1.2x?

Betting at 1.2x feels safe because you almost always win. It isn't any safer in the long run. The house edge is the same at every payout, so each roll loses the same small share of the stake on average. What changes is the shape: lots of small wins, and now and then one loss that wipes out five or six of them. At $60,000 a roll that loss is big, and trying to win it back straight away, the way both of these players did with a much bigger stake, makes it bigger.

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