How to gamble against all odds

DOI10.1016/J.GEB.2015.10.006MaRDI QIDQ894618zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Gilad Bavly, Ron Peretz

Publication date 2 December 2015

Published in Games and Economic Behavior (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1311.2109, http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/54506/1/__libfile_REPOSITORY_Content_Peretz%2CR_How%20to%20gamble_Peretz_How%20to%20gamble_2013.pdf

zbMATH Keywords

repeated gamesalgorithmic randomnesspredictabilitygamblingpseudo-randomness

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Martingales with discrete parameter (60G42) Algorithmic information theory (Kolmogorov complexity, etc.) (68Q30) Multistage and repeated games (91A20) Probabilistic games; gambling (91A60)

Abstract: A decision maker observes the evolving state of the world while constantly trying to predict the next state given the history of past states. The ability to benefit from such predictions depends not only on the ability to recognize patters in history, but also on the range of actions available to the decision maker. We assume there are two possible states of the world. The decision maker is a gambler who has to bet a certain amount of money on the bits of an announced binary sequence of states. If he makes a correct prediction he wins his wager, otherwise he loses it. We compare the power of betting strategies (aka martingales) whose wagers take values in different sets of reals. A martingale whose wagers take values in a set $A$ is called an $A$-martingale. A set of reals $B$ anticipates a set $A$, if for every $A$-martingale there is a countable set of $B$-martingales, such that on every binary sequence on which the $A$-martingale gains an infinite amount at least one of the $B$-martingales gains an infinite amount, too. We show that for two important classes of pairs of sets $A$ and $B$, $B$ anticipates $A$ if and only if the closure of $B$ contains $rA$, for some positive $r$. One class is when $A$ is bounded and $B$ is bounded away from zero; the other class is when $B$ is well ordered (has no left-accumulation points). Our results generalize several recent results in algorithmic randomness and answer a question posed by Chalcraft et al. (2012).

Recommendations

• Effective martingales with restricted wagers
• A savings paradox for integer-valued gambling strategies
• How to build a probability-free casino
• A universal pair of 1/2-betting strategies

Cites work

• A savings paradox for integer-valued gambling strategies
• A unified approach to the definition of random sequences
• Effective martingales with restricted wagers
• Expressible inspections
• How to build a probability-free casino
• On calibration error of randomized forecasting algorithms
• Probabilistic Algorithmic Randomness
• Unpredictability of complex (pure) strategies

Cited in

(6)

• Effective martingales with restricted wagers
• Monotonous betting strategies in warped casinos
• Lower bounds on the redundancy in computations from random oracles via betting strategies with restricted wagers
• A universal pair of 1/2-betting strategies
• Computability theory. Abstracts from the workshop held January 7--13, 2018
• Granularity of wagers in games and the possibility of saving

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