Explained with data
The house doesn’t need luck. It has arithmetic.
Simulations, 235,000 matches with real odds and official Spanish gambling data to understand what really happens to the money people bet.
Every section can be read two ways: in plain mode, without jargon, or in technical mode, with the formulas, methods and code.
- Median player
- Average
- 90% of players
- Middle 50%
01 · Simulation
The Ruin Lab
83%
of the players above do not finish ahead. Change the game, the stake or the strategy and watch thousands of players at once: percentile bands, survival and risk of ruin.
Simulate →02 · Real data
Do the odds tell the truth?
-4.5%
is what you would have lost always backing the favourite for ten years (at random, -6.9%). Margin, calibration, the favourite–longshot bias and a model that tries to beat the market, across 235,796 matches.
Read →03 · Spain
The market
€1,706m
lost by online gamblers in Spain in 2025, three times more than in 2017. Revenue, marketing, bonuses and how many teenagers gamble.
See the dashboard →About
Made by Ángel Zamora Martínez, PhD in Psychology and digital health data analyst. The simulations are written in TypeScript and covered by tests; the odds analysis is a reproducible Python pipeline. All the code is open.
What people ask
- Gambling addiction test: do I have a problem with gambling? This test uses the PGSI, nine questions about the last 12 months used in research worldwide.
- How to stop gambling: what to do if you think you are addicted Start today with three things: put up barriers that do not depend on you (self-exclusion, a blocker, a bank block), put distance between you and the money, and tell one person.
- Does the martingale work? No.
- Can you make a living from sports betting? Almost nobody does.
- What are the odds of winning the Spanish Christmas Lottery? The Gordo comes up for 1 in 100,000 décimos.
- How do you self-exclude from gambling in Spain? By registering in the RGIAJ, Spain’s national self-exclusion register.