Loss Recovery Calculator

The Loss Recovery Calculator answers a dangerous arithmetic question: what stake, at given decimal odds, would both erase a current loss and add a target profit if the next bet wins. Three inputs: Current Loss (default $100), Extra Profit (default $10), Decimal Odds (default 2.0). Recovery Stake = (loss + target) / (odds − 1). Risk Level is High if that stake exceeds 2 × loss, otherwise Moderate. On the defaults, stake = (100 + 10) / (2 − 1) = $110.00, and $110 > 2×$100? No, so Moderate.

Read that $110 slowly. You are already down $100. You now put $110 more at even money to try to finish $10 up. If you win, profit on the bet is $110, net session = −100 + 110 = +10, as designed. If you lose, you are down $210, and the next recovery stake at the same 2.0 and a new $10 target would be 220, then 430, a martingale cousin. The risk label Moderate is a threshold on stake versus original loss, not a safety certificate. High would fire at odds 1.5: stake = 110 / 0.5 = $220, which is > $200, High — matching the unit test in the repo.

Lower Extra Profit to 0 if you only want to get back to zero: stake = 100 / 1 = $100 at 2.0. Raise odds to 3.0: stake = 110 / 2 = $55, still Moderate. Long odds shrink the required stake and raise the chance you simply lose it. Short odds (1.20) explode the stake: 110 / 0.20 = $550, High, and you are risking 5.5× the hole to climb $10 out of it.

The calculator will not refuse to compute. It will label High when the stake is more than twice the hole. That is the only brake. Chasing losses is how martingale systems and “one good hit” sessions bankrupt a roll that the Expected Loss and Bankroll Safety tools would have kept intact. Use this page to see the stake, then consider not placing it.

If odds ≤ 1, profit per unit is non-positive and the engine returns an infinite stake. Do not type 1.00. The minimum accepted is 1.01, which already implies a monstrous stake: 110 / 0.01 = $11,000 on a $100 hole.

Loss recovery arithmetic is the algebra of chasing. Every martingale, every “I just need one win at 2.0,” every labouchère line that adds the loss to the next stake is a version of stake = (hole + pride) / (odds − 1). The formula is correct as arithmetic and usually disastrous as policy. SorteCalc prints it because hiding the number does not stop people from doing it in their heads badly. Seeing $110 to recover $100 plus $10 at even money is more honest than “one more double.”

History: martingale appears in 18th-century French gambling; the name’s etymology is messy, the doubling is not. D’Alembert, Labouchère, and Fibonacci progressions are cousins — they all raise exposure after a loss. Feller and every responsible-gambling chapter note that a finite bankroll plus a table limit makes the doubling scheme’s “certain recovery” a fiction. This calculator is one-step, not a full progression: it sizes the next bet only. The High/Moderate flag is a crude 2× hole threshold, not a Kelly condition and not a risk-of-ruin number.

The Extra Profit field exists because people rarely chase to exact zero; they want to “get the night back plus a taxi.” That extra $10 on a $100 hole at 2.0 is an extra $10 of stake. Pride is a line item. Set it to zero to see the pure get-even stake.

Limits: one bet, no sequence, no probability of winning, no house edge. A 2.0 price on a 48.6% roulette even-money bet (European) has negative expectation; recovering in expectation is impossible, recovering on a given path is possible and costly. The tool does not multiply by p. It cannot tell you the chance the recovery works. Pair with the casino-edge and expected-loss pages to see that the next $110 has expectation −$2.97 at 2.7% edge, not +$10.

Educational purpose: expose the leverage. Odds 1.5, $220 to chase $110 of hole-plus-target, High. Odds 2.0, $110, Moderate. The labels are not moral. They are a ratio. If you still chase, you at least know the ratio. The warning is the product: chasing losses is how a $100 hole becomes a $1,000 story. This page is the first chapter of that story, not the strategy.

A lecture on how to size a one-step recovery stake is linear payout arithmetic, and it is usually disastrous as policy. Current loss L = 100, extra profit target T = 10, decimal odds o = 2. Net profit per unit staked on a win is o − 1. To collect L + T when the bet wins you need stake × (o − 1) = L + T, hence stake = (L + T)/(o − 1) = 110/1 = 110. Risk is labelled High if that stake exceeds twice the hole, otherwise Moderate. One hundred ten is not greater than 200, so Moderate. You are already down 100; you now put 110 more at even money to try to finish 10 up. Win, and session profit is −100 + 110 = +10. Lose, and you are down 210.

At odds 1.5 the same 110 of hole-plus-target demands 110/0.5 = 220, which exceeds 200, High. At odds 3.0 the stake shrinks to 55, still Moderate. Short odds 1.20 explode it: 110/0.20 = 550, High, five and a half times the hole to climb 10 out of it. Set the extra profit to 0 to see the pure get-even stake: 100 at even money. Odds 1.01 already imply 110/0.01 = 11000 on a 100 hole. The next recovery after a loss at the defaults would ask for 220, then 430: a martingale cousin. The Moderate label is a ratio, not a safety certificate.

Martingale appears in eighteenth-century French gambling; d’Alembert, Labouchère, and Fibonacci progressions are cousins that raise exposure after a loss. Feller and every responsible-gambling chapter note that a finite bankroll plus a table limit makes “certain recovery” a fiction. This calculation sizes the next bet only. Expectation if the true win chance is π: stake × (π o − 1). For a fair even-money coin that product is 0, so you cannot expect to recover a hole in one fair bet. With house edge, π o is less than 1 and the recovery bet deepens expected loss. A 2.0 price on European even-money roulette, about 48.6 percent, has negative mean; the next 110 has expectation about −2.97 at 2.7 percent edge, not +10.

Assumptions: one bet, no sequence, no probability input, odds greater than 1. The identity is just solving a linear payout. The twice-the-hole threshold is arbitrary engineering, not Huygens, not Kelly, not Feller. Pride is a line item: the extra 10 on a 100 hole at 2.0 is an extra 10 of stake. Seeing 110 to recover 100 plus 10 at even money is more honest than “one more double.” A linear payout does not undo a negative-drift walk. That is the entire warning, and the entire mathematics. Chasing is how a 100 hole becomes a 1000 story; this page is the first chapter of that story, not the strategy.