Let's play a game.

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e.g. if 1,000,000 people each paid $1000 to play this game, they would probably end up with more money than they started with (as a group)

that is, they would probably have over $1,000*1,000,000 = 1 billion dollars combined at the end of the games.

maybe i'll write a program to test it

If we go by probability alone

500,000 people will get $2 = $1,000,000
250,000 will get $4 = $1,000,000
125,000 will get $8 = $1,000,000
and so on by each half. Since one million can be divided in half 500,000 times, the total excepted payout would be $500,000,000,000, or $500,000 dollars each.

Of course, under Murphy's Law, we just have a million people out $998.

[jimboston]

Assuming the $2, $4, $8 scenario, I would pay $10 without doing the math.

The odds would be in the house's favor, but once I got past 4 flips it would all be profit.
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I wouldn't play with the $2000, $4000, $8000 numbers, as the stakes would be too high for my gambling taste.
(i.e. I would only pay a couple hundred for that and the house would never take that bet.)

[Funkyterrance]

once again, reality. in any game that I pay money for, I have a limited amount of starting money. doesn't do me any good to have spent all my money in a game that I could have made a lot of money but didn't... which is the primary reason I very rarely gamble at all

The more I come back to this thread the more I love this quote. Nobody wants to lose any money so human nature dictates that most people would pay relatively little to play.
How about we play another game? Russian roulette with 10,000 people and a reallly high capacity cylinder. If you last the one and only round you get a random prize anywhere from 2 to $1,000,000. I've got pretty good odds of making a buck but I think I'll pass.