I would like to bet on soccer games, on every possible combination. For example, I bet on $10$ different games, and each soccer game can go three ways: either a win, draw, or loss.
How many combinations would I have to use in order to get a guaranteed win by betting $10$ matches with every combination possible?
Each game has three possibilities. So after the first game there are three potential outcomes. After the second, game there are three times three. That is for each of the three outcomes of the previous game, there are three outcomes for the second. By induction, each new game increases the number of potential outcomes by a factor of three. So for ten games, it is $3^{10}$, which is about 59,000.