Roulette is considered to be the holy grail of a casino, for both players and casinos by the way. Casinos enjoy the house edge which creates an advantage for the house, which comes from odds not matching the winning chance. And for players, it is one of the biggest payoffs possible. Getting a single number has a 37 to 1 winning multiplier.
Besides, you can find numerous different mathematical strategies online that can help you win in a roulette game. So today we will take a look at most popular and simple ones. Let’s see if any of them are worthy of the holy grail.
Martingale Strategy
Probably the most famous strategy of all. Many people who have never seen a roulette wheel in real life have heard of it. This is a betting strategy that relies on doubling a wager every time you lose on a color.
To make it more understandable:
- You bet $1 on red and you lose.
- So you bet $2 now on the red, you lose again.
- Now you bet $4 on red, just for the sake of arguments let’s say that you’ve lost again.
- So what do you do – you bet $8 on red and you win.
What is the end result? 8 – 4 – 2 – 1 = 1($). Basically, this progressive betting strategy allows you to win an amount equal to the first bet the next time you get lucky.
Now let’s look closer at this system and talk about misconceptions and problems.
First of all, your chance of getting red or black is not 50/50. We’ve talked about the house edge before (if you don’t know what it is then read this first). Your chances are 48.6% in European roulette and 46.37% in American.
The second misconception is that the chances of a ball hitting your color do not increase with each loss. Each next spin is independent of the previous, so your chances are always the same, even after 100 losses in a row.
Now to the problems with that system. Although mathematically you could go up higher with your bets until the win, the real life is a little bit more complicated. Usually, the table has something called the maximum bet, that is, you cannot wager more than a certain amount, and with doubling the wager, the chances of reaching the max are quite good. Let’s be honest: you are not interested in winning just $1. And with this strategy, the higher the initial bet, the quicker you reach the ceiling and from that point onwards each loss does not get accounted in the system.
So if you decide to use this system, then you must first know the rules, estimate how many losses you can go without reaching the max bet, and remember your odds.
Reverse Martingale Strategy
This is a regressive betting system when you back down from losses and up on the winnings. We will not go deep into the math as this system is proven to be seriously flawed and ineffective. For example, you will only win $1 with seven wins and 3 losses, while in regular Martingale you would earn $3.
Fibonacci Strategy
A similar system, except that you use the sum of all previous losses instead of doubling them up. This adds up to zero every time. It has the same problems as the previous strategy. And let’s be honest, you come to a casino not to break even, you plan to win. So this is not interesting.
Magic 8 System
This is a little bit more complex betting strategy. First of all, it is the only inside betting system on our list today. Similar to the chaos theory, it works as follows: let’s say that during previous 8 spins the results were 5, 20, 23, 31, 4, 9, 24, 15. What you do is start betting on 5, then on 5 and 20, then on 5, 20 and 23. You are carrying on until winning after which you need a new sequence. It is a medium risk system. You can extend to a sequence of 11 but then you increase the risk, so generally speaking, you are better off sticking with 8.
We didn’t go to the entire math of this system, as it is extremely complex. And although some might tell you stories about 98% winning chance in the long run, you should remember that it shares the same basic problem of randomness. Each next spin of a wheel is independent from the previous – in the RNG, R stands for RANDOM.
D’Alembert System
This is one of the safest strategies with relatively low payoffs. But what did you expect? No pay no game, my friends.
The good thing about this system is that it relies on smaller progression when compared to Martingale, for example. The math is quite simple: you increase by 1 after each loss and decrease by 1 after a win.
So, for example, you go with 5 – loss, 6 – loss, 7 – win, 6 – loss, 7 – win, 6 – win and so on. The end game looks like 6 + 7 + 7 – 6 – 6 – 5 = 3 ($). The immediate requirement for any profit is that you need to have the same number of wins as losses.
Of course, it carries the same risks as any other outside betting system and there is always a chance of going on a losing streak. The problem here obviously is that unlike Martingale, where you only require 1 win to have a small winning, here you need to break even with the house, but the payoff is always larger. In fact, you always get the same winning amount as the number of successful bets (if the requirement is matched). Another upside is that you aren’t really at risk of hitting a maximum bet if you haven’t started with the amount close to this number.
Now, obviously even when carefully using these strategies you might not always win, remember that there is always an element of luck present at the casino. But you will be far better off playing roulette with some strategy than just rushing and placing bets randomly, although that also can work.
You think that those are “small-time” systems? Wait till the next release where we will discuss more advanced strategies with higher risks and larger payoffs.