Roulette Betting Systems
Roulette betting systems are all equally worthless. Actually, the term
"worthless" may not be appropriate, because some roulette betting strategies
are worse than useless--they're dangerous. I'm going to discuss a few of
them in order to give you something to think about before buying a bunch of
roulette strategy books.
Roulette House Edge
I've been writing a lot lately about the house edge in roulette. The house edge, or the expected value, is the amount of money a casino expects to make on a game (on average). Every game in the casino is weighted slightly in the advantage of the casino operators. A license to open a casino is essentially a license to operate games where the casino (the house) has a built-in advantage.
While
that advantage doesn't assure the casino of winning any given hand or
gambling session, it does give the casino reasonable expectations that it
will pull down significant profits in any given period. With thousands of
bets riding at any given time in a casino, and all those bets providing a
house edge, the casino is virtually assured it's going to make a profit off
these bets.
Roulette Payout Percentage
That means you should expect to lose a certain amount of money at roulette, because you're no exception. In European roulette, you should expect to lose around $2.63 for every $100 dollars spent. In American roulette, the figure swells to around $5.26.
Nothing you can do changes that fact--the casino has the advantage. Roulette not only has one of the worst payout percentages of all games in the casino, but it also offers no strategy deviations that are going to increase your odds (unless you are making the five-number basket bet on the 0, 00, 1, 2, and 3--always avoid this bet).
Despite this, people still come up with roulette betting systems they think are going to work, and people still write books telling people they have a system that works. All these people are lying to you.
Martingale System - Roulette Betting
The Martingale System is one of the most enduring scams in the casino betting world. That's probably because it's been around since the 18th century and has the respectability of old age. There's also the mathematical, scientific sheen it has. At face value, the martingale system appears to make common sense.
That's one reason common sense is often overrated.
How the Martingale System Works
The Martingale System tells you to double your bet after a losing spin. If you bet $1 and lose, then bet $2. If you win, then you've won back your initial stake and then some. If you lose, then bet $4. If you win, then you've won back your initial two losing stakes and then some. This continues until you win, at which point you start your betting cycle over again at $1.
Common sense tells you this should work. Common sense breaks down when you have a run of bad luck using the Martingale System, though. Let's assume you lose ten bets in a row. That's bad luck, but if you're played Roulette for any length of time, you know cold streaks happen, like in any gambling endeavor.
The third bet was $4, so the fourth bet would be $8, the fifth would be $16, the sixth bet would be $32, the seventh bet would be $64, the eighth bet would be $128, the ninth bet would be $256, and the tenth bet would be $512. After your tenth losing hand, your 11th wager would be a whopping $1,024. And that's to recoup your initial $1 bet.
Why the Martingale System Sucks
I don't know one gambler who starts with a $1 wager and who takes satisfaction in winning back a $1 wager who is willing to let over a thousand dollars ride on one spin of the roulette wheel. That gambler doesn't exist. Sure, it's unlikely that you'll lose 10 times in a row on a 50-50 bet, but even if you assume five losses, most $1 roulette players I know don't want to be making $32 on a 50-50 proposition.
Consistent tests with the Martingale System show that you don't make more money than you lose and your risk of ruin (losing all your money) goes through the roof. While you might win a lot of small sessions, the losses on the big losing sessions of roulette more than make up the difference. And when you have a bad streak of luck, you are screwed.
Gambler's Fallacy
You might suggest another strategy, such as betting on "black" after three spins that come up on "red". The idea is that the black slot is due, because it hasn't hit in the last few spins. This ignores the fact that no two spins are connected, so hitting red last time does not increase the chances that the ball lands on black this time. It's still a 50-50 proposition--actually less than 50/50, since there are those green 0 and 00 slots.
While the law of averages tells you that, if you had a near-infinite number of spins (whatever that term means--let's say a trillion spins), then roughly 1/2 of the spins would be black and 1/2 would be red. But that's at the high numbers, when the odds begin to play out. At small numbers, even a thousand spins, there's no telling what the split will be. In the end, no matter how many times a ball lands on red (or black) in succession, that has absolutely no bearing on the likelihood the ball lands on the other color on the next spin.
That's just not how it works. Most roulette betting systems proponents and writers focus on these flawed betting strategies, hoping you won't analyse what they're selling, at least long enough to make the sell. They're selling hope, but that hope is a con game.
Einstein on Roulette
Albert Einstein, known somewhat for his ability to analyze, famously said about roulette, "No one can possibly win at roulette unless he steals money from the table while the croupier isn't looking." And he was right. Even for the mathematicians (or especially for them), no roulette betting system has been found that beats the house edge.
