Roulette Help
If you haven't been having much luck and you feel like you need some
roulette help, you've come to the right place. Many websites would try to
convince you that you aren't winning at roulette because you aren't making
the best wagers, or you aren't using their money management or betting
system. These people are likely to be peddling a book or an e-book that
claims to give you the secrets to roulette betting strategies that can't
fail, ways to spot roulette wheels which are out-of-balance or have deep
slots, or other arcane roulette secrets.
I'm here to tell you that kind of roulette help is worse than no help at all. I'm hear to tell you that there's no roulette strategy that works, because the odds are stacked too heavily against you. Actually, there is one system that assures you'll beat roulette--getting lucky. Short of that, you aren't going to beat the roulette odds. Even then, if you play roulette long enough, the odds are going to catch up and you're luck is going to run out.
Martingale Roulette Strategy Help
Right
now, you might be asking, "What about the Martingale betting strategy?" The
Martingale system suggests that you bet more every time you lose, because
the odds should even out and you'll win back what you lost on the previous
bet. There's even one prominent website that claims that "statistics say
that it is impossible to lose more than eight times in succession". Let's
take a look at that for a second.
Let's say you make an even-money roulette bet for $1. The odds of losing the first bet are 50%. The odds of losing the second bet are 50%. The odds of losing the third bet are 50% and so on. Those odds never go down, no matter how many bets you lose in a row. But what are the odds of losing eight 50/50 bets in a row? That's something like 0.4006875, about one-half of one percent--not impossible. For roughly every 200 sequences of bets on a 50-50 proposition, you're going to hit a really bad streak where you lose 8 bets in a row.
In the classic Martingale system, you keep doubling until you win, which covers you initial losses (no matter how many losses) plus $1. So for each of these sequences ends when you win, you win $1, no matter what. At the end of the 199 winning sequences, you have $199 to show for your trouble.
Risk of Ruin
Now let's look at that 200th time, where you lose 8 bets in a row. If you keep double that dollar bet every time you lose, then after losing 8 bets, you are wagering $256 on the next spin of the win. Mind you, your odds of winning that next bet are still 50-50, so you're risking a lot of money on the outcome of that one wager.
What happens if you lose that bet and you're suddenly down $57 for that betting session? Do you dare double your bet again to $512? What happens if you lose that wager (mind you, it's a 50-50 bet)? Are you going for $1,024 bets? How about $2,048?
The Martingale system exposes a player to what's called the "risk of ruin", if played to its logical conclusion. The people who push this system back it up with the veneer of logical mathematics, but the math doesn't add up. Consistent tests with the Martingale System show that the system doesn't increase your winnings, and exposes you to a greater degree of variance than standard roulette betting practices.
In the end, the Martingale system creates a whole lot of small wins, which are more than offset by that one horrendous streak of luck you're sure to have at some point.
Roulette Strategies - Flawed Logic
Those figures above are rough figures, and they give the Martingale proponent the benefit of the doubt (which I shouldn't). The premise of the 50-50 bet isn't right to begin with. In American roulette, there are two zero slots, the single-zero and the double-zero, which are automatic loses on the even-money bets. Your odds of winning an even-money bet in roulette is just over 47%, which is how the casino makes a profit.
Gambler's Fallacy
The Martingale System exploits what gamblers call "gambler's fallacy". This is the idea that, if a random outcome hasn't happened in the last X-number of spins, that it's more likely to happen or "bound to happen soon". No, it's not bound, because each and every spin in roulette is entirely separate from every other spin. Each time you wager, it's an entirely new game.
So when you're surfing the Internet for roulette help, beware the people who claim they can help you win. Those people are just trying to sell you a product.
