Two strategies for Roulette

Remember the movie Play it to the Bone? The part where Woody Harrelson explains his roulette strategy to Antonio Banderas, how for red/black bets the odds are 50% either way, so each time you lose double your bet
until you win, and then go back to your original bet. That was a basic explanation of the Martingale strategy for roulette.

Casino Roulette

Back to the movie for a second. Remember in one of the closing scenes as the two stars groaningly tell their friend Grace how many thousands of dollars they both lost? The Martingale roulette system is quite possibly the least financially sound gambling strategy ever conceived of. Why?

First, the odds are NOT 50/50 on red and black bets. There are more colors than red and black out there. There are also those little green monsters, the house numbers, 0 and 00. The actual odds are more like 47.34% for either red or black, with about a 5.32% chance on every roll of the house taking everything.

Second, under the Martingale system, you have to levy your bankroll just to break even. Taking a less than even risk just to get back to nothing is not sound financial decision making. Should your stock broker ever offer you a similar opportunity, either fire him or set up a contingency plan for your life that allows you the safety net of sleeping on your sister’s sofa.

The reason is that while long streaks of either wins or losses are statistically improbable, any experienced gambler has experienced one. By doubling your bet with each loss, a starting bet of as little as $10 doubled each time thru a 10 loss losing streak would leave a 10 grand bankroll sitting safely in the casinos vault.

Alternatively, players can try a progressive betting system in roulette. Where the previously discussed system requires you to levy your own bankroll to try to offset the house advantage, progressive betting has you raise your bet when you win instead of when you lose. This approach to roulette in inherently superior to Martingale systems since it affords the player the opportunity to profit from winning streaks, while risking only a small amount of their initial funds. Another way to say it is, after a win you are primarily taking the chance of losing your winnings, rather than going much deeper into your pockets.

Since roulette is after all a game with a negative expectation for profits, whatever rule set you use to govern your betting patterns you should play this game for fun. No system and no amount of luck can offset the fact that the house numbers exist, and the long term odds dictate that the house will never fail to make a profit from players.