The roulette strategies

The first thing to point out is that on average roulette players do not win, because of the house edge. But some players do win.

Note that we only provide honest strategy evaluations. If you read on the Web about a guaranteed roulette system sure to bring you riches for a modest fee, there is only one thing guaranteed: the vendor is lying. Because there is no way to beat the game of roulette systematically. The only way to beat roulette (without cheating) is to have some luck.

When you play roulette online, you can either play as you wish, or follow a specific strategy. If luck is on your side, then you may win a lot of money at roulette as some players have in the past. Here is a review of the main roulette strategies, feel free to play 3d roulette and try the strategy of your choice.

The martingale strategy

The martingale strategy is probably the most famous roulette system. It is so famous indeed that its name is used in theoretical statistics, to describe a purely random sequence of numbers.

The martingale system is simple: start with a small bet size (this unit of betting will not change); make an even bet such as betting on red; if you win, great; otherwise double up and bet once more; continue doubling up until you win.

Let's take an example with $1 as the unit of betting. You bet $1 on red and black comes out; now bet $2 on red, and black comes out; if you bet $4 and lose again, bet $8 on red and let's say you finally win your bet. The total profit is 8-4-2-1=1. The profit will always to $1 each time you reach a win. This sounds like a sure way of winning.

The problem is when you lose a large number of times in a row, like ten times; now the next bet has to be $2048 just in the hope of winning $1. This is a very bad risk return trade off. Anyway you may reach the limit of your bankroll or the house limit for that table. Unable to make the next bet, you lose a lot of money.

This is the risk with the martingale strategy. It is guaranteed to earn you a steady income until you hit a very bad run of luck and that time you take a big loss.

The Labouchere strategy

What was noticeable in the previous strategy was that the bets were increasing too fast, leading to potential large bets with the attached risk to take a large loss. The Labouchere strategy follows the same idea except that the bet size does not increase that fast.

The Labouchere system consist in first choosing a target profit and a progression of the bet size in order to reach the target. The same problem of potential large bets also arise, but at a lower speed than the martingale system.

The dopey experiment

This a different strategy created by Andres Martinez, a former Los Angeles Times editor. Divide your bankroll by 35 and keep on betting on the same number each time. If you win at some point, the remaining money is pure profit that you can use to keep on betting and make a large profit.

This is a nice idea. The problem with this system is that there is a 39% chance that the chosen number does not come out within 35 attempts, in which case the bankroll is lost.

Roulette strategies summary

Let's be clear you need luck to win at roulette, but it can be fun to make best based on one of these systems. These roulette strategies and others give you a foundation to make smart bets instead of betting randomly.