The Most Famous Roulette Betting Systems
The versions of online casino roulette so popular with today’s gamers are broadly based on a casino game with a long history. Though no one knows for sure, roulette is said to have evolved from wheel-based concepts like the medieval Wheel of Fortune and the Old English wheel game Even/Odd, and from an Italian board game called Biribiri. The French physicist and mathematician Blaise Pascal is also known to have linked the theory of probability to games of chance, but most experts believe roulette began in 17th century Italy.
However, it was during the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe that the game began to emerge in a more modern form. Even so, access to the game was often restricted to those in high society, and sometimes banned all together – as happened in France in 1837. At this particular time, those looking to develop the game simply moved to Germany where it was still legal. But roulette was soon outlawed in Germany too – so one of the few places which encouraged roulette casinos was Monte Carlo.
European roulette developed as a single zero game, and this version remains popular around the world. However, the American version used a double zero system, which actually gives the house a better edge. This is still the main difference between these two roulette variants. But it was not until the 1970s that casino roulette became more popular. Nevertheless, many movies (such as ‘Casablanca’, starring Humphrey Bogart) include a roulette sequence, as do novels such as Ian Fleming's ‘Casino Royale’, in which James Bond employs a roulette strategy.
It is only with widespread Internet access that roulette has become really popular with online casino gamblers. And this new popularity has encouraged many players to study some of the most famous roulette strategies devised by major players to tip the odds of winning in their favour. So let’s look at a brief summary of these different roulette systems.
The Martingale and the Grand Martingale
The Martingale is the first of these closely related strategies, and dictates that you should double your bet if you lose. This relies on the belief that you will win sometimes, and when that payout happens, this strategy will get you back in credit. In practice it can be risky because doubling your loss soon mounts up. Look at the sequence 5, 10, 20, 40, 80, 160, 320, 640, 1280, and you’ll see that 8 losing plays, then 1 win, would leave you shelling out £1,280 to win back a £5 bet. The Grand Martingale recommends tripling your bet after a loss.
The Labouchere System
The well-known Labouchere roulette system involves a negative progression. You create a number sequence of bet units, say 5, 10, 15. You then bet the sum of the first and last units (5 + 15 = 20). If you lose, you add that bet to the end of the row, making your new sequence 5, 10, 15, 20 and your next bet (5 + 20 = 25). This applies with every losing play. But if you win, you cancel the first and last numbers – so in this example, a win on the second play leaves you ahead by 5 units
The D'Alembert Strategy
This strategy relies upon the (unsubstantiated) belief that wins balance out over time. So if you were betting on the number 12, which had been a successful approach for the first 100 spins, the D'Alembert method suggests it’s a wise move to switch – simply because it’s in the ‘nature of chance’ that other number payouts will now start to ‘catch up’. Though this notion might sound right, it’s commonly described as the Gambler’s Fallacy.
The Fibonacci Number Sequence
Often referred to as ‘nature’s code’, the Fibonacci number sequence is constructed by adding a new number which is the sum of the two preceding digits. It begins like this: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55 … So the pattern goes: 0+1 =1; 1+1 =2; 1+2 = 3; etc. For gamblers, where your betting unit is 10, you bet 10, lose and bet 20 (10 + 10), lose and bet 30 (10 + 20) etc.
The Paroli system
Some also call this ‘parley’ – a positive betting strategy where you only increase your bet following a win. Gamblers who use this system commonly double their bets for three successive plays. So a 10 unit bet becomes 20 units and then 40 units. It is claimed this works well with a winning streak, and the system can be stopped at any point.
The Chaos Approach to Roulette Betting
Scientific chaos theory suggests that small changes in context can have large scale random effects over time. For online roulette players, that means knowing about small flaws in live-casino wheels or random number generators would tilt the odds in a gambler’s favour by as much as 18%. But how gambler’s might discover such things is something chaos-theory gamblers never seem to explain.
The 6 Pence Roulette System
The aim of a 6 Pence strategy is simply to cover as much of the roulette number field as possible. For instance, six numbers are covered by one single chip, and the general idea is to try and at least break even on any spin. That, of course, means accepting that any straight-up bet successes will just be a bonus.
The Green Black Attack Roulette System
The layout of red and black numbers is at the heart of this strategy. Looking at the layout of number columns from behind the wheel, the leftmost column starts on 1, the centre column on 2, and the right-hand column on 3. But in terms of the distribution of red and black numbers, these same columns have six, eight and four black numbers respectively. This system allows gamblers to take advantage of the heavier concentration of black numbers in that central column.
Clocking Spins
Spin clocking is a technique gamblers have occasionally tried to employ on live casino tables. In essence, it is an attempt to observe and calculate the probability of the spinning ball landing in certain sectors of the wheel and adjusting betting to try to take advantage of this. However, playing an online roulette casino facility such as JackpotCity avoids all such problems, and so gives every gambler an equal chance of securing that big win.