Casinos

How many times have you searched for roulette on google and the above website descriptions have shown up in the search results ? Well, if you are anything like me, you will have seen them hundreds of times. I have many years experience of playing roulette in casinos both online and at land based casinos, including in the gambler's paradise Las Vegas. Therefore, knowing something about roulette and having a decent knowledge of gambling odds and probabilities I was intrigued by these claims and decided to investigate some of them to see if they were, as they claimed, the holy grail of betting.

What I discovered was that, as I suspected, they are all scams and you will lose money, potentially a lot of money, if you follow them. Below I examine some of the claims made will these systems and provide you with the truth.

The system

The system itself is very simple, you select either red or black to bet on and put your opening stake on your selection. Some suggest starting at £1, some suggest you can start at £5. They all say not to be too greedy and to keep your opening stake small. This is nothing to do with being greedy but everything to do with the fundamental flaw in the system which I will explain later. Some of the systems also say that you should spin the wheel until you get a run of three or four blacks or reds in a row and then bet on the opposite colour because, they claim, this increases the possibility the other colour will come up.

You have selected red ,you place your £1 bet and and spin the wheel. If it is red you receive £2, £1 profit and your £1 stake back. If it is black or zero you lose your £1 bet and you need to double your original bet. So now you put £2 on red and spin the wheel. If it is red you receive £4 so you have made £1 profit. (£4 - £3 total staked so far). If it is black or zero you double the £2 bet on red. The system states that you keep doubling your stake until red comes up and you make a £1 profit. You then start again with a £1 stake on the colour of your choice.

In a nutshell, select a colour, start with a £1 bet and double your stake until you win.

Sounds wonderful doesn't it? Easy money guaranteed to win, no need to work again ! But hold on, let's look further into this system and the claims made about it.

The claims

Using a European roulette wheel, there are 37 numbers on the wheel - 18 red, 18 black and zero. This means that if you choose red the chance of the ball landing on red is 18/37 = 0.486 = 48.6%. So you have a 51.4% chance of losing your money. When the odds you are getting on the bet are 1/1 you can see how this is a bad value bet. However, some of the sites claim that by waiting, for example, for 3 non reds in a row then you are almost certain to win. They claim that using mathematics the table is now in your favour. They do this by showing the probability of 4 non reds as being,

(19/37) x (19/37) x (19x37) x (19x37) = 0.51 x 0.51 x 0.51 x 0.51 = 0.07

in other words the chance of 4 non reds in a row is 7% and so after 3 spins the chance of the ball landing on red is (100-7) = 93%

It is true that the probability of 4 non reds in a row is 7% but there is one important thing that is not disclosed and that is that no prior spin has any effect on any future spin. Every time the wheel is spun the chances of red turning up are (18/37)= 48.6%. If the wheel has been red the last 10 spins the chance of it being red in the next spin are still (18/37) = 48.6%. Therefore, on every spin of the wheel you are getting bad odds. (1/1 on a 48.6% chance). For more information on this read the gambler's fallacy section.

No matter what you do you cannot turn the mathematics of the roulette wheel in your favour. Mathematics show that no roulette system can work because they are mathematically perfect in favour of the house. To try and beat roulette by using a system your are trying to beat the laws of mathematics - IT CANNOT BE DONE.

The staking plan of doubling your bet after a loss so that first win will recover all previous losses plus win a profit equal to the original stake is known as the Martingale system and was popular in 18th century France. The system will work if you have infinite wealth but as nobody has infinite wealth the exponential growth of the bets will eventually bankrupt you. Look up the Martingale system on Wikipedia and it states "the assumptions behind the strategy are unsound. Players using the Martingale system do not have any long term mathematical advantage over any other betting system or even randomly placed bets."

The sites claim that it is unlikely that you will get more than 6 or 7 spins before you win but this is just not true. If you read betting or casino forums you will find that is it not uncommon to get 15 spins of the same colour. In Monte Carlo in 1913 black came up 26 times in a row and in New York in 1943 red came up 32 times in a row.

Lets look at the amount of money required to cover a series of bets starting with a £1 stake.

As you see,if you lose 14 times in a row on the 15th spin you would have to stake £16,384 in order to make £1 profit. If you lose 19 in a row on the 20th spin you would have to stake £524,288 just to win £1. The problem here is not just that you will probably run out of money but you will reach the table limit. Casinos have a maximum bet limit and you can bet no more than this amount. If you reach the limit and cannot bet any higher you will have suffered a serious financial loss.

A lot of these sites claim they are on the side of the small guy helping you out by beating the big bad casinos. Some invite you to thank them by donating some money to them. However, the truth is far more sinister.

The Sting

The sites say that this system will only work at certain casinos and provide you with a list of these to target. What the site owners do not tell you is that they have an arrangement with the casinos and that they get paid for for every player that signs up with them by getting a share of all the money you lose at the casino. The more players they sign up the more they get paid. This is also why they say you need to click on the link on their site. 

They do not get paid if you win. This is why they encourage you to not spend too much time at any one casino and sign up with all the recommended casinos. It affects their profit if you do manage to win !

If you feel that these sites are giving you this system out of the goodness of their hearts ask yourself why a lot of them appear on the sponsored links section on the google search ? In other words ,they are paying google to have their sites appear on the search results. Type in "win at roulette" in the google search bar and see for yourself. They would not do this unless it was profitable for them to do so.

They also say that you should regularly switch between casinos and not just use the one casino because if caught using this system you will be banned. This is just not true. Casinos love players who use systems because they know they have the laws of mathematics on their side and that they cannot lose.

Conclusion

Roulette is a lot of fun to play and sometimes you can get lucky and win so carry on and enjoy it but please DO NOT USE THIS SYSTEM to try to make money as you could possibly lose a huge amount. Gamble sensibly.