The foundation of good roulette strategy
It might seem a bit strange that a game based on luck can have strategies, but rest assured, there are a lot of them out there. Pretty much every roulette strategy is used to help you accumulate some wins over a short period of time but the house edge will stop any notions of long term success. That said, knowing the strategies will help your game significantly.
Every strategy can easily be applied to live roulette, even more so than with a land-based game. This is mainly because you can take your time figuring out the system you’re using without any pressure being placed on you. It also means that you can have a strategy guide, like this one, open while you’re playing so you can make sure you’re doing everything right. You can also use various software to manage your strategy, but learning how they work for yourself is obviously much better to develop your skills.
In addition, the interface will give you valuable insights into the hot and cold numbers, the percentage of wins on each bet type and how many times a specific number has landed. All of this is averaged from up to 500 previous rounds giving you a clear understanding of how best to play on a particular table.
Now that you’ve laid the groundwork, let’s dive into the 5 most popular roulette betting strategies!
The 5 most successful roulette strategies
What is the Martingale Roulette System?
The Martingale system is definitely the most popular of all the strategies, thanks to the very simple and easy way you use it. It’s based on the idea that if you do something enough times, you will eventually win. It’s part of the progression systems of betting as the outcome of the game will determine your next bet. To be more specific, it’s counted as a negative variation of the system as you up your stakes when you lose. If you’re new to the concept of roulette betting strategies, then this is a good place to start.
It involves betting on simple chances only (e.g. red/black or odds/evens) with a relatively small bet size. When you lose a bet, you double your stake in the next game. After a streak of losses you will eventually win, and when you do you basically restart the cycle and bet the base amount again. As soon as you win, you will have won back all your previous losses, plus, you will make a small profit equal to the size of the original bet.
As you are betting on simple chances, you have an almost 50:50 chance of winning, so it seems easy to win over just a few games. For example, if you place a €1 bet on red and lose, you will place a €2 bet next, another loss and you up the stakes to €4. Say you win this game, that means that you now have €8, meaning you’re up €1. You should preferably play European or French Roulette with the La Partage rule, to keep the advantage for the casino as low as possible.
Martingale example with a starting bankroll of €50
What is the Reverse Martingale Roulette System?
The Reverse Martingale system is another popular concept that’s easy to grasp. As you probably guessed already, it works in the opposite way to the Martingale. It’s a positive progression system that involves doubling your bet after a win instead of a loss, making it perfect if you have tried out the previous strategy and are looking to expand your knowledge further.
Much like the Martingale, this works best when you wager a small amount on an even bet. If you win then you double up on your initial bet and continue doing this for each consecutive win. The idea here is that you’re covering your wins with the casino’s money instead of your own.
If you get a good streak, you will be able to make a much higher profit on this method than on the Martingale. When you eventually lose a game, you only lose what you put in at the beginning and you start back again on the lowest bet and work your way up once more.
Your odds of winning in this strategy are roughly 50:50 as well so it can be easy to rake up a few wins in a row. For example, if you place an initial bet of €1 on red and win you will get €2 back. Lovely. After this, put down this €2 on an even bet of your choice again, another win gives you €4, if you win this round you’re up to €8. You’re on a roll! Now you place a €16 bet and you lose, you’re back to square one again, but you’re only €1 out of pocket. The trick here is knowing when to bank your winnings before the eventual loss.
Reverse Martingale example with a starting bankroll of €50
What is the D’Alembert Roulette System?
In the 18th century, the mathematician Jean Le Rond d’Alembert went about creating a more profitable strategy for casino games. Hence, the d’Alembert was born. The D’Alembert is inspired by the Martingale and the Great Martingale, with many elements of the system coming from these two. The underlying principle of this strategy is the idea that you’re more likely to experience a win after a loss. Throughout the years, this negative progressive betting strategy has become one of the most popular used by players all over the world.
The concept behind the D’Alembert is quite simple: you either increase or decrease your bet depending on the outcome of the game. For this strategy, the increase occurs after every loss and the decrease occurs after every win. It works best on even odds bets and you can decide yourself how much you want to set your base bet as. If you’re new to roulette strategies, keep this as low as possible until you get a better understanding of how it works.
Placing bets on even odds means you will win roughly 50% of the time with this strategy, making it rather safe and easy to test out. Let’s say, for example, you set your base bet as €1 and place your chips on Red and you lose. Unlucky, sure, but this is where the method comes into its own. For your next bet, you will up the stakes to €2 and place it on Red (or any other even bet). If you lose again you up it to €3 and try for a win once more. This time, luck is on your side and you win, which means you win back everything you lost. Great! Now, for your next bet you will reduce the stakes to €2. Below you’ll find a table of how the above example may play out over a period of 10 games:
D’Alembert example with a starting bankroll of €50
As you can see, with an even amount of wins and loses you would still come out with €5 profit, making this a very safe betting strategy to implement and try out for yourself.
What is the Fibonacci Roulette System?
This is a negative progression betting strategy that uses the Fibonacci sequence of numbers to try and formulate a method of winning at roulette. The sequence is a mathematical theory that presents a series of numbers where each number is made up of the sum of the two previous numbers. A Fibonacci sequence looks like this:
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, …
Can you see the pattern here? This sequence will continue infinitely, but to keep things simple 34 should be far enough. This sequence has a huge number of applications in mathematics and science and, interestingly, it even occurs organically in nature too.
Like the previous two strategies, the Fibonacci method is most effective on even bets. The sequence of numbers determines how much you are going to bet. So, for your initial bet you will start off with the standard wager. If you lose, you move to the next number and you will continue to move up through the numbers until you get a win. When you win, you will actually take two steps back down through the sequence. If you win on the first two numbers in the sequence, simply start again from the beginning.
The Fibonacci gives you an almost 50:50 chance of winning as it’s only made on even bets. This makes it a very simple and very safe strategy to use. Let’s have a look at an example of how 10 plays would work out in the Fibonacci strategy:
Fibonacci example with a starting bankroll of €50
Even with so many losses in this example, you still come out with a pretty decent profit. This makes the Fibonacci method a more favourable strategy than others, namely the Martingale. It’s definitely worth learning how it works, and trying it out for yourself.
What is the Labouchere Roulette System?
The Labouchère method is a more advanced type of negative progression system. If you have a good understanding of the previous strategies and tried them out for yourself, then you’re ready to move on to a more elaborate strategy such as this. Known by many names (the Split Martingale, the Cancellation System and American Progression), it’s become a very popular system for players all over the world. It’s much like the Martingale System in a way, however, instead of recovering your losses with a single win, Labouchère aims to do it with multiple wins.
This method was formulated specifically with roulette in mind and works off of even odd bets. This system works by taking a sequence of numbers. These numbers when added up should total to the expected amount you want to win. To keep it simple, let’s take the following:
1 – 2 – 3
In this example, the expected amount you are looking to win in each cycle is €6. For each bet you make, you need to put down an amount of money that adds up to the sum of the first and the last numbers in the sequence. In this case you would be betting €4. If you win the bet, well done, you’re only €2 off what you need to achieve. Now, take the first and last numbers and remove them from the sequence. However, if you lose, you will then add the full amount of the placed bet to the end of the sequence. The series of numbers will now look like this:
1 – 2 – 3 – 4
The aim is to keep adding the amount you betted to the end of the sequence every time you lose and remove the first and last numbers when you win. If you get enough wins you will eventually remove every number and the cycle ends.
When you put some thought into the process involved with the Labouchère system, you will be able to be a bit more creative with the numbers you use and their placement in the sequence. For instance, in the above example you can split the €6 in a number of ways. Perhaps you prefer to separate it out like 1 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 1 – 1, or 2 – 2 – 2, or 1 – 1 – 4. There is a plethora of different combinations you can use.
Labouchère example with a starting bankroll of €50 and the starting sequence: 1 – 2 – 3
