With the exception of a tiny handful of punters, no player can beat the tables consistently without taking advantage of great streaks of luck. Beating roulette with streak bets can be both fun and profitable.
Roulette players tend to love their game so much that they adhere to what Nick “The Greek” Dandalos said, “The only thing as good as gambling and winning, is gambling and losing.”
In an effort to find any way possible to supplement or enhance their chances at the roulette table, enthusiasts tend to use betting systems that increase their time at the table without necessarily increasing their overall odds of winning.
The simple fact of roulette is that the house has the advantage and will win one more bet out of every 37 spins than the player. However, roulette betting systems can take advantage of streaks and provide a player with the opportunity to increase their bankrolls in specific situations.
Betting Against a Streak
The Martingale system is one of the best known and easiest to apply betting systems. The player simply doubles their bet each time they lose and waits for a winner. Many roulette players employ this system with an even money bet (odd or even, red or black, first 18 or second 18) after seeing the opposite side hit three times in a row.
The logic that the other side is now due to hit isn’t actually logic at all, it’s the classic gambler’s fallacy that the odds of an event happening are going to even-out quickly by returning a series of events that are the opposite of what has just been observed.
On each spin of the ball, the chance of red coming up is 48.7%. On a single zero wheel, if a bet on red wins .487% of the time, the odds of two consecutive red spins is .237, three in a row is .115, four in a row is .0562, and five in a row is .0274. That means a streak of five happens about once in 36.5 spins, and we’ll round up to 37.
So, if you see four straight black spins, does that mean the next spin has to be red (or green) except in one case out of 37? No. The odds are still 48.7% that black is coming back. However, that’s what keeps Martingale players using their system. They will win their small bet many times before they run into a streak that wipes out their current table bankroll.
A player will see six consecutive black spins about once in 75 spins, seven consecutive about once in 154 spins. That’s why Martingale players can win so many times, build up a little bankroll, and have it in their head that the system is a winner. Because of those long odds, a player may win 100, 200, or even 300 straight betting opportunities.
Want to give it a try yourself? Give Lonnie’s roulette simulations a look – click on bet, make the number of spins 100, and see if you get a streak of over 7 on an even-money bet. The results might surprise you!
Dodging the bullet of casino odds is like Russian roulette and you’ve got five chances out of six of winning, and one chance in six that will blow your bankroll out of the water. The problem with the Martingale and many other roulette systems is that you are constantly risking a small fortune to win a single bet. Give it a shot, win a few bets, and consider yourself lucky. Don’t expect it to always work.
Betting With a Streak
Instead of betting against a streak, some players have had great success by anticipating a streak of even-money outcomes continuing. With this system, the player simply chooses an even-money bet (odd/even, red/black, 1-18/19-36) and places a single five-unit wager. When it loses it is replaced with a new five unit wager. When it wins, let the winnings ride until it wins five straight times for a payoff of 155 units.
If every bet was a win or a loss, the house would win its 2.7% and that would be it. However, due to several small streaks happening before a streak of five straight appears, the bettor will not lose 19 of every 37 spins. However, it can be a good stretch before a winning streak of five straight appears.
An added twist to this strategy is to pull back a single chip after the first three wins of 5, 10, and 20, so 35 rides on the bet. If this wins, two chips are pulled back so 60 rides. If the bet wins again, either the total of 120 is pulled back, or four chips are pulled back and 100 rides. If the 100 bet wins, the entire 200 is now pulled back and the opposite side of the bet (even – now odd, etc.) is made for a single 5-unit wager.
Experiment with your own mixture of these bets to find a happy medium. If you don’t have a wheel at home, try the free online roulette game on the American, European or French roulette pages.
Barring that, you can always take a deck of cards and make your own set-up of 18 even numbers, 18 odd numbers, and an ace to represent the zero, and shuffle away to try a streak system.