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Winning at the roulette table is something that every casino goer dreams of. That’s because it not only fulfils their goal of winning but it also satisfies the fantasy of being surrounded by beautiful people who are in awe of the winner’s prowess at the table. Just like in the movies, where the debonair high roller lets their chips ride and the ball lands on the very number which breaks the casino’s bank, every roulette player dreams of beating the odds.

Before we look at the popular gambling systems, there is a gambler’s fallacy that must be taken into account, which states that each spin of the roulette wheel is totally independent from the last. This means that the idea of a winning or losing streak simply cannot exist, because each spin of the wheel can result in any number or colour being landed on by the ball irrespective of how many times it has done so in past spins. Bearing that in mind, we can now look at the gambling systems.

The Martingale system has to be one of the most well known of the gambler’s systems for using the power of mathematics to attempt to beat the odds. Its very simplicity forms the basis for a large number of related betting systems that can be applied to games of chance such as roulette that provide even money payouts on certain bets. In roulette these bets are those that can be placed on groups made up of 18 numbers together and include evens/odds, red/black and low/high. The system’s technique is simply to bet a set amount, then if the bet loses to double the amount of the subsequent bet, continuing in this fashion until you win. Mathematically, a win will cover all your previous losses as well as providing a profit which is the equivalent of the initial wager.

When the Martingale system was first popularised in the late 18th century in France it was used extensively by roulette players. Its downfall was if a player ran out of money before winning. In modern casinos, the house betting limit prevents you from wagering large amounts which effectively curtails the system early on. It’s easy to see how the bet grows with each loss. By continually doubling a $1 bet, after only 10 losing bets your wager will have grown to $512! Once you get in that deep it becomes disheartening to know that even if you win on the next spin, your total profit is still only a dollar.

The Anti-Martingale, true to its name works in reverse to the Martingale by increasing the value of bets placed after each win and reducing them after losses. It has its logic based in the premise that the reward should come from winning streaks and not losing streaks. That logic has been taken up and used by many gamblers over the years. However, it still runs afoul of the gambler’s fallacy as described above.

Another simple gambling system is known as “Betting on Red.” This can be taken to mean betting on any one side of an evens bet, so either red or black, odds or evens, low or high for a set number of spins at a set amount wagered each time. The American roulette wheel has 38 slots with two zero pockets, meaning there are 18 winning slots available for this kind of bet. By setting your number of bets on red to 18 to cover all winnable pockets, you therefore have a 47.37% probability of landing on red. In order to break even with this kind of system, it’s necessary for the ball to drop into a red pocket 19 times. This has only a 37% probability of occurring, although the gambler’s fallacy will skew this mathematical result still further. There have been many reports of roulette wheels producing well over 18 reds in a row, which would be very good had you been betting on red, but very bad if you’d chosen black as your colour!

The combo is another popular gambling system that works by combining the Martingale and “Betting on Red” systems. The strategy here is to make two separate bets each time, one on red then one on another evens bet such as “odd”. Each bet uses the Martingale system of doubling after a losing bet and returning to the original bet after a win. With a probability of both bets winning at almost 25% and a chance to break even at nearly 50%, there is scope to keep this bet going for a fairly long time.

Because of the random nature of the gamblers fallacy, there is, in reality no system that can truly be said to be able to beat the roulette table. In that case, luck is really the only deciding factor and if your luck is in, then you’ll win. But if your luck is out, your only real chance would be to look to Einstein’s foolproof Theory of Roulette-ivity!