Roulette Strategy

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No matter what game you play, be it roulette or something else, you want to win. Of course, you know you can’t win all the time, but you’d prefer to do it more times than you didn’t.

And when games have been around as long as roulette, you can be sure that plenty of people have dedicated a lot of time to finding ways to increase their chances of being victorious. In the case of roulette, the result of this effort is a range of different strategies that players like to deploy in the hopes of shrinking the house edge or even beating the casino altogether.

So is this how to play Roulette? Let’s find out.

The most successful roulette strategies in a nutshell

Everyone who plays roulette has a strategy, even if they don’t realize it. For some people, that strategy is to bet on red each time, others like to pick numbers that mean something to them.

While they may not be overly effective, they are strategies.

However, some of the more structured strategies include:

• Martingale
• Reverse Martingale
• Labouchère
• Fibonacci
• Andrucci
• D’Alembert

If you’re starting out and you’d like to learn more about how to play casino games like roulette with a strategy, here’s a handy guide.

Martingale - the most famous roulette strategy to beat casinos

The Martingale strategy is the most famous of all. One of the main reasons for this is its simplicity, making it easy to understand. It also works in both online casino roulette games and in land-based versions.

There isn’t really anything complicated with the Martingale strategy. You simply make even-money wagers (red/black, odd/even, high/low), doubling the size of your bet each time you lose and halving it every time you win.

The principle is that if you double your bet every time you lose, the next win will cover all of your previous losses.

However, there are some downsides to using it too. Most notably, the fact that you can lose a lot of money very quickly if you end up on a losing streak as in just 12 rounds a $1 bet would jump to $2,048.

Even if you have the bankroll to cover such enormous wagers, most casinos have table limits which effectively prevent the Martingale system from working as you’ll hit the limit very quickly.

There’s also a version called the Reverse Martingale, which is the same, but you double your wagers for wins and half them after each loss. It has the same pros and cons as it will hit the table limit in just a few rounds.

Fibonacci - does the golden rule apply to casino games?

Leonardo Fibonacci was an Italian mathematician who lived between the 12th and 13th centuries. Although he didn’t invent the mathematical sequence that bears his name, he did help to make it famous.

A Fibonacci sequence is one that spirals exponentially larger by adding the last two numbers in the sequence together. For example:

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233

In casino games like roulette, the Fibonacci strategy involves increasing your wagers in a Fibonacci sequence.

As with the Martingale, you make even-money wagers and move up the sequence with each losing bet while you move down two places for each win.

Also, like the Martingale, the Fibonacci strategy will mean you could be making considerable wagers in just a few rounds, and this will eventually be stopped by the table limit.

D’Alembert

The D’Alembert is also named after a mathematician from 18th-century France. It’s a little simpler than the previous two strategies, though it does follow the same principles.

It doesn’t require your mental arithmetic to be quite as powerful as you need to add and subtract one each time.

So if you start out with a $1 bet and lose, you’d increase it to $2, then $3, $4, and $5. If you then won, you’d just subtract $1, moving back down to $4, and then $3.

This strategy won’t hit a table limit anywhere near as quickly as it doesn’t grow your stake exponentially. The downside, though, is that it doesn’t increase fast enough to cover your previous losses with wins. Therefore, if you hit a losing streak, you’ll quickly rack up losses.

Labouchère

The Labouchère strategy is also named after a person, this time a 19th-century English politician, journalist, and writer named Henry Du Pré Labouchère. Although he probably had his hands full with those jobs, he still found time to devise a betting system for roulette.

It sometimes goes by the name of the Split Martingale or the Cancellation System because it involves adding the first and last numbers of a sequence together.

To use it, you need to choose a sequence of numbers (they can be anything you want) and make a bet that is the sum of the first and last numbers in it. If you win, you remove the first and last positions from the sequence and start again, but if you lose, you add the wager size to the end of the sequence.

So, for example, if you chose 1, 2, and 3, you’d add 4 to the end if you lost but remove 1 and 3 if you won.

The Labouchère is more complicated than the others, so it’s not the best for new players. However, it does give players a more significant degree of control over their play.

Why roulette strategies like these don’t work

All games have a casino RTP or house edge, and roulette is no exception. These strategies don’t actually change this because the odds of a win are always the same. In theory, some of these strategies could help you offset losses by making larger and larger bets, but the table limits prevent this.

Therefore, you should see strategies as a fun way to add structure to your game, not as a way to make guaranteed wins.

Are there some ways I can at least improve my odds in roulette?

There are a few ways you can improve your odds in roulette as the house edge remains the same for almost every bet. Playing European roulette over American roulette cuts the edge in half, so this is the single best option you have.

If you play French Roulette and make even-money bets, then you reduce the house edge to just 1.35%, thanks to the La Partage and En Prison rules.

FAQs

What is the most successful strategy in Roulette?

Martingale, where you make even-money wagers (red/black, even/odd, high/low), doubling the size of your bet each time you lose and halving it each time you win.

Does Roulette strategies increase my chance of winning?

Strategies are an excellent way to structure the way you play, but all table games have a house edge, so the odds of winning are always the same.

What is the house edge in Roulette?

The house edge in European Roulette is 2.7%. It's 5.26% in the American version, and in the French one, it can fall to just 1.35% (with even bets).

What is the Fibonacci system?

The Fibonacci system is based on a sequence where the next number you get equals the sum of the previous two. This is what the Fibonacci sequence looks like: 1-1-2-3-5-8-13-21-34-55-82-144-233.