Hey guys,

Normally I play poker online or live at a casino. To study, I normally watch YouTube videos. In the recommendations one day I saw a couple videos about roulette and how to beat it. There's a couple that seem to work, but there's one theory I find interesting.

Basically, you just pick a color. Red or black. Place one chip on it and double it each time you lose. When you win, you go back to betting one chip. Each time you win you will be ahead by one chip.

Have you ever used this in a casino or online?

Do you know of any others that work? I feel like it's so obvious people would be making a lot of money if their starting bet was $100 then they would make $100 every time they win.

Thanks in advance!

This system is called Martingale. Like all roulette betting systems, it no effect on the negative EV of the game. You will still lose a little over $5 of every $100 wagered in roulette, and that is controlled by the rules of the game. Betting systems don't change it. What Martingale does is skew the distribution of outcomes to have many tiny wins offset by the occasional huge loss that wipes them all out.

The game is not beatable without some form of cheating.

Do you consider bias play and visual prediction to be "cheating" or were you just making a statement that is very widely applicable

The latter, and I wouldn't consider those cheating. I was answering in the context of OPs question, which was about betting strategies.

To beat roulette we need to find a "bias" in the widest acception of the word.
It's a rare finding and almost always such bias works as a temporary effect.

Obviously we are double less stupid trying to find such bias on a single zero wheel.

The "strategy" was for a single wheel. But what do you mean by this? I don't quite follow.

One born every minute.

Besides not to playing roulette at all, -2.7% should be better than -5.26%. :-)

Of course such negative expectations rely upon the fact that every number is equally probable per every single spin.

Again no one progression, sophisticated or not, could have the best of it itlr whether every number will be equally probable.

Here is a thought question.

What if you walked up to a wheel that has landed on red 20 times in a row.

Would you bet on black cuz its "due" or
Bet on red because there must be something going on with red and you want in on the action!

You do not want to bet anything based on that.

The probability next spin(s) will be red or black is always the same: 18/37.
What happened is just a 4.5 sigma occurence with no meaning.

Obviously both colors are still equally likely if the wheel is unbiased, so you could say it doesn't matter what color we bet on. And we know that that opposite color is not ever "due", whether the wheel is fair or not, that's just gambler's fallacy. However, we do have evidence that red *might* be favored by bias, if there is a bias.

So you make a Pascal's wager here. You choose red "just in case".

Yes, it makes sense.

Anyway in order to catch up possible wheel defects EC are the worst options to be considered.

Haven't looked into it much but I've seen some gamblers post Roulette strategy on instagram. From what I saw I think it was just a martingale system.

European "La Partage" Roulette has -1.35% EV on the side bets and -2.70% EV on all other bets for every single spin
European Roulette has -2.70% EV for every single spin
American Roulette has -5.26% EV for every single spin

If you think you can beat the roulette, you are on the wrong side.

the math is pretty easy and clear, you cant beat roulette my friends

You can not beat roulette. All have been written why. Anyway, Einstein said this also, soo.. Does not matter what tactics you pick.. in the long run you are loser...

Think of it like this: If roulette would be beatable? Would casinos still have it in their games? Because this is a game that person plays against casino (and not like poker: casinos takes rake: people play against each other).

and this is why casinos make so much money

It all comes down to whether you can identify and exploit a bias (mechanical or human) before the casino can identify and correct it. Probably every roulette table in North America, at least, has one of those boards that displays the past N spins. Therefore, the casino has access to a realtime database of the wheel's behaviour, and having a computer analyze the results for bias is child's play. The casino should know long before you do.

Maybe casinos will figure out a possible bias when it's too late.

More interestingly it's when casinos think their wheels aren't vulnerable anyway and anyhow because they have been instructed that those wheels are perfectly unbeatable.

I don't work in a casino, so I can't speak to what casinos actually do. I do know that detecting a biased wheel can be so easy for a casino and they could know well before a player could identify it and use the information. A smart crooked dealer would be harder, and the cheating player would know before the casino, naturally. That could go on for a while before the house catches on.

Yep, but there are many kind of biases to be detected and definetely some players are smarter than casinos.

of course, thats why casinos have them, they like to give away free money (/sarcasm)

I discovered the best system to beat roulette is bet once in your life and win that spin. If you play over a sustained period its impossible. God i remember buying ebay e-book guides back in 2005 thinking i could beat roulette.

Best gambling material and gambling studies aren't available publicly.
As there's no point to let casinos know anything else different than their games are totally unbeatable.

Roulette is a so unbeatable game that when casinos find a player seemingly winning too much on long terms, they simply show him the door.
The prove that the wheel is unbeatable.

Whenever consistent money it's lost, well, you'll never know.