this is not scientific, but just my $.02......I play roulette online for fun and I use the Martingale system......I usually win but there are many times when red or black or odd or even comes up 5, 6, 7 times in a row......Martingale system if you are betting large amounts will break you quickly....

get an unlimited bankroll
martingale
repeat until millionaire

Actually and without using illegal devices (Ritz casino in London being the most notable documented example about roulette illegal devices), people who have consistently won millions playing roulette had almost always implemented a few numbers betting strategy.
Gonzalo Garcia Pelayo team was a preminent authority in this field crushing repeatedly many casinos worldwide by a supposedly biased wheel strategy.

In reality some sharp players got the best of it utilizing a visual ballistic strategy involving to bet nearly half of the wheel. Instructing the dealer to speed the rotor at a very low velociity and enticing him by the promise of outrageous tips (which they actually did), a couple of German players won millions of euros in many European casinos until they got banned everywhere.
I witnessed such guys in action a couple of times, they were allowed to bet on those Caro manufactured wheels (featuring a very low bouncing effect) up to 2-3 final ball revolutions.

Besides that recent wheels feature a very high bouncing effect, almost no one casino allows you to bet in the very last revolutions stages of the ball. And of course every roulette is continuosly monitored about possible defects.

No matter how is the strategy employed, the common denominator is to disprove the fact that every slot will be equally probable per every spin. There is no other way to win at roulette by 1 trillion accuracy.

This reminds me of the old one about how to end up with a million dollars by playing roulette (insert whatever game you want). Start with two million.

Very clever, I like it.

If I'm going to bet on wheel that has hit red 20 times in a row (and, in all honesty, I'm probably not going to do so), I'm going to bet on red. To oversimplify a bit, there are two possibilities:

1. The "streak" is just a random cluster, which, though it has a low probability of happening, will happen occasionally. This is the most likely of the two, and in this case, it makes not a bit of difference whether you bet red or black.

2. The streak is the result of some sort of bias in the game. In this case, red is your best bet.

So, there is no case where betting black is better than betting red, and a low probability that betting red is better.

The best option, of course, is not to bet at all. 20 reds in a row is nowhere near enough to establish a significant probability that there is a bias toward red, nor that it is strong enough to overcome the truly nasty house edge of roulette.

The other way is to own the casino and take the good side of the bets.

It seems like discussions of Martingale always end up discussing whether an infinite bankrolls makes a martingale a winning proposition. My take on this is that it doesn't matter. If you have an infinite bankroll, what the hell, exactly is the point of gambling?

It's an invalid argument anyway. Even if you have unlimited funds, there is no future stopping point from now where the casino's EV against you is ever negative. 1 bet or 1 million bets from now, their mathematical expectation is always to get some of your infinite roll.

Forget the martingales.

Try this.
Join an IB double zero automated roulette machine. It's one of the silliest move you can make inside a casino, anyway...

Bet "big" on 7-8 adjacent numbers after the ball is spun and cancel the whole bet just before the betting is stopped. Usually such interval time lasts for about 5 seconds.
Repeat this process several times and register how many times you would have fictionally won or lost. It doesn't matter whether the numbers chosen are the same.
For an 8 numbers bet, the long term winning probability is about 21%.

You'll be surprised that such winning probability will easily reach astounding sd values even within short terms of play. Of course on the wrong side.

Bad news? Actually these are very good news.

While I agree that roulette is unbeatable, the argument that the fact that a casino is offering a game means it's unbeatable is a fallacy. Many games in a casino have the potential to be +EV given certain conditions. A game being overall profitable for a casino can still be a beatable game. I mean, blackjack is still in existence last time I checked.

A streak of the same color wouldn't indicate a wheel bias because the colors are staggered between each other. There would be no type of wheel bias that would do this.

Unless two or more red slots are slightly larger than the 4-6 adjacent black numbers.

But such probability is very low.

Wise words, imo.

No matter what mathematics dictates, some productions for a reason or another are far from being perfectly random.

I can think of at least 7 or 8 legal ways that roulette can be beaten.
Most do involve some physical imperfection of the wheel/track or some stupid promotion but in jurisdictions where devices are legal, prediction computers will work on many wheels.
They even work on the video screens that film the physical wheel, which are common in the UK and Europe.

100% true.

There's a sentence in Edward Thorp's "Mathematics Of Gambling" where he refers to physical prediction methods "approximate calculations yielded an advantage of 15%.

Thorp invented card-counting and made billions on the stock market. He wouldn't have made a statement like that lightly.

My own experiments with roulette prediction yielded some positive returns. There are other reasonably credible individuals who have had some success-Laurance Scott produced some interesting work on the subject.

Essentially what you are doing is just calculating the velocity of the rotor and the ball (expressed in terms of pocket-widths) to work out an approximate location. The obstacles prevent perfect prediction but you often still have enough predictive advantage to overturn the house edge.

My guess would be that the reason there isn't more interest in the subject is simply because there was no mass-market book explaining simply and clearly how to beat roulette. Also, it isn't spectacularly profitable even when done well.

Cue more endless anecdotal bull**** from clueless people....

Thorp was a sort of genius (especially from a money making point of view) but didn't invent card counting. Marcum, Bernstein and many others did invent card counting before him.
In a sense I mean that few serious gamblers would divulge publicly their discoveries and methods.

Laurence Scott books give some hints about visual ballistics strategy but I can assure you that such suggestions won't work on the almost totality of actual wheels.
After knowing that a possible visual ballistics strategy properly applied could get acute players an advantage, modern roulette manufactures have built their wheels with low edge pockets, low weight balls, etc., all factors leading to a huge bouncing effect capable to destroy every favourable prediction.

Nevertheless, certain online sites and/or aut. wheels will feature a very low bouncing effect but at the same time offering a very restricted betting time after the ball is launched.
It's just here that some electronic devices could give the player a substantial edge because the ball/rotor velocities are precisely estimated at the start.

Recent studies (not publicized widely, of course) have shown how to take advantage from the discrepance existing between a perfect random generation and outcomes taken from specific wheels.
In a word, certain roulette outcomes aren't precisely random.

Nobody is going to tell you how this can be done, let casinos to stay clueless.

Maybe anyone who likes to attribute the word "clueless" to people should remember the Socrates adage "scio nescire"

The fact that visual predictions may not work in most situations, or more accurately work to the extent where doing so is financially worthwhile, does not mean much. Most of advantage play gambling is seeking out unusual profitable situations-blackjack dealers who deal way into the pack, poker games with fish, lines that are way off at the bookie etc.

Most of the mitigating factors you describe are not new. Very often you'll hear about some new randomizing technique that is supposed to make wheels fully random-only to discover it is from the 19th century.

I'm not sure what you are talking about when you refer to "recent studies" and "discrepance between perfect random generation" but it sounds like horse****. It isn't any one's responsibility to know what you are thinking about: you have to tell them or they will assume you are out to lunch.

Socrates was referring to the benefits of a naive mind without preconceptions when considering the nature of things. He wasn't encouraging people to sound off cluelessly on the basis of ignorance.

max bets come into play

The system has a losing expectation even with no betting limits.

Exactly, you are not sure as, I fear, you don't know. As you don't know how exactly Garcia-Pelayo family won a lot of money (more than 6 millions of euros) playing roulette.
Maybe you think they played biased wheels but it's just a guess you can read on internet as you live thousands of miles away from Spain.
Scio nescire.

Actually horse**** is what you've sayed about Thorp: he didn't invent card counting by any means.
Are you changing the state of art of card counting?

I fear that it's quite easier to write a "baccarat for clueless" book than a "roulette for clueless" book.
Nevertheless I'll be glad to be the first one to buy a J.M. book about the subject.

This.



.

My friend did a computer simulation on this system. If you have an unlimited bank roll, and there is no table max it works.

But, it is a loser, if both of those facts are not in play.

5-500, is 7.5 spins. That random outcome occurs from time to time.

There was an astute group in Europe that found a wheel that was slightly off balanced which made certain numbers more likely to occur.

So how much have you gained when you have unlimited + 1?

In the real world obviously infinite bankrolls (or infinite anything) can't exist. So in the real world the system is a losing one. No betting system (alone) can ever change the fixed negative expectation of roulette.