Peter has been writing for the gambling industry since 2013, and joined the SportsCasting team in July 2024. Outside of work Peter is a runner, gig rower, guitarist and musician (releasing two albums under the name 'ShiroToKuro'). Peter is also a lover of manga, anime and Japanese cinema and can even read and speak Japanese at the conversational level.
Get to know Peter Addison betterWhat’s the best roulette strategy? How do you win at roulette? Is it possible to win at roulette? Let’s go for a spin, answer all these questions and more.
Can the Best Roulette Strategies Help You Win at Roulette?
While it’s a good idea to have a roulette strategy in place when you play roulette, there is no guarantee that your strategy will help you win. When you are playing roulette, there are two golden rules to remember:
Roulette is purely a game of chance
And
No matter your strategy, the house will maintain its edge
When you see people debating roulette strategies they always talk about two things – covering numbers in line with the frequency that previous numbers have come up and altering the size of your bet depending on your previous record regarding wins and losses. The truth is, both of these tactics have zero effect on the outcome of the next spin of the reel. The ‘perfect roulette strategy’ does not exist, no matter what people may tell you, or attempt to sell you.
The House Edge Explained
The house edge is the difference between the roulette odds offered and the actual odds themselves. Let’s take a standard European roulette wheel containing the numbers 0 to 36. As there are thirty-seven numbers on the reel, the odds of a single number coming up are 37-1 – yet the casino pays out on a 35-1 basis. It’s that difference that maintains the house’s edge.
In addition, the European roulette wheel has ‘0’ and the American roulette wheel has ‘0’ and ‘00’. You can bet on these numbers, but they are not included in bets such as red/black, odd/even and high/low. This gives a casino an even greater edge (5.26% from 2.7 %).
The house edge means the best strategy for roulette is to enjoy playing it and not to play it in the expectation of getting rich quick.
Five Contenders for the Best Roulette Strategy
You;ve probably heard of a few roulette strategies. The question is … do they work? And the answer is the same for all of them – ‘yes’ in the short term, but ‘no’ in the long term. Let’s examine each of these roulette strategies in turn.
Martingale Roulette Strategy
The most famous ‘best roulette betting strategy‘ of them all, the martingale system. With this strategy, you pick a 50/50 bet such as red/black and back on the same outcome on every spin (although it doesn’t matter at all if you switch from red to black at any stage). You decide on a starting bet unit, say £1. Each time you win, you bet one unit on the next spin. Each time you lose, you double the size of your bet. As soon as you win, you go back to single unit. This system ‘guarantees’ that for every betting sequence, you will win one unit.
Why it doesn’t work – Losing streaks and roulette table limits. Streaks of red (or black) on a roulette wheel are more common than you think. If you start with £1 and suffer seven losses in a row, your next bet will have to be £64. That’s a lot of money to risk, just to win £1. A losing streak will wipe out your bankroll, and if you hit the table limit, then your strategy completely falls apart.D’Alembert Roulette Strategy
Jean Baptiste Le Rond D’Alebert was an incredibly intelligent mathematician, and he came up with this system. It’s a simple system too – like Martingale you start with a base stake, and each time you win (betting again on a 50/50 chance) you increase your bet by one stake unit, and each time you lose you decrease your bet by one stake unit. Seems easy-peasy, but does it work?
Why it doesn’t work – It’s boring. You are just trying to grind out wins and after a long playing session the chances are you’ll end up with around about the same funds as you started with. The system only works if you win more often than you lose, and if you get off to a bad start you will spend the rest of your play time chasing your losses, sometimes successfully, and sometimes not.Fibonacci Roulette Strategy
If you studied maths to a decent level, you will have been introduced to the Fibonacci sequence in which the number in the sequence is the sum of the previous two numbers – so, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 and so on. With the Fibonacci roulette strategy, you start again with a base stake and with any loss, you move up to the next number in the sequence as the size of your bet. If you win, you step back two numbers in the sequence. Therefore, after a succession of losses you will eventually win a large amount.
Why it doesn’t work – Even big wins don’t recover your losses. If you have a run of bad luck (entirely possible when playing roulette) then your stake may rise to £13. If you’ve gotten that far, you’ve already staked and lost £20, so even a win won’t cover the money you have lost. This ‘strategy’ relies upon you experiencing more wins than losses, but even random flat betting returns a profit if you win more than you lose!Labouchere Roulette Strategy
Have you noticed all these strategies have fancy names? There’s a reason for this – if something has a ‘fancy’ name people are more inclined to believe it works. If a strategy is called ‘Jim’s Roulette Strategy’ are you likely to follow it? Anyhow, this ‘strategy’ is named after the writer, politician and gambler who devised it.
You begin a Labouchere betting sequence by writing down a sequence of small numbers that add up to the amount you want to win. Say, you want to win £10, you could write down 1-2-3-2-1-1. You then bet on a 50/50 chance with your stake being the sum of the first and last number on the list, so on our list that would be £2. If you win, you then cross off the first and last numbers on the list. If you lose, you add your bet to the end of the list (so our list would now be 1-2-3-2-1-1-2) and you use the same principle for the value of your next bet (which in our case would now be £3). You keep going until all the numbers on the list have been crossed off, at which point you would have won £10.
Why it doesn’t work – You can spend hours chasing losses. Let’s say we are unlucky enough to lose our first four spins. Our list becomes 1-2-3-2-1-1-2-3-4-5. We suddenly have ten numbers on the list and that list will never be cleared until we start winning more than we lose. As you cross off two numbers with each win but add one with each loss, you will have to win three more times than you lose in order to complete the list. This can take hours and at the end of it, you’ve still just won £10! There’s also the risk of hitting the roulette table limits and if you do that you’ll never be able to complete your sequence, and your losses will be substantial.Paroli Betting Strategy
This is a variation of the Martingale system. Here you double your stake after a win and go back to your base stake after a loss. You also go back to your base stake after three successive wins. Seems simple enough, but does it work?
Why it doesn’t work – It’s no better than random flat betting. Say you win a £1 bet, and then a £2 bet. You’ve won £3, but now you are staking £4. If the bet wins then fair enough you’ve won £7 in total, but if it loses you are down £1. The system only works if you experience more wins than losses and relies explicitly on you landing a good number of three successive wins. If you don’t, then over time you will end up in the red, and not in the black.Roulette Game Selection for Strategy Users
Which version of roulette should you play if you want to try out a roulette strategy? As the strategies we’ve introduced you to above don’t work, perhaps you’ve devised one of your own. Let’s take a look at some version of roulette you might play.
European Roulette
European roulette, or French roulette as it is also known has a wheel with 36 numbers and a ‘0’. You can bet on single numbers, groups of numbers or outside bets such as red/black or odd/even. You can also (depending on the rules of the game you are playing) bet on ‘racetrack’ bets which cover areas of the wheel as opposed to numbers in numerical sequence and called bets such as betting on numbers that end in the same digit (1, 11, 21 and 31 for example).
The house edge with European roulette is always 2.7% unless the version you are playing has a special feature (such as getting half your bet back when the ball lands on ‘0’ and your bet didn’t contain a bet on ‘0’ – French La Partage Roulette) which reduces that. If you want to test out a roulette strategy, then European roulette is the best version of roulette to play.
American Roulette
There’s a simple rule when it comes to American roulette – don’t play it. American roulette wheels have a ‘0’ and a ‘00’ which increases the normal house edge when it comes to roulette from 2.7% to 5.26%. This just means you are less likely to win no matter if you are using a roulette best strategy or not. If you have a choice at an online casino of playing European or American roulette then always go for European, even if you voted in favour of Brexit.
Live Roulette
Live roulette may be fun, but it’s no different to normal roulette … well, there are differences in that it’s a real roulette wheel and real people are overseeing the play. You still place your bets via a software interface though, so in that respect, you are still playing roulette with a computer.
If you are working to evaluate a betting system for roulette then it is probably best to give live roulette a miss. The reason for this is live roulette is much slower than RNG-based roulette games, meaning it will take you longer to know whether your roulette betting strategy works or not.
Roulette with Side Bets
Roulette can become boring pretty quickly. Unlike, say, blackjack, there’s no decision-making, especially if you are betting on a 50/50 outcome spin after spin as you should be when you are evaluating a roulette betting system. Online casinos therefore offer roulette games with side bets (such as numbers being randomly selected to earn multipliers on a spin) in the hope that players won’t grow bored and will keep playing them.
These games will not serve as a way of evaluating your patent roulette betting system as frequently, casinos will alter the odds of normal wins to make sure they don’t lose out when people win the side bets. If you find a betting strategy that works with such side bets (and good luck, as we know you won’t) then you will not be able to apply it to any other form of roulette.
In conclusion in regards to the different versions of roulette that are available, if you are evaluating a betting system then you should only use European Roulette as the basis for your evaluation.
Roulette Tips for Strategic Players
You may be convinced you’ve come up with a winning roulette strategy, but what are you supposed to do with it? Here are some roulette tips from us about how you can put it into practice at your favourite roulette sites.
Paper Trade Beforehand
You can download non-gambling site versions of roulette to play on your PC, phone or tablet. Use those to test out your roulette system on paper before you risk money on it. Make sure you test for a long time to get rid of random bias.Have an Adequate Bankroll
Make sure you have enough money to cover your live testing, especially if your system is an increase/decrease bets system. We suggest at least one thousand base bet units. If you are only testing, then that’s £10 at a penny a spin (if you can find a version of roulette that has bets so small).Set a Time Limit
You don’t want to spend hours of your life winning a small amount of cash. For testing, give yourself a sensible time limit. Even if the system works, if it takes too long to put it into practice, then it’s probably not worth doing.Use Bonus Cash
If you can use a site’s bonus money to play roulette, then make sure you do so. Using bonus cash as opposed to your own money at an online casino is always a good idea anyhow. Make sure you check though that roulette can be used for meeting wagering requirements.Quit When You’re Winning
The key, we think, to any roulette betting system is to know when to quit. Set a profit limit before you place your best roulette bets and make sure you stop playing once you reach it. The whole idea of a roulette betting strategy is to win money so there’s no point just playing on and playing on until your bankroll is completely deleted.Always Play Responsibly
Roulette is a game of random chance no matter what anyone tells you. Gambling games always have the potential to become addictive, so be mindful. Understand what qualifies as responsible gambling and make sure you adhere to the principles at all times.
Conclusion
Everyone wants to know how to win at roulette and punters have sought the perfect roulette strategy for centuries and, apart from wheel weighting bias which you can use online anyhow, no one has ever found one. It can be entertaining to come up with strategies though and see how they fare in the real world, as long as it is done responsibly. We hope this page has helped in your quest to come up with the best roulette strategy to win possible.
Best Roulette Strategy FAQs
What is the most successful roulette strategy?
Is there a trick to winning roulette?
What is mathematically the Best Roulette Strategy?
What is the 3/2 rule in roulette?
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