HOW TO WIN AT ROULETTE
Most people when playing Roulette play the game the wrong way. For example, most people will start to play with a certain amount of money and keep playing until it is gone. This isn’t their intention, but that’s how it always seems to end up. Well, read on and I’ll show you how to best change this process.
Roulette is such a diverse game with so many possible betting combinations that if you are going to play it seriously you should be aware of what you should and shouldn’t do. After many years of study of the Roulette game I can show you with absolute certainty what constitutes a good bet and what doesn’t. It is my intention to give you a more in-depth knowledge of the game so that you can use this understanding to your advantage and hopefully make a profit in the long run.
The first thing I must stress at this point is that there is no great advantage. It is, however, possible to minimize the probability of losing, therefore maximizing your potential to win. There is no sure-fire way to always win, if there were Roulette would have died out many years ago, long before it was ever available online, but read on and lets see what we can do.
BETTING ON NUMBERS
One of the great advantages to playing Roulette online is you often have the choice of either an American or a European table. Always play on the European version with only one zero (the rest of this article assumes that you are). It lowers the house edge which can make all the difference.
Most people when playing Roulette will immediately start placing chips here, there and everywhere all over the table. They will put a couple of chips on some numbers, a larger amount of chips somewhere else, until they’re happy they have satisfied that little feeling inside them that is always intuitively telling them where to bet and by how much.
It’s a shame that in reality what they’re doing is placing the poorest value bets the table can offer. Even when they win, as they often do because the table is a wash with their chip colors, the winnings they receive are often less, or little more than the amount they have staked.
Now there is no doubt that this is an exciting and enjoyable way to play. If you enjoy it, and decide to carry on, then good luck to you. It is feasible that some times you can, and probably will win by playing this way. But do you keep a record of ALL your wins and losses? If you do then I would be very surprised if you win in the long run. So my advice is if you are intent on cutting the odds of you losing, then avoid this method of play.
If you study the above method scientifically you will find that most of the time you are betting against yourself. As an example, and to simplify things so that we can get a better vision of exactly what’s happening; let’s assume that we simply put $1 on each of the eighteen low numbers and $2 on each of the eighteen high numbers (ignoring zero for this example). Now if it lands on a high number we have won $18, but if it lands on a low number we lose $18 – bearing in mind that a win would pay 35-1.
This is exactly the same as putting an equal amount of money on high and low. The odds work out exactly the same, but we can clearly see from this example that we are wasting our time by putting a total of $36 on high and $18 on low because it would be exactly the same bet to put just $18 on high and leave low blank. You will be no better off except that if zero falls in and you lose both high and low then you now lose much less even though you have the same potential winnings. Of course when you’re spreading your bets all over the table you may decide to put a bet on zero, but the odds are the same it’s just that any other losing number or numbers become your bogey numbers. I have taken this example to a ridiculous extreme in the hope it will help you to see the mistake most people are making.
Transfer this diagnosis back to the way most people do play i.e. spreading a lot of money all over the table and you can see that they are nearly always betting unnecessary amounts (more than they need to in order to win the same amount) and steadily going to lose unless they are very lucky – but with such a method of playing they are minimizing their chances of being lucky. And there is always going to be the heavy loss when none of their chips come in – a totally unnecessary risk!
I say again, what we should be aiming at is maximizing the chance of allowing ourselves to be lucky. Try not to bet against yourself by staking more than is necessary to win the same amount anyway, and remember to take into account the amount of the total stake that is spent even when you win. If you start getting carried away and picking more and more numbers per bet, although you may have the fun of winning more often, you are going to be losing an increasing amount in the longer run most of the time.
Remember this rule; as you increase your stakes and spread the bet out, yes it may seem like you are winning more often, but when you do win your winnings are becoming less and less adequate compared to the expense of your stakes and the inevitable big losses.
Bearing all this in mind I would say one of the best value bets the Roulette table can offer is to pick 3 or 4 numbers (at 35-1) and just keep playing this same bet over and over. Or why not place these numbers on, say, the high number side of the table and stake the same total amount on low (at evens). Then if your chosen numbers refuse to drop in, at least the odds are slightly in your favor that you may be covering much of your losses because the ball is temporarily landing more on the opposite side of the table. Also, obviously, the opposite is also true; if the ball is not landing on low as much as high, you stand a chance that it could be temporally landing on your numbers more than the natural odds would predict.
If you give the above system a go you will need to be prepared to lose small amounts most of the time in order to gain occasional good wins. That’s how it will work, it is a good value bet, but it’s up to you to decide if you are prepared to take on the risk or not. I advise you try the system in an online Casino first but without real money to see how you get on. Keep a record of the results and see what happens over a reasonable period.
ANOTHER MISTAKE TO AVOID
If you have ever visited a Casino then no doubt you have seen people keeping notes of what numbers have come up in previous games. This is very common and encouraged by Casinos often with a free supply of pre-printed cards and pens to help you with the process. In online Casinos a large list of all the previous numbers are usually there for you to see the sequence they came out.
The theory is that because there is an equal chance of each number dropping in, and because the law of chance dictates that numbers will always average out in the long run, then surely if a number has not dropped in for a high number of spins it must be due any time now. So you keep betting on that number because it must – by the law of averages – be a winner very soon.
The only trouble is that there is no truth in this theory what-so-ever! My advice is completely forget this idea because it has no bearing on reality. I don’t care if a number has not dropped in for 10,000 spins, this does not mean that it has any more chance, or is any more likely to be the next winner than any other number for the forthcoming game or games.
Of course the odds of that number not being a winner for 10,000 spins are astronomical, true, but it is the odds at the beginning of the 10,000 spins when it is unlikely, not after the event. Once it has happened there is exactly a 36-1 against chance of it landing in that number for the next spin.
What has happened in the past has no influence on what will happen in the future. Remember this fact the next time you see someone betting on a certain number, or a color etc., because that particular bet has not won for a while. It may or may not win, if it feels like a good idea and you’re prepared to take the risk then go for it by all means. But whether it wins or loses is down to luck and not down to the fact that it was due to win.
PLAYING WISE – PROFIT AND LOSS RATIO
As a rule of thumb, expect to lose the value of your average stake per bet over 37 games. For example, if you are placing five dollars on the table each spin, then after 37 spins, if the odds are running exact, you will be five dollars in loss. Of course, it is unlikely that the odds will be exact, but it gives you a rough idea of what the odds are against you. Put simply, for every $37 you bet, if it runs exactly to the odds, you will end up with $36. This is why the Casino always has a slight advantage. The more you are betting the more you must expect to lose over a certain period. So what do we do?
If you want to win money you’ll have to drag yourself off the table when you’re in a reasonable amount of profit. This is the hardest time to walk away because you’re feeling great, you’re winning money and you want to win more – it doesn’t works like that. Although you could win more, there is always that slightly more chance (as described above) that you will lose. Then you will be chasing your previous winnings again, but wishing you had quit while you were ahead.
In reality what will happen is that the money you begin with will rise and fall slightly, with the pull being a little more in the favor of a fall. Of course it can shoot one way or the other quickly and without warning but this is the nature of the beast. Most of the time however you should find a slow and steady sway between profit and loss.
Set a pre-determined win or loss cut-off point, and finish that session when you reach it. Place a bet that is, say, 5% of the total amount you are prepared to lose on red or black. Whether you win or lose keep placing the same bet until you either win half what you started with, or lose the whole lot. I like playing on the colors/high-low/odds-evens because it cuts the banks slight advantage further due to you only losing half your stake when zero drops in.
Here’s a good system: Notice that the table is split into three length-way rows (i.e. 1-34, 2-35, and 3-36). The row with the numbers 3-36 has eight red numbers and only four black numbers. We can use this fact to our advantage. Place one chip on red and two chips on row 1-36 and two chips on row 2-35.
Now, most of the time you will win but if the ball sways in favor of the row 3-36 the odds are in our favor it will keep landing on red so our losses are less than they would have been. However because it will more than likely sway in favor of one of the three rows over a given period, we don’t have to be too lucky to have picked the right one as we have covered two out of three (also, hopefully, it will keep landing in red too).
Because you should win small amounts most of the time (with bigger losses less often), you may like to try raising your stake slightly on a loss. Simply raise your bet on a loss and lower your bet on a win. This helps to cancel out losses and partly safeguards wins. (NEVER keep doubling up even if you can afford it as this is definitely a recipe for losing a fortune sooner or later.) Stick with this system until you either lose your pre-determined amount (e.g. say twenty dollars if you are prepared to lose this much), or win half of it (e.g. ten dollars).
Base your strategy on a longer term plan. I hope you won’t start off in an unlucky fashion but if you do, please don’t dismiss the above strategies because there really is no better way of winning more than you lose. But remember you are still GAMBLING and as such you are always putting yourself in a situation where you could lose your money in the hope of winning some.
Many online Casinos offer introductory bonuses to get you to start an online account. A typical introductory offer is to double your initial deposit (even if it’s not advertised on their website many will offer you a big bonus shortly after downloading their software, just wait a few days without making a deposit).
