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Betting Strategies

Albert Einstein is reputed to have stated, "You cannot beat a roulette table unless you steal money from it." And yet, the numerous even money bets in roulette have inspired many players over the years to attempt to beat the game by using one or more variations of a Martingale betting strategy, wherein the gamer doubles the bet after every loss, so that the first win would recover all previous losses, plus win a profit equal to the original bet. As the referenced article on Martingales points out, this betting strategy is fundamentally flawed in practice and the inevitable long-term consequence is a large financial loss. Despite the claims in some books (for instance "Beat The House", by Frederick Lembeck, ISBN 0806516070), there is no way such a betting strategy can work over the long term.

Another strategy is the Fibonacci system. The Fibonacci roulette bet management system is a score system. it calculates a score based on results of the games. The score indicates the situation on the betting table based on which you should take a betting decision. The advantage of this system is that it stays relatively stable even in short runs, because losing streaks are easily compensated with one win. It is way better than the dreaded Martingale positive progression system. Fibonacci system is also less threatened by the table limits because it tends to stay in saner bounds than Martingale in short runs.

While not a strategy to win money, New York Times editor Andres Martinez described an enjoyable roulette betting method in his book on Las Vegas entitled "24/7". He called it the "dopey experiment". The idea is to divide your roulette session bankroll into 35 units. This unit is bet on a particular number for 35 consecutive spins. Thus, if the number hits in that time, you've won back your original bankroll and can play subsequent spins with house money. If your number never hits - well, it can take a great deal of time to spin the wheel 35 times; think of the fun you'll have in that time! In practice, this dopey experiment often results in funny looks from the dealer at first; soon, however, every gambler at the table will be putting money on your number. This turns roulette into a group activity that can rival craps for cheers when the number hits. However, there is only a (1 - (37 / 38)35) * 100% = 60.68% probability of winning within 35 spins (assuming a double zero wheel with 38 pockets).

There is a common misconception that the green numbers are "house numbers" and that by betting on them one "gains the house edge." In fact, it is true that the house's advantage comes from the existence of the green numbers (a game without them would be statistically fair) however they are no more or less likely to come up than any other number.

Various attempts have been made by engineers to overcome the house edge through predicting the mechanical performance of the wheel, most notably by Joseph Jaggers, the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo in 1873. These schemes work by determining that the ball is more likely to fall at certain numbers. Claude Shannon, a mathematician and computer scientist best known for his contributions to information theory, built arguably the first wearable computer to do so in 1961.

To try to prevent exploits like this, the casinos monitor the performance of their wheels, and rebalance and realign them regularly to try to keep the result of the spins as random as possible.

More recently Thomas Bass, in his book The Newtonian Casino 1991, has claimed to be able to predict wheel performance in real time. He is also the author of The Eudaemonic Pie, which describes the exploits of a group of computer hackers, who called themselves the Eudaemons, who in the late 1970s used computers in their shoes to win at roulette by predicting where the ball would fall.

In the early 1990's, Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo, realizing that most roulette wheels are not "perfect", used a computer to model the tendencies of the roulette wheels at the Casino de Madrid in Madrid, Spain. Betting the most likely numbers, along with members of his family, he was able to win over one million dollars over a period of several years. A court ruled in his favour when the legality of his strategy was challenged by the casino.

In 2004, it was reported that a group in London had used mobile camera phones to predict the path of the ball, a cheating technique called sector targeting.  In December 2004 court adjudged that they didn't cheat because their special laser camera phone and microchip weren't influencing the ball - they kept all £1.3m.

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