Stay in the Black
Roulette expert Samuel Blankson runs down his best tips for success at the wheel.
Whether you play roulette online or offline, without a sensible working strategy your bankroll will be quickly depleted by the casino. Therefore, what strategies and techniques can you employ to give yourself an advantage at the casino?
First Things First
There are those that believe that the mathematics of the game of roulette is infallible and thus no system can be defined that will beat the game. For these people, there are statistical strategies that will decrease the casino edge in the game of roulette.
The simplest of these, the first roulette strategy, is simply to refrain from playing the game of roulette. This may sound silly but for those without a working strategy or system this is perhaps your best bet of coming out even with the casino. However, for most other people this strategy is hardly good enough. For one thing, it removes the possibility of ever winning at roulette.
If you must play roulette, at least play it safe by betting on the outside bets. These are bets that return even odds. Black or red, even or odd, and high or low are bets that will return you the same amount you risked should you win. The single zero (on the European roulette table) or double zero (on the American roulette table) determines the casino edge when playing roulette. Without the zero, you would have a 50/50 chance of winning with outside bets; however, the inclusion of the zero or double zero reduces your chances of winning by 2.7% or 5.26% respectfully. This brings us to the second roulette strategy - only play single zero European roulette.
We now come to third roulette strategy - the 'La Partage' rule. The ‘La Partage’ rule allows you to take half your outside bet stake off the table should a zero be landed. Of course, you lose the other half, but this reduces the house edge from 2.7% to 1.35%. Not all casinos with European roulette will offer this rule.
In European roulette, some casinos also offer En Prison, a rule by which if you are betting on the outside bet and the zero is landed, you are allowed to take half your money losing only half, or leave the whole amount on the table for the next spin. However, if another zero is landed in the next spin, you will lose the complete stake. If you win the next spin, and you had decided to leave the outside bet En Prison, you get to take the whole win. The En Prison rule reduces the house edge even further from 2.7% to 1.35% and has the added benefit that you could win and take the full return (or lose it all). Hence, our fourth roulette strategy is to play European tables that offer the En Prison rule.
Common Sense Strategy
After the outside bet, your chances of winning reduce even further with the higher return and higher risk bets. However, your returns, should you win, also increase with the increased risk. Clearly, there is another strategy staring us in the face here. Roulette strategy five, stick to low return, low risk bets where you have a higher chance of winning and a lowered risk of losing. After the outside bets already described, use the dozens and columns inside bets. These bets will allow you to win double what you risk when you do win. Furthermore the chance of losing is just below 70% for European tables. To decrease your risk level even further, use two outside bets, i.e. a bet on the 1st dozen and another bet on the 2nd dozen simultaneously. Your wins will half but their frequency will almost double. This is roulette strategy six.
You can also combine outside and inside bets to produce high win rates and lowered risk of loss. This brings us to roulette strategy seven - using the high/max or low/min bets along with the 1st or 3rd dozen bet. This allows you to cover 30 numbers (1- 18 and 25-36 or 1-12 and 19 to 36). You will need two chips to play this strategy, one chip on the inside bet and another on the outside bet, this could total $2. If you win on the outside bet, you break even whilst if you win on the inside bet you made 50% return on your stake. This strategy’s benefits are further increased with En Prison or La Partage rules.
Money Management Strategies
One of the main reasons gamblers lose money at roulette is that they simply become greedy. Roulette strategy eight tackles this problem. Before you go to the roulette table, clearly define:
- How much you are prepared to lose. Only buy chips up to this figure and when you lose all your chips, stop playing.
- The highest stake you will place. Do not exceed this figure
- At what profit you will stop gambling. As soon as you reach this figure, stop gambling, cash in your chips and leave the casino.
If you cannot remember these rules in the heat of the game, take a friend with you to remind you when you reach any of your predefined limits.
Psychological Strategies
Roulette strategy nine relies on a player with extreme bad luck. This strategy simply requires you to go to a casino and first observe the tables. When you spot someone who is having a bad night, join his or her table, and bet against him or her. That is, bet as opposite to his or her bets as you can. Therefore, if they are betting on dozens and they select the 1st dozen, simply bet on the 2nd and 3rd dozens. If they are betting on a selection of numbers on the table, bet on the remaining numbers. This strategy cannot be used for prolonged periods as you stand the risk of offending the already irate loser. Go in, make a quick profit, and leave without anyone figuring out what you are doing.
It amazes me that having looked at roulette players and thousands of roulette games over the years, there seems to be a clear pattern the majority of the time, that is that at some time in the evening the roulette player was up in profit and at the end of the night, they were down. The last strategy utilises this information. Roulette strategy ten, simply put is to stop whilst you are ahead. Now how do you know when you are ahead? That is the two million dollar question. I have worked on this extensively and have come up with the following system.
Using whatever technique or strategy you currently employ, play at roulette as normal. When you reach half of the profit figure that you normally peak at (peak profit figure), halve your stakes and continue to play until you are down to 40% of your peak profit figure or 60% of your normal profit peak figure.
If your profit drops to 40%, quit. If it does not drop to 40% and you continue to win building your profits up to 60% of your normal profit peak figure, then reduce your stakes by half again to 25% of your original starting stake(s). Continue like this, halving your stakes every 10% increase on the normal peak profit figure. If at any time, your profits drop by 10%, quit. Using this system, you will always leave the roulette table a winner after each winning streak and you will limit the losses you could have made through cockiness and greed.
Samuel Blankson is the author of How to win at online roulette and creator of the Ultimate Roulette System.
3 comments
If you are a Gambling.com member, please login at the top left of this page.
If you are not a Gambling.com member, please complete our sign up form—membership is free and it takes just a minute or two to sign up.
Posted by Gambling – 13 Sep 2007, 5:51 PM
All on red! Your best odds of winning are the 50/50 red or black.
Posted by Groberts – 24 Sep 2007, 12:28 PM
it cant be 50/50 red or black, 00 is green, so how do you explain that Gambling?!
Posted by georgestam – 20 Oct 2007, 1:19 PM
Good tip, i especially like the first one of not playing it at all