Best Way To Win At Roulette

Albert Einstein supposedly once said: “No one can win at roulette unless he steals money from the table while the croupier isn’t looking.”

Although I wouldn’t normally question Einstein, this statement isn’t true. In fact, you can use Einstein’s specialist subject, physics, to help you win. Or you can find a biased wheel that makes some numbers more likely to come up.

What Einstein actually meant was that there is no mathematical trick that can help you win at roulette. Each spin is an independent trial and, in the long run, the casino will win. This is different to a game such as Blackjack where the probabilities change as cards are dealt.

But some believe that it is possible to exploit the way the roulette wheel, and the betting cloth, is laid out to give themselves an advantage. The idea is that you can make bets on the layout in a way that you are guaranteed to win. But is this really possible?

What Einstein actually meant was that there is no mathematical trick that can help you win at roulette. Each spin is an independent trial and, in the long run, the casino will win. Image credit: CrossFit215. Roulette is a game in which the casino holds a slight edge over the players. That is, of course, unless the player can figure out a way to cheat the casino. If you win for the first time you have played, play again and leave the original bet to take that one home. As long as you win or lose till you have original bet, you can play and if this is not happening, cut the losses and leave. That is why it is impossible to win in roulette, regardless of which betting strategies and tactics selection of items you use. Note: the formula (3), (5) and (8) can be obtained for 'American roulette' with two sectors of zero: 0 and 00. Similar materials. Play free European roulette by; Why the casino house always wins? How to win in roulette.

Roulette wheel layout

Like a dartboard, the layout of a roulette wheel did not come about by accident. It was carefully planned and exhibits certain properties. In fact, there are two different layouts. An American wheel and a European wheel. The two layouts are shown below.

Notice that the American wheel has two zeroes. This is important as it doubles the advantage for the casino. On a European wheel you would expect to lose, in the long run, 2.7% of any money you bet with. On an American wheel you can expect to lose 5.26% (if you are interested in the mathematics of roulette, the video at the end will show you how these odds are calculated).

The numbers are arranged in a different order on each wheel but there are some similarities in the patterns. On both wheels, the red and black numbers alternate around the wheel, although if you removed the zeroes, the American wheel would have consecutive reds and blacks. The wheels are also structured so that the low numbers (1-18) and the high numbers (19-36) should alternate as much as possible.

On a European wheel, this is only violated where the 5 sits next to the 10 (both low numbers). On the American wheel, there are many examples where this rule is violated. It is for this reason that the American wheel is considered not as balanced as the European wheel. Both wheels also try to distribute odd and even numbers as evenly as possible. But again there are a number of violations of this rule on both wheels.

Strategy is critical if you want to increase your odds of winning. The first time you play roulette, the players sprinkling the layout with chips may look as if they’re heaping pepperoni slices on a pizza. You can make many different bets as long as you stay within the table’s maximum limits.

On the European wheel there are two other interesting symmetries. First, all the low red numbers and black high numbers are on one side of the zero, and the high red numbers and low black numbers are on the other side. Second, the sequence 29-7-28-12-35-3-26-0-32 contains no numbers between 13 and 24 (the second dozen). You can place a bet on the whole of the second dozen, with odds of 2-1.

So, can we beat the maths?

A simple search on Google will return many (possibly millions) of systems for playing (and supposedly winning) roulette. Some easy, some complicated, some well described, some not so.

A system should really be a combination of a playing strategy and a money management strategy. Perhaps the best known money management strategy is the Martingale system. This system is guaranteed to win money as long as you have enough of a bankroll to double your bet after every loss and you do not hit the table limit, which you will quickly do so. The Martingale system is probably the quickest way to bankruptcy known to man.

Whatever betting strategy, and money management strategy, you choose, they all suffer from the same fate. Assuming that each number on the wheel has the same probability of being selected – meaning the wheel is not biased – the maths means the casino will always win. The system may look good, and may work in the short term, but when one of the numbers comes up that you have not bet on you will lose and the casino will move towards its win expectation (2.7% or 5.26%).

Some systems involve betting on many numbers, perhaps 20. In this case, you will win quite often as you are covering more than half of the numbers. But when one of the numbers does not turn up (and it will almost half the time) you lose all of the 20 bets you have made. This will often wipe out any wins to date.

Any system, so far devised, can be analysed to show that there is a win expectation for the casino. The following video shows the maths.

You might as well place a single chip on the same number every time and hope that it appears more than it should during the short time that you are playing.

We can dress up the layout of the wheel, the layout of the betting cloth, our number selection and our money management system however we like, but the maths is always there, quietly working against us. You might as well just have fun, pick random numbers and trust to Lady Luck. Either that, or do as Einstein suggested and steal chips (not that we’d recommend it).

Roulette was the first casino game I ever played. I didn’t realize at the time that the odds on roulette were some of the worst in the casino when it came to table games.

I did have enough sense to avoid the slot machines, though.

Since that first trip, I’ve had a lot of fun playing roulette in Las Vegas. I’ve had many winning sessions, too, which some gambling writers would have you believe is next to impossible.

In this post, I’ve distilled my years of experience playing roulette in Las Vegas into seven tips on how to win, and I’ve explained each of them below.

1- Understand How the House Gets Its Edge in Roulette

You’ll find three different kinds of roulette games in Vegas:

American roulette
European roulette
Sands roulette

American roulette is the most common, so I’ll explain how the house gets its mathematical edge in that game before discussing anything else.

Also, a brief observation about the importance of understanding the odds in roulette:

You should understand the odds in any gambling game because that’s the first step in knowing what you’re up against.

It’s like knowing how many calories are in a meal. You can’t control your weight unless you know what you’re eating. (I can’t, anyway.)

You have a plethora of bets available in roulette, but they all have one thing in common — they would all be long-term break-even bets if there were 36 numbers on the roulette wheel.

But there are more numbers than that. On a standard American roulette wheel, you’ll find 38 numbers.

Let’s ignore red and black, odd or even, or any other complicated bets for now. Let’s just look at the single number bet.

A single number bet is a bet that a specific number will come up. It pays off at 35 to 1.

So, if you bet $100 on the number 7, and the ball lands on 7, you win $3500.

The odds of winning that bet, though, are 37 to 1. You have 37 possible losing outcomes compared to one possible winning outcome.

For purposes of calculating the house’s advantage, take a statistically perfect set of 38 spins — you land on each number once, and you make the same $100 bet on the same number every time.

You’ll lose $100 on 37 of those spins, for a total loss of $3700.

You’ll win $3500 on the winning spin, for a total win of $3500.

You’ll have lost $200 total, which is an average of $5.26 per bet. Divide the net loss by the number of bets to get the average loss in this case.

That’s 5.26% of your action, and that’s the house edge.

The other games have different house edge figures, but that’s what you’re facing, principle-wise.

2- Try to Find a Roulette Wheel With Only One Zero

Remember how I said there are three different kinds of roulette wheels?

The differences between these wheels are the number of possible outcomes on each.

A European wheel only has 37 possible outcomes, while a Sands roulette wheel has 39 possible outcomes.

The difference comes from the number of zeroes on each wheel.

All the wheels have the numbers 1 through 36 on them, and half of those numbers are always black and half are always red.

The American wheel also has a 0 and 00, both of which are colored green.

A European wheel, though, only has a 0. There’s no 00.

This reduces the house edge from 5.26% to 2.70%.

And the game plays exactly the same.

The math is easy to do, too. In a perfect statistical set of 37 spins, you’ll only lose $100 instead of $200.

3- Avoid Sands Roulette at All Costs

The payouts for all these roulette games are the same. It’s just the odds of winning that change from game to game.

That single number bet that’s a 37 to 1 shot on an American wheel is a 36 to 1 shot on a European wheel.

But it’s a 38 to 1 shot on a Sands roulette wheel because there are three zeroes on the wheel.

The Sands roulette wheel is tricky, though, because the third zero isn’t labeled as a zero. Instead, it’s often a symbol or a letter of some kind.

I’ve seen reports that some casinos use a symbol of an eagle or the letter “S.”

Either way, it’s a bad deal.

The house edge goes up from 5.26% to 7.89% when you play on a triple zero roulette wheel.

In other words, you’ll lose 38 times, for $3800 in losses. You’ll still only have a single win for $3500, which means you’ve lost $300 over 38 spins, which is $7.89 per spin on average.

4- Find a Game With the En Prison or La Partage Rule

You’ll only find these optional rules available on European roulette games, and the rules only apply to the even money bets, which I haven’t even discussed yet.

The even money bets at the roulette table are red/ black, odd/even, or high/low.

If you win one of these bets, you win even money. Bet $100, and you’ll win $100.

The house edge is still the same, however. Here’s why:

Take 37 perfect spins on a European wheel. Eighteen of those numbers are red, and 18 of them are black. One of them, the zero, is green.

If you bet on red, you’ll lose $100 on 19 of those spins ($1900 total), and you’ll win $100 on 18 of those spins ($1800 total). Your net loss is still $100 over 37 spins or $2.70 per spin.

But with the en prison or la partage rule in effect, you have a 50% probability of getting your original bet back.

This reduces the house edge from 2.70% to 1.35%.

Now you’re playing a game with odds about the same as craps, which has a house edge of 1.41% on its most basic bet, also known as the pass line bet.

5- Skip the Betting Systems

There are many variations of roulette betting systems to choose from, but the most popular is the Martingale system. To use this system, you make an even money bet. If you lose, you double the size of that bet and bet again. Lose again, and you double the size of your bet again.

When you eventually win, you’ll have won back all the money you’ve lost, and you have a profit on top of that.

If you start with a $5 bet on black and lose, you’ll bet $10 on the next spin. Lose again, and you’ll bet $20 on the next spin.

The thing about this system is that it doesn’t change the house edge.

Every one of those bets is a negative expectation bet, so you’re basically just adding a bunch of different sized negative numbers together hoping to get a positive number as your sum.

And that’s not how it works.

You will see winning progressions with this system, but when you do have a big losing progression, you’ll lose so much money that it will make up for your wins and then some. And that “then some” will eventually be the size of the house edge.

6- Or Use a Betting System if You Want To

The Martingale system isn’t the only betting system used in roulette, but it’s always a great example.

If you understand that the Martingale system doesn’t change the odds, it’s okay to use.

In fact, in the short run, the Martingale system can increase your probability of having a winning session.

I’ve seen estimates that suggested that using the Martingale system in an hour-long session gives you an 80% probability of having a profitable session.

The profits will be small, though.

The other 20% of the time, you’ll have a large enough set of losses to compensate.

That’s because the numbers grow faster than you think when you start doubling them.

If I gave you a penny and you doubled that penny every day for 30 days, you’d wind up a millionaire.

Of course, losing 30 spins in a row on roulette is unlikely in the extreme, which makes for some great roulette bankroll management. However, you only need to lose eight times in a row to need to place a bet that’s bigger than your bankroll, or the table limits can handle:

$5 – $10 – $20 – $40 – $80 – $160 – $320 – $640

Most roulette tables have a maximum bet of $500, which breaks the system right there.

7- Don’t Gamble With Money You Can’t Afford to Lose