Roulette is one of the easiest games to play and understand in the casino. As usual the easier a game is to understand the greater the house edge, and roulette is no exception. If you are looking for a easy to understand and slow paced table game, and are willing to sacrifice on the house edge, then you may like roulette. Roulette Odds of Winning and Your System of Play As already mentioned, if your system of play is based on fuzzy math, you still have a chance of winning each and every time, but the house has the edge. In the end, they will own your bankroll unless you get really lucky. There is a system of play, however, that defeats the odds.

A roulette strategy has one aim and one aim only: to win. Most roulette strategies are based around telling players how they should bet and when to bet it. The game of roulette has more potential strategies than any other casino game.

However, most roulette players lose because the strategies they use are tailored towards promotions, rather than actual tips that can help them win.

This article will explain which roulette strategies work and show why others do not.

But first, it’s important to understand the basics of roulette strategy. A lot of roulette players believe in absolute nonsense.

Here are 10 common misconceptions about the roulette strategy.

1. Previous Spins Do Not Affect Future Spins

No matter how many times you spin the wheel, the chances that the ball landing on one number/color/etc remain the same every time. You can see this for yourself. Load up an online roulette wheel and play some spins for free. Record the results of red and black and try and spot some streaks. If you find one, check how many times that color spins next. After enough spins, you will find that the odds will not have changed at all. Previous spins do not affect future spins.

2. Progression Bets Do Not Help You Win In Roulette

Changing your bet size after each bet is called “progression”. Increasing your bet size is known as “positive progression”. Likewise, decreasing your bet size is known as “negative progression”.

No matter if it’s positive or negative, changing your bet size has no impact on your chances of winning.

Many roulette players wait for some sort of ‘trigger’ before implementing a betting progression strategy. One example could be waiting for black to win 3 times in a row. From here, the player would double the bet until they win.

This will not help the player win. Each spin is independent of the next and the odds have not changed since the last spin.

The only thing that is changing is the amount of money wagered. Sure, the player could be lucky and win big, but it’s just as likely they can be unlucky and lose big too.

3. Roulette Triggers Don’t Exist

Waiting for a certain event to happen does not impact your chances of winning in roulette. The only ‘trigger’ that can help you is if it is related to the physical wheel itself, rather than the sequence of numbers.

For example, if you decide to bet the number 3 after noticing that over 10,000 spins it wins at a higher percentage, then this is called bias analysis. This would make sense since there must be something about the wheel that causes the number 3 to win more often than other numbers.

On the other hand, waiting for the sequence red, black, black, black and then betting big on red does not affect your chances of winning.

Another trigger players like to use is skipping spins. Again, this does not win in the long-term.

Imagine that over the course of 500 spins, you only bet on 50 ie 10% and you manage to make a profit. This does not mean your ‘trigger’ means anything. All that’s really happened is that you won over the course of 50 spins.

4. Bankroll Management Does Not Help In Roulette

Bankroll management has two effects on roulette strategy: you either lose your money quicker (ie positive progression) or slower (ie negative progression).

All bankroll management does is control how much you should bet on each spin. Again, it comes down to the fact that bet sizing has no impact on your chances of winning.

5. Long Term Balance Does Not Exist In Roulette

After 5,000 spins of the wheel, the results of red or black will be close to even. Therefore, it seems reasonable to think that over the long term, you could check what color has spun the most and bet on the other one, right?

Not really. If there are more of one color than the other, then this is more because of a defect in the wheel. Therefore, if your roulette strategy was to bet on red because it had fewer wins than black, it would actually be a lot better to bet on black as the wheel is favored towards it.

6. Only Bet Short-Term Roulette Strategies

Lots of roulette strategies aim to make a 1-unit profit per session. Unless your units are in hundreds or thousands, it’s not enough to make a real difference anyway

But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that winning 1 unit a session is the be-all and end-all for winning roulette.

Now think of it like this: if it guarantees to win 1 unit a session, wouldn’t you want to use it all the time? After all, if it’s that good, why limit yourself to just 1 unit?

The answer is that short-term strategies do not work for roulette. They can either win over the long-term or they don’t. Either way, the house always has the edge.

7. Roulette Streaks Make No Difference To Your Chances Of Winning

Sometimes in roulette, the ball will land on the same number twice, three times or more in a row. This isn’t some freaky wizardry, it’s simple statistics.

On an American roulette wheel, the odds of spinning the same number three times in a row can be calculated by:

(1 in 38) x (1 in 38) x (1 in 38) = 1 in 54,872

But what about the odds of spinning the same number twice in a row, say 5, but then landing on a different number, say 7?

Since every spin is independent of the previous, spin, the chances are exactly the same as above: 1 in 54,872.

So it makes no logical sense to think that if one number is on a winning streak, it’s in your favor to bet it again.

This also applies to other roulette bets, including red or black, first, second, or third dozen, etc.

8. You Can’t Use Progression To Win Before A “Rare Event” Happens”

Once again, this comes down to the fact the odds do not change. Rare events do not exist in roulette. The only reason players think they do is because they have not seen enough spins for it to have happened yet.

For example, the player may not have seen this sequence of winning numbers before: 1,4,6,2,5. But they may also have never seen this sequence of winning numbers before either: 12, 25, 14, 9, 0.

After enough spins, both of these sequences will happen at some point. With a large enough sample size, you will see that they will also occur the same number of times too.

Each sequence of winning numbers in roulette is just as rare as each other.

9. Just Because A Roulette Strategy Wins Doesn’t Guarantee It Works

Roulette betting strategies either win in the long term or they don’t, it’s as simple as that. For example, if you decide to use a negative progression strategy after losing a few bets, the end result remains a loss.

On the other hand, you could wait for “triggers” before using an aggressive betting strategy and win big. Of course, you will not be making as many bets as the progression strategy, meaning you can make your bankroll last for, potentially, thousands of spins.

Now, just because you may have won big does not mean that the system you used was a good one. If you analyze this in more detail, you will likely see multiple large spikes in your bankroll.

To see how ‘good’ this system really is, find a reliable roulette system tester and create another one with completely random bets. Over 10,000, 20,000 or even 50,000 spins, you may find that betting randomly can be profitable.

Does this mean that the random selection process is a winning strategy that works? Of course not.

You will have just been lucky.

It’s easy to think that you have a winning strategy when all that happened was that you got lucky from time to time. This happens to a lot of players.

Luck can even make losing strategies profitable. Those using it may stop playing roulette and end with a profit, making them believe the strategy was effective.

Over time though, if they continue playing, reality will catch up and the system will lose.

10. Winning Most Of The Time In Roulette Is Enough

Imagine you had a roulette strategy that won 75% of the time. Over the course of 4 days, you profit on 3 and lose on 1. Your results may be something like:

Day 1: +10 units

Day 2: +20 units

Day 3: +50 units

Day 4: -100 units

Chances Of Winning The Lottery

Everything was going so well until something happened that you didn’t expect and you lost big. How did this happen? You just got unlucky, right?

Except that you didn’t. Casinos don’t leave it up to chance to make money. In the end, the house wins because of its long-term edge over players.

Winning Systems: The Casino’s Illusion

Casinos profit because they know the majority of players can’t tell the difference between a winning roulette strategy and a losing one. Here’s an example that shows how this can happen.

Imagine 100 players all played roulette and used exactly the same strategy as each other, but none of them knew each other or the systems each of them were using.

After using the strategy over the course of 1 month, these were the results:

40 of the players won a total of $400,000. Since they all won, they are sure that their strategy wins. Since they believe they have a winning strategy, they will return to the casino hoping to win more money.

The remaining 60 players lost a total of $500,000. Since they all lost, they are sure their system loses. Since they believe they have a losing strategy, they will look to improve it before returning to the casino again with a new system.

But none of this matters.

At the end of the day, the casino is the real winner.

Firstly, they have made a $100,000 profit from this group of 100 players.

They also have the winning players coming back, even though it’s not a long-term profitable strategy, as shown by the 60 losing players.

Sure, they may have initially paid out $400,000, but to the casino, it’s like an investment. They pay out with the expectation the players return and bet the same strategy – only this time, the players will lose.

Casinos don’t care about winners or losers; they just need more people to lose than to win.

How To Win At Roulette

So now that the important things have been covered, it’s time to learn how to win at roulette.

On a typical American roulette wheel, your chances of picking the right number are 1 in 38.

The only way is to improve your own chances of winnings. If you don’t, the odds remain in favor of the casino.

How do you do this?

By studying the thing that actually determines the result of a spin: the wheel and the ball.

But this isn’t brand new information to casinos. They know better than anyone how players can use the roulette wheel to give them a real advantage.

Losing Roulette Strategies

So by now, you should understand why a lot of strategies lose. They use a ‘trigger’ that doesn’t exist, they implement some form of bet progression or they focus on the numbers rather than the roulette wheel and ball.

The following section will show you some of the best-known roulette strategies. However, they all lose in the long-term. From everything discussed so far, you will see why they lose now too.

The Martingale Strategy

Martingale is a betting progression strategy. If you lose a bet, you must double it for the next one.

This is not a good strategy for multiple reasons:

1. If you go on a bad run using martingale, you can lose your bankroll quickly.
2. After lots of doubles, you will reach the maximum bet amount. Even if it wins, you may not be able to recoup your losses.
3. The odds do not change when you double the size of your bet. All that’s happening is changing your bet on a different spin.

Tier et Tout Strategy

This is another betting progression strategy but with bankroll management included too.

Like the martingale, no matter how many times you increase or decrease the size of your bet, the chances of winning never change. The only thing you are doing is making different bets of different sizes.

You are just as likely to win (or lose) making a random bet of a random size.

John Solitude Raindrop Strategy

This roulette strategy uses the balance misconception. It expects to win ‘in the end’ but this does not work because it won’t allow you to choose bets in a way that actually improves your chances of winning.

These are just a selection of losing strategies by there are countless others out there, each claiming to be the next thing since sliced bread. But they all share the same misconceptions of roulette strategy.

You may also find strategies that may sound different at first but they are actually exactly the same as other losing systems.

You must be aware of this before learning which strategies you should actually be using.

Winning Roulette Strategies

Many roulette players use strategies that do not work. Unfortunately, many people are losing because they have been convinced that it is a winning roulette strategy.

Everything that this article has covered so far should help you identify a losing system, should you come across one. Hopefully, you will never need to waste another penny again.

Now for the good news.

Odds Of Winning Russian Roulette

Here are the best winning roulette strategies.

Roulette Computers

These are small electronic devices that can measure the speed of the wheel and the ball as it travels. This predicts where the ball will land.

This is the most effective way to beat roulette.

Bear in mind though that, while they’re not illegal, if you get caught using them, you will probably get banned from the casino so keep them hidden as much as possible.

Visual Ballistics

This involves looking at the wheel with your own eyes to predict where the ball lands. With practice, it becomes a lot easier than you may think (but a lot tougher compared to other effective winning roulette strategies.)

Dealer’s Signature

A lot of roulette dealers spin the wheel and ball consistently, leading to predictable patterns. This is known as the ‘dealer’s signature’ and is the reason why they are changed every 30 minutes or so.

It works on the following principles:

1. The ball hits some diamonds more often than others ie dominant diamonds.
2. The ball bounce is not totally unpredictable.

When the wheel spins at, near enough, the same speed, the ball will travel a predictable distance and drop into a predictable area of the wheel.

Keep in mind that this strategy doesn’t work on every wheel though. You need to find the right wheel and the right dealer to get the most from this strategy.

Bias Analysis

Every single roulette wheel has some sort of defect. Even if it’s a tiny defect, it can affect how the ball lands.

This is known as bias.

If you can spot the defect and learn how it affects the results, you can profit from roulette.

Of course, this strategy relies on you spotting the defect before the casino does and removes it from play.

Roulette is one of oldest casino games and its origins could easily be traced to more than a millennium ago when various simplified versions of it existed as a form of entertainment. Today, gamblers have access to dozens of betting systems, strategies, and even cheating devices that promise long-term success to those who dare use them. Still, there are only two simple concepts they need to grasp in order to improve their play and their chances of winning and that is the odds and the casino advantage that is built-in in every roulette game.

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Knowing the odds is essential in playing roulette or any other game of chance where players’ decisions have no impact on the outcome of the round. Games of skill, in contrast, typically require at least basic knowledge of the rules and give skilled players the opportunity to improve their chances of winning. Unlike classic casino games such as blackjack or poker where individual actions can significantly change the outcome, roulette is a game of pure chance where the outcome is completely random.

Once players recognize this fact, they can truly understand the nature of roulette and learn how to optimize their play to avoid significant losses on the roulette table. Those who want to be successful in the long term need to learn the basic probabilities in this game and determine how likely to win or lose any given bet is. Moreover, all roulette fans should bear in mind that every bet they place is more likely to lose than to win – this is how casinos manage to always make a profit even with the occasional big wins they have to pay out.

So, what is probability and is there a difference between the true odds in roulette and the casino odds offered to players? These are fundamental questions that need to be answered honestly before gamblers sit around the roulette table.

Probability and True Odds

Often, the terms “probability” and “odds” can be confused by even professional casino players. Although they are, indeed, very similar in terms of their usefulness and relevance to evaluating different roulette bets, the two are quite different – at least theoretically.

First of all, players should know that if fair and unbiased, roulette wheels produce random results with every spin. Each of the numbers is equally likely to win or, rather, equally likely to lose. At the same time, for each number from 0 to 36, there are only two possible outcomes – a win or a loss.

Probability

The probability is the likelihood of any given outcome compared to all outcomes that are possible. Expressed as a number, the probability always exists between 0 and 1 – 0 would indicate that something is impossible to occur, while 1 would mean absolute certainty for the outcome. Even chances, for example, would be expressed as a 0.50 probability. In roulette, we have either 37 or 38 numbers in total, so these are all the possible outcomes.

Let us take the single-zero roulette wheel where for each number, there is only 1 way to win and 36 ways to lose. So what is the probability that the ball will fall on 17 in the next spin, for example? We can calculate it by dividing the number of ways to win by all possible ways – 1/37, which is 0.027. For most people, the probability is easier to understand as a percentage, so we simply multiply the decimal by 100 and we get 2.70%.

True Odds in Roulette

Now that we have established what probability is and how it is determined in roulette, we can compare it to the notion of “odds”. Odds are also used to describe the chance of an event occurring but they compare the number of ways it can occur to the number of ways it cannot occur. The odds of any particular number winning in roulette could be simply displayed as 1:36 or 1/36 where 36 is, once again, the number of ways to lose.

Sometimes, when it comes to expressing the odds of a particular bet in roulette, they would be in reverse, indicating the odds against winning. Using the same example, the odds of the number 17 against winning would be 36:1, or 36 to 1. These are known as “true odds” as compared to what some players refer to as “casino odds”. There is a huge difference between the two terms, but it will be explained in detail in the following section.

To make this even clearer, let us see the odds for probably the most commonly placed bet in roulette – red/black. If we place our chips on red, the probability would be 18 out of 37, while the odds would be 19:18 against us because there would be 19 ways to lose against 18 ways to win. In percentages, the probability would be 18/37 = 0.48648648648, 48.65%.

Casino Odds

When determining whether a roulette bet has good or bad odds, experienced players take into account not only their probability of winning and the true odds but also the potential reward they could bring. Each bet pays out differently, depending on its likelihood of winning – the less likely a given outcome is to occur, the more its potential payout would be. There is a sound logic behind this and in a perfect world where casinos would not have to make a profit, the payout of every bet would be equal to the odds against winning.

Let us take a look at the straight bet in European roulette – the odds against the player here are 36 to 1 (36:1) because as we have already shown above, there are 36 ways for this bet to lose and only 1 way to win. In order to offer a reward that would match the risk, the casino would be expected to pay players 36 to 1. In other words, it would be expected to return the original stake and to pay out winnings that are worth 36 times the amount of the bet.

Casino Odds Additional TipsIn reality, this does not happen, however, and the house gives a slightly lower payout of 35:1 on winning straight-up bets. The idea is that on every winning wager, players pay a small fee to the casino and in this case, it is one unit. The difference does not seem significant but it is how casinos gain their advantage over players – by paying every winner just slightly less than they should have. Over time, this tiny difference makes a large profit for the house and provides a guaranteed income in any possible scenario.

These payouts offered by casinos are sometimes referred to as “casino odds” due to their visible similarity. And while both are expressed as ratios of two numbers, they are never equal – the odds against winning are always slightly higher than the casino odds. The closer the casino odds get to the true odds of any given bet, the lower the advantage of the casino.

Roulette House Edge Explained

Clearly, the payout does not correspond to the true odds of roulette bets. This advantage of the casino over its patrons is called house advantage and can be easily demonstrated with the following example – we bet $1 on the number 17 and win. If given the true odds for this bet (36:1), we would receive our initial $1 stake back plus $36 as a payout. Instead, casinos pay us $35 and the original $1 bet but they keep the $1 difference.

The same concept applies to all bets in the game, which results in an average house edge of 2.70% for single-zero roulette and 5.26% for double-zero roulette. There are several formulas for calculating the house edge but probably the simplest one is the following – we need to subtract the casino odds from the true odds against success and then, to multiply that by the probability of success. So, the formula will look like this:

House Edge = (True Odds – Casino Odds) x Probability

When we substitute with the numbers we have already used for the straight bet, we get – (36/1 – 35/1) x 1/37 = 1×1/37 = 0.02702702702, or 0.027. To express it as a percentage, we multiply by 100 and get 2.70%. Several other formulas exist, but they all eventually come to the same conclusion and percentage for the house edge.

Roulette House Edge Additional TipsWhat this means for the players is that they can expect to lose 2.70% of their wager when playing a single-zero roulette. For every $100 they bet, they would lose on $2.70 on average. Of course, this is a theoretical ratio between the stake and the expected loss but things could be very different in real life. If we place a $100 chip on red, we can either win or lose its entire value. But we cannot win the bet and lose $2.70 at the same time.

So, the house edge can only get closer to reality with hundreds or even hundreds of thousands spins of the roulette wheel. It is a theoretical concept and while this may sound too vague to players, it is a good indicator of how much money they can expect to lose over time. Of course, they might win hundreds of dollars by the end of one gaming session or lose hundreds more in the next one. Still, they are less likely to lose their bankroll if they stick to specific games and bets where the casino has the lowest advantage.

Beating the Odds in Roulette

The idea that by using a complex strategy one could beat the odds in roulette is very popular but equally misleading. There are countless guides, books, and websites dedicated to convincing people that there is a guaranteed method of winning in this game. In fact, various betting systems, often inaccurately called “strategies”, have been developed over the years, as well as ways that would supposedly help players exploit the imperfections of physical roulette wheels and overcome the house edge.

Unfortunately, these methodologies have been repeatedly proven to be inefficient in securing winnings over the long term. Moreover, their short-term usefulness is doubtful and the reason is obvious to most expert-level players – roulette is a game with fixed odds that cannot be changed even with the best strategy. As explained above, the outcome of every spin of the roulette is random and based on probability. The house edge, therefore, also remains the same almost as a proof for the popular saying that the house always wins.

Roulette Strategies

The so-called roulette strategies are, in their essence, betting systems based on a progression where the amount of the stake changes after a certain outcome. Famous methods such as the Martingale or the D’Alembert suggest that you increase your bet after every loss, hoping that, in the end, one winning bet will compensate for all the losses. There are also systems where the bet is decreased, while in others, it remains the same throughout the entire game session. Overall, the idea is to help players minimize their losses or even generate some decent winnings over the long term.

While none of these betting progressions provides a fool-proof way to win, another type of strategies comes with exactly this claim. These strategies are based on the notion that you can increase your chances of winning by covering a large part of the table. Indeed, this sounds logical at first and certain methods even suggest that you should cover much more than 50% of the table. This strategy, however, will be too costly for most players, especially after a few losing spins.

If not used carefully, both betting systems and roulette strategies may “eat up” players’ entire bankroll within a short period of time. Placing neighbor bets or any other type of announced bets could be detrimental to those who are not well prepared to suffer serious losses. In conclusion, even the best methods and combinations of bets cannot aid you in beating the odds and overcoming the built-in casino advantage.

Advantage Play

Some roulette players rely on quite different methods for securing winnings. Known as advantage play methods, these include any strategies that give players either a statistical or a mathematical advantage over the casino. If employed successfully, they can beat the standard roulette odds and even if it is just by a little, it should be enough to provide players with long-term winnings. Unlike the betting strategies and systems described above, advantage play does not revolve around the betting layout but rather, around the wheel.

It can be used in both online and land-based casinos and online, advantage players would try to use special software that records and analyzes the results of hundreds of spins. The aim is to find a pattern in the winning numbers (such as repeating sequences of winning numbers) and then, to use it to make predictions. However, most online casinos nowadays offer roulette games based on RNG (random number generator) so finding patterns would be impossible as the outcome of every spin is random.

When it comes to playing a roulette game with a physical roulette wheel, however, advantage play is much more different. Players who try to use this technique would typically stand by the roulette table for at least 40-50 spins and write down all the winning numbers in the hope that they would be able to spot numbers that come out more frequently than others. In fact, sometimes they observe the wheel for hundreds of spins before they can notice repeating numbers, patterns or some irregularities.

Advantage Play Additional TipsThis method was mostly used in the past when casinos did not have such strict maintenance rules and protocols, while the wheels and other gaming equipment were manufactured in a manner that today would be deemed unacceptable. Players who wish to turn the odds in their favor these days need to be extremely discreet if they plan to observe the wheels before the casino security become aware of them. Exploiting roulette wheels’ bias and imperfections for one’s profit is not usually met with understanding from casinos.

How to Increase Player’s Chances of Winning

There are no reliable ways to actually beat the odds when playing roulette and even if such methods exist, they are neither simple nor acceptable by casino standards. Yet, players can increase their chances of winning by following several basic principles that can be applied to both online and brick-and-mortar casinos.

First of all, choosing a good roulette table is essential and obviously, single-zero roulette games are a much better option than double-zero games, which are mostly offered in casinos across the United States. The house edge in the American-style roulette is twice as high due to the additional sector on the wheel, the green 00. But picking French or European-style roulette variations is just the first step in learning how to maximize players’ expected value.

Second, players should always base their play around wagers with the lowest possible house edge. Of course, the best bets in roulette are the outside bets, which cover large portions of the wheel and require a single chip to be wagered. These include black/red, even/odd, and low/high, where the advantage of the casino is 2.70% while the player’s odds of winning are the highest. It is true that the payouts are not particularly attractive but these bets are less risky options in the game.

When choosing a bet, players need to compare the casino odds to the true odds and find the type of bet where these two as close to each other as possible. Often, the most attractive payouts are offered for bets which the casino pays much less than their actual worth. As a general rule of thumb, players should remember that the less risk they take, the less they can expect to win. All the good payouts, however, come with exceptionally bad odds and require a great tolerance for risk.