Roulette Strategy

Much of the strategy that surrounds the game of roulette is going to revolve around your management of bankroll. The question is whether you can do it to an extent that you can stand a better chance of surviving defeats in order to snag a victory.

This is not an easy game to win, or perhaps you have already been told. One of the things that is critical to know right from the outset is that every bet you make is going to have a built-in disadvantage that goes along with it. In other words, no matter what you do you are realistically not going to adjust the odds in your favor. On all the bets, whether they are inside bets or outside bets, the house is going to have an advantage of 5.26%. At least in the American version of the game that is the case. Why is this, you ask? Well, it is because of the existence of the zero and double zero. Without them, there is indeed a 35-to-1 chance that the single numbers would result from a spin of the wheel, thus evening up the proposition. But when there are two other numbers in the mix, it makes all the difference in tipping the scales in favor of the house.

With all of this in mind, you have to decide what kinds of bets you want to make. Do you want to bet on single numbers or groups of numbers? With the so-called "even money" bets you have a better chance to win, but it doesn't really make much of a difference.

The even money bets certainly come into play when it comes to the matter of betting systems. These generally involve doubling up your bet after a certain result, and they are in almost all cases applied to the even money bets that lie outside the main layout. These are not the dozens bets (on the first, second or third 12) or the columns bets, which pay off at 2-to-1, but instead the propositions where you will wager either on Red or Black, Even or Odd and Low or High.

In these "Martingale" systems, you might simply double up (the "regular" martingale), double and then add one unit (Grand Martingale), double up after wins (Reverse Martingale), add a unit after losing and deduct a unit after winning (D'Alembert) or do the reverse of that (Reverse D'Alembert). To the extent they could work, the systems require that the bets have roughly a 50-50 chance of winning.