The Effectiveness of Strategies in Online Roulette
Whether you're a professional gambler or a beginner, if you're playing roulette online, you're already aware of the existence of strategies. Roulette is a game with many strategies/systems, and they all claim to “work”. If you are playing with big wagers, there are two things you need to do: one, find offers for high stakes roulette. These bonuses allow you to play for real money without using your own bankroll. Two, find out if roulette strategies work, so you can see if you actually need to use them.
Below we'll break down roulette strategies into two main categories and explain both, but before we get started, let's make a quick reminder: no matter what strategy or system you use, you cannot change the RTP and/or house edge of roulette. In this respect, roulette is not like card games: you cannot increase your chances of winning with optimal gameplay. The house edge in roulette varies between 1.35% and 5.26% depending on the variant played, which shows how much of your investment you can recover in the long run. Since this figure will not change, there is no strategy that guarantees you winning. But some roulette strategies can actually make you lose less or win more often.
Types of Roulette Strategies
There are two types of roulette strategies: the first gives you instructions on how to set your stake. Such strategies do not try to increase your chances of winning. Instead, they ask you to increase or decrease the amount of your bet according to a certain rule/sequence. For example, you double the bet after winning and decrease it after losing. The basic logic of all these strategies is the same: they assume that you will eventually win (after all, no gambler always loses), and when you make a win, they make sure that the payout will cover all your losses and leave you a small profit. The vast majority of roulette strategies fall into this category. For example:
- Martingale
- Reverse Martingale
- Fibonacci
- D'Alembert
- Labouchere
The second category includes strategies that focus directly on your chances of winning. They do not advise you on what the stake should be. Instead, they focus on exactly what bets you have to place. Their aim is to cover at least more than half of the possible outcomes on the wheel. For example, the “James Bond” strategy allows you to bet on more than 20 numbers, increasing your chances of winning to almost 67% per spin.
Do They Work?
At first glance, roulette strategies that focus on your chances of winning may seem more plausible, but they are practically useless. The most famous example in this category is the James Bond strategy: we mentioned above that it provides a close to 67% chance of winning every spin. However, this also means that your probability of losing is around 32% per spin. Almost every simulation run has shown that in the long run, your losses will wipe out your entire profit.
Surprisingly, all strategies that focus on stakes work. So, when you win, they really provide you with a payment that will both cover all your losses and make a little profit. The only problem is that they require a large bankroll. Almost all strategies in this category require constantly increasing the bet amount (until you win). For example, the Martingale strategy asks you to double your stake after every loss. If you start playing with 2 units and do not win in the first 10 spins, you will have to place 1,024 units on the table in the 11th spin. If you have a bankroll big enough to withstand it, that is, to continue to support you until you win, the strategy will eventually work. But if you have a limited budget and the win comes too late, you can go bankrupt before you can cover your losses: this is a serious risk you should not take.