Roulette Table: May The Odds Be With You
by AnteUp - GamblingLinks.com/GamblingLinks.com Staff © 2006, Reproduction without permission strictly prohibited. All company and product names in this document are the property of their respective copyright and/or trademark holders.
As far as the people who write dictionaries are concerned, the thing is simplicity itself: Rou·lette (roo-let') n. A gambling game in which the players bet on which slot of a rotating disk a small ball will come to rest in. For players, however, the game is infinitely complex, an intricate mathematical puzzle daring you to devote substantial amounts of your money and life to solving it. The intense battle of wills waged against the merciless wheel, the challenge of a lone person trying to surmount a sheer cliff against all odds, are probably why roulette is just as popular now, if not more so, than it was when the canvas cover was pulled off the first layout almost three hundred years ago.
Around the world, in online casinos and offline casinos, the spinning roulette wheel is played, studied, enjoyed and even, occasionally, beaten by scientific gamers, long-shot plungers, casual players and every other type of gambler. It is so popular that two expressions directly related to roulette have become so deeply embedded in our language and culture that few people have the slightest idea where they came from. The first is "broken on the wheel," which originally was used to describe wealthy playboys who, having lost their fortunes at the roulette tables in Monte Carlo, went for a stroll in the nearby ocean and never returned. The second "roulettism" -- breaking the bank -- is more cheerful. It referred to playboys who, having beaten the Monte Carlo wheel, sailed out to sea on a yacht instead of their wingtips. One additional bit of lore: Since the sum of a roulette layout's numbers - today as always - is 666, the same as the biblical "number of the beast," a persistent legend holds that Francois Blanc, the godfather of the Monte Carlo casino industry, once traded the game's secret to the devil for a better soul with which to enter eternity.
As you've probably guessed from the name, roulette - which means "small wheel" in its native tongue -- is a French invention, reaching America via New Orleans in about 1800. Though the game was first played in Paris in the mid-1700s, the center of the roulette world moved to Monaco after France criminalized gambling in the early 1770s.
European roulette wheels, often called French wheels in deference to their country of origin, contain 36 numbered slots plus a zero slot. American wheels also have a double zero slot, thus increasing the odds favoring the house from a bit over 2.5 percent to a little over 5 percent. This makes playing at an online or offline casino's European roulette wheel a better deal than playing on an American wheel. You can also improve your odds by wagering on a game where an en prison, surrender, La Partage or similar rule is in place These rules, common in European roulette, allow players to re-wager some of their losing bets if the ball lands on zero.
Bets can be placed on individual numbers, 0 (and in American roulette 00), groups of numbers, odds or evens and blacks and reds with winnings proportional to the odds against each proposition. For example, the simplest possible roulette wager, a straight bet on red, black, odds or evens, normally pays two to one. The house edge consists of the "0" and - if present - the "00," which are neither red nor black (they're green, actually) or odd or even.
For whatever reason, perhaps the mathematical purity of the game's odds or the fact that it's been around a long time, more systems for beating those odds have been devised than for any other form of casino gambling. Unsurprisingly, none of them work for degenerate gamblers or hardcore roulette addicts. Unlike, say, poker or blackjack, you can't improve your odds at roulette by increasing your knowledge of the game and skill at playing it. On the more positive side, however, some of the roulette systems do work in the short term if the gaming gods happen to be with you and you have the brains and moral fortitude to pick up your chips and quit while you're ahead.
The most common, oldest, easiest and most dangerous-to-your-bankroll roulette betting scheme is the Martindale, which is so seductive and easy to understand that it is now commonly used by crap shooters, slot players and even golfers who wager on a per-hole basis. The Martindale, beloved by millions of gamblers who have no idea that they're even using a system, is the original "double or nothing" bet. It calls for doubling your bet every time you lose and dropping down to your original bet and starting the sequence over when you win. The idea - cover all your losses and maybe even make a profit on a single wager -- is as logical as it is asinine. Even if you print your own money and there is no maximum betting limit at your favorite roulette table, the Martindale system is unlikely to make you a long-term winner - the odds on each spin of the wheel favor the house. The most the Martindale can do - long term - is theoretically limit your losses to the house percentage. In the real world, however, the Martindale cannot do even that. For one thing, it does suppose you have infinite money with which to keep doubling your bet. Do you? And even if you are richer than Bill Gates and the head of the Russian Mafia combined, you'll eventually - inevitably - run into a string of losses that would require a "Martindale" bet higher than the table limit to continue with the system. The Martindale can, however, make you a winner in the short run if you happen to employ it on a particularly luck day. For example, you bet a dollar on the number 3 and lose. So you bet two bucks on three and lose again. Next you bet four dollars on three, etc. Let's say the wee ball plops into three when you're at the ten-dollar level. Your winnings? $350. Your total wagers? $55.
Though the origin of the Martindale system is shrouded by history, the d'Alembert betting scheme for roulette was named after the French mathematician who first postulated the Law of Equilibrium, which states - in its simplest form - that if you flip a coin 60 times and it comes up heads the first 20 times, it will come up tails 30 out of the next 40 flips. Using the d'Alembert system you start with, say, ten dollars. If you lose, you increase your bet by one unit - in other words, you bet 11 dollars. If you win, you decrease by one unit and bet nine. In theory, according to d'Alembert's law, you will win as many times as you lose, giving you a net profit of one dollar for each win.
Please, please remember that I am only reporting on these systems, not devising or recommending them. In fact, when it comes to the d'Alembert method, I've never even been able to understand it, so don't bother e-mailing me for further elucidation. For it to work, in my puzzled opinion, something on that lovely green, black and red layout would have to offer a 50/50 betting proposition and nothing does. Now that that's out of the way, let's move right along to the third most popular roulette betting scheme: The Labouchere, aka Cancellation, System.
Like the d'Alembert system, this one is based on the laws of probability, but it also takes into consideration the fact that the odds favor the house and that the chances of the same things happening an equal amount of times in a fixed and limited time period are unlikely. Here goes. Visualize, type, or write a sequence of consecutive numbers … let's use 5,6,7,8,9,10. Add the first and last number together and bet the total -- $15 - as your first wager on one of the 2/1 propositions on the layout, let's use "red" for this example. If red wins, discard the 5 and 10, and bet another $15 (6+9) on red. If that wins, bet another $15 (7+8) on red. If that wins, you've run out of numbers, you've won $45 and it's time to quit. It gets a bit more complicated when you lose. In this scenario, if your first bet is $15 (5+10) and black comes up, you delete the 5 and add the $15 you lost to the end of the list, making your next bet $21 (6+15). If you lose that one, you drop the six and add the $21 making bet number three $28 (7+21). If you win that one, drop the 7 and the 21 and bet $23 (8+15). As you can see, the idea is that eventually the laws of probability will catch up to you and you'll be left with no numbers and a profit equal to the total of your bets - if you don't run out of money first.
The Labouchere system is better than the Martindale in the sense that increasing the bets incrementally rather than doubling them up burns through a gambler's stake more slowly and makes it less likely that the whole scheme will be undone by a player running up against the table limit (unless, of course, his or her initial bet is overly large.) Labouchere also has an advantage over the d'Alembert in that it is possible to leave the table a winner even when your proposition (in our example "red") comes up less than 50 percent of the time. All that said, over 250 years worth of experience seems to indicate that system players at the roulette table have no better odds of winning (or losing) than someone who just walks up and bets their heart. However you wager, you've got roughly the same chance to "break the bank," get "broken on the wheel" or, if you're like the vast majority of us, have a lot of fun while either winning or losing a few bucks.
As far as the people who write dictionaries are concerned, the thing is simplicity itself: Rou·lette (roo-let') n. A gambling game in which the players bet on which slot of a rotating disk a small ball will come to rest in. For players, however, the game is infinitely complex, an intricate mathematical puzzle daring you to devote substantial amounts of your money and life to solving it. The intense battle of wills waged against the merciless wheel, the challenge of a lone person trying to surmount a sheer cliff against all odds, are probably why roulette is just as popular now, if not more so, than it was when the canvas cover was pulled off the first layout almost three hundred years ago.
Around the world, in online casinos and offline casinos, the spinning roulette wheel is played, studied, enjoyed and even, occasionally, beaten by scientific gamers, long-shot plungers, casual players and every other type of gambler. It is so popular that two expressions directly related to roulette have become so deeply embedded in our language and culture that few people have the slightest idea where they came from. The first is "broken on the wheel," which originally was used to describe wealthy playboys who, having lost their fortunes at the roulette tables in Monte Carlo, went for a stroll in the nearby ocean and never returned. The second "roulettism" -- breaking the bank -- is more cheerful. It referred to playboys who, having beaten the Monte Carlo wheel, sailed out to sea on a yacht instead of their wingtips. One additional bit of lore: Since the sum of a roulette layout's numbers - today as always - is 666, the same as the biblical "number of the beast," a persistent legend holds that Francois Blanc, the godfather of the Monte Carlo casino industry, once traded the game's secret to the devil for a better soul with which to enter eternity.
As you've probably guessed from the name, roulette - which means "small wheel" in its native tongue -- is a French invention, reaching America via New Orleans in about 1800. Though the game was first played in Paris in the mid-1700s, the center of the roulette world moved to Monaco after France criminalized gambling in the early 1770s.
European roulette wheels, often called French wheels in deference to their country of origin, contain 36 numbered slots plus a zero slot. American wheels also have a double zero slot, thus increasing the odds favoring the house from a bit over 2.5 percent to a little over 5 percent. This makes playing at an online or offline casino's European roulette wheel a better deal than playing on an American wheel. You can also improve your odds by wagering on a game where an en prison, surrender, La Partage or similar rule is in place These rules, common in European roulette, allow players to re-wager some of their losing bets if the ball lands on zero.
Bets can be placed on individual numbers, 0 (and in American roulette 00), groups of numbers, odds or evens and blacks and reds with winnings proportional to the odds against each proposition. For example, the simplest possible roulette wager, a straight bet on red, black, odds or evens, normally pays two to one. The house edge consists of the "0" and - if present - the "00," which are neither red nor black (they're green, actually) or odd or even.
For whatever reason, perhaps the mathematical purity of the game's odds or the fact that it's been around a long time, more systems for beating those odds have been devised than for any other form of casino gambling. Unsurprisingly, none of them work for degenerate gamblers or hardcore roulette addicts. Unlike, say, poker or blackjack, you can't improve your odds at roulette by increasing your knowledge of the game and skill at playing it. On the more positive side, however, some of the roulette systems do work in the short term if the gaming gods happen to be with you and you have the brains and moral fortitude to pick up your chips and quit while you're ahead.
The most common, oldest, easiest and most dangerous-to-your-bankroll roulette betting scheme is the Martindale, which is so seductive and easy to understand that it is now commonly used by crap shooters, slot players and even golfers who wager on a per-hole basis. The Martindale, beloved by millions of gamblers who have no idea that they're even using a system, is the original "double or nothing" bet. It calls for doubling your bet every time you lose and dropping down to your original bet and starting the sequence over when you win. The idea - cover all your losses and maybe even make a profit on a single wager -- is as logical as it is asinine. Even if you print your own money and there is no maximum betting limit at your favorite roulette table, the Martindale system is unlikely to make you a long-term winner - the odds on each spin of the wheel favor the house. The most the Martindale can do - long term - is theoretically limit your losses to the house percentage. In the real world, however, the Martindale cannot do even that. For one thing, it does suppose you have infinite money with which to keep doubling your bet. Do you? And even if you are richer than Bill Gates and the head of the Russian Mafia combined, you'll eventually - inevitably - run into a string of losses that would require a "Martindale" bet higher than the table limit to continue with the system. The Martindale can, however, make you a winner in the short run if you happen to employ it on a particularly luck day. For example, you bet a dollar on the number 3 and lose. So you bet two bucks on three and lose again. Next you bet four dollars on three, etc. Let's say the wee ball plops into three when you're at the ten-dollar level. Your winnings? $350. Your total wagers? $55.
Though the origin of the Martindale system is shrouded by history, the d'Alembert betting scheme for roulette was named after the French mathematician who first postulated the Law of Equilibrium, which states - in its simplest form - that if you flip a coin 60 times and it comes up heads the first 20 times, it will come up tails 30 out of the next 40 flips. Using the d'Alembert system you start with, say, ten dollars. If you lose, you increase your bet by one unit - in other words, you bet 11 dollars. If you win, you decrease by one unit and bet nine. In theory, according to d'Alembert's law, you will win as many times as you lose, giving you a net profit of one dollar for each win.
Please, please remember that I am only reporting on these systems, not devising or recommending them. In fact, when it comes to the d'Alembert method, I've never even been able to understand it, so don't bother e-mailing me for further elucidation. For it to work, in my puzzled opinion, something on that lovely green, black and red layout would have to offer a 50/50 betting proposition and nothing does. Now that that's out of the way, let's move right along to the third most popular roulette betting scheme: The Labouchere, aka Cancellation, System.
Like the d'Alembert system, this one is based on the laws of probability, but it also takes into consideration the fact that the odds favor the house and that the chances of the same things happening an equal amount of times in a fixed and limited time period are unlikely. Here goes. Visualize, type, or write a sequence of consecutive numbers … let's use 5,6,7,8,9,10. Add the first and last number together and bet the total -- $15 - as your first wager on one of the 2/1 propositions on the layout, let's use "red" for this example. If red wins, discard the 5 and 10, and bet another $15 (6+9) on red. If that wins, bet another $15 (7+8) on red. If that wins, you've run out of numbers, you've won $45 and it's time to quit. It gets a bit more complicated when you lose. In this scenario, if your first bet is $15 (5+10) and black comes up, you delete the 5 and add the $15 you lost to the end of the list, making your next bet $21 (6+15). If you lose that one, you drop the six and add the $21 making bet number three $28 (7+21). If you win that one, drop the 7 and the 21 and bet $23 (8+15). As you can see, the idea is that eventually the laws of probability will catch up to you and you'll be left with no numbers and a profit equal to the total of your bets - if you don't run out of money first.
The Labouchere system is better than the Martindale in the sense that increasing the bets incrementally rather than doubling them up burns through a gambler's stake more slowly and makes it less likely that the whole scheme will be undone by a player running up against the table limit (unless, of course, his or her initial bet is overly large.) Labouchere also has an advantage over the d'Alembert in that it is possible to leave the table a winner even when your proposition (in our example "red") comes up less than 50 percent of the time. All that said, over 250 years worth of experience seems to indicate that system players at the roulette table have no better odds of winning (or losing) than someone who just walks up and bets their heart. However you wager, you've got roughly the same chance to "break the bank," get "broken on the wheel" or, if you're like the vast majority of us, have a lot of fun while either winning or losing a few bucks.
