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Firstly no money management system can get you an edge in roulette……or can it? I think what you have to remember is that we are talking about live roulette here and not online roulette with random number generators being used to create the results. For a money management system or betting system not to be profitable on roulette then we need one criterion to be present and this is that the results are totally random.

The next question is……..can we always assume that the results on a standard roulette wheel are always random? In my experience of nearly ten years inside the gaming industry then I do not believe that they are. Or at the very least that they are not random all the time. If you back even chances on roulette then you are only at a disadvantage of around 1.35% to the house. The house edge is 2.70% but this falls to 1.35% on even chances because if zero arrives (assuming a single zero wheel) then you get half of your bet back.

The pay offs are 35-1 but there are 37 numbers in the wheel and dividing 100% by 37 gives us 2.70. So if you can identify a bias that is being caused by either natural forces or by inadvertent actions from the dealer then you may just be able to gain an edge. As an ex-croupier then I know that part of the dealers job is to make the result of the spin as random as possible……I also know that this isn’t always achieved even by skilled croupiers.

There is something pretty cool about the game of roulette. It may have an undisputable house edge but it also allows players to win vast amounts of money as well compared to their stakes should they get lucky. In this aspect then it has similarities with the National Lotteries where for a small amount of money then you can win life changing sums of money. I have never personally witnessed anyone winning a life changing sum of money on roulette but have heard plenty of stories of people that have.

My own experiences range from seeing someone turn £0.50p into £600 which in dollar terms at the time would have been $1 into $1200. This actually happened on the very table that I was dealing as a croupier back in 1993. I have also witnessed games where someone actually turned £10 ($20) into £1050 or $2100 and I can also remember someone turning £100 ($200) into £7800 ($15,600).

In terms of multiples of investment the first one was the greatest returning x1200 times the original amount. Of course this is nothing compared to what people win on lotteries but they are still staggering amounts of money when compared to the amounts that were risked. So roulette does afford people that opportunity but the flip side is the odds that you are facing when it comes to actually making a life changing sum of money. Only the latter example could be said to be life changing in some capacity but the overwhelming likelihood is that the person would have lost their £100.

Many people are afraid to play roulette and it is almost as if the game has some sort of mystical powers to drain their money. However you can have some great fun doing what is called “spinning up”. This is a poker and gambling term for people who start out with a very small amount of money and then see how much they can turn it into you. There are all sorts of spins that you implement and all sorts of aggression levels. For example you could start with $20 and then bet in $5 increments on even chances.

However one such popular way is to bet on even chances and only use a percentage of your stake. Say $1 if you started with $20. But instead of doubling up your stake if you lose you only increase your stakes if you win. If you went onto a winning streak straight away then you can actually amass considerable winnings. Let us say that you bet $1 and won and so now you have $2 and a total of $21. Let us also say that you actually win 8 times on the trot. Spin number two and you wager $2 and so win another $2 and thus taking your stack to $23.
Spin three and you bet the $3 profit and win again and now you have $26.

The same with spin number four and now you have $32. On spin number five then you decide that you are going to “bank” some of your money and so you risk $6 and that wins and now your stack is at $38. You decide to risk $12 of your profit on spin six and that wins and now you are up to $50. You have $30 profits after six spins and your maximum downside was only $1.

In gambling strategy then it isn’t sufficient to simply devise a way of playing that is fundamentally sound. It not only has to be fundamentally sound but it also needs to overcome any vigorish that may be up against you. For example we can look at biased wheels in roulette as a perfect analogy. Wheels can become biased but there are biases and biases and not only does a wheel have to be biased but it has to show enough of a bias to overcome the house edge.

This analogy is significant because it highlights the fact that many systems fail in gambling not because they are fundamentally unsound but because of the vigorish that is imposed on it from the casino or the gambling house. Poker is the same with table fees and rake and many would be successful poker players end up either not making money, losing money or not making enough to make the entire process financially viable above and beyond doing another line of work.

This process is the same for poker players because not only do you need to find a successful style but you also need to find a successful style that beats the rake and other overheads and also to find a successful style that allows you to earn an amount from the game that you deem to be financially viable. So any casino gambling strategy by sheer definition has many obstacles for it to overcome before it can start down the road to making money.

We can all learn lessons from other sports and games to use in the current sport or game that we are playing. A thorough study of game theory will reveal this to be the case. In trading for example (I am referring to financial trading here) then the objective of all traders is to buy at a price that is lower than what they sell and vice versa. This is not always achievable but it is the goal of every trader.

However another clear goal is to also ride your profits as far as you possibly can and to cut your losses short. This principle is seen in some roulette systems where you start off making an initial bet and the use a percentage of that bet to carry on towards the next bet in the hope that the run will continue. There is logic behind this because of the fact that numbers in games like roulette are not evenly distributed in the short term.

For example in 37 spins then it is extremely unlikely that all 37 numbers would appear in those 37 spins and so this means that some numbers would appear more than once. So if you can look to possibly identify which number is about to go into a sequence of arriving more than it should based on short term variance then you have a chance of coming out ahead for the session. Clearly this method of betting will not make you +EV but it can be fun to use for single sessions of play.

We all know (or at least you should do) that roulette cannot be beaten by systems or systematic play. However what exactly is a system and how does it work? Well I think that when people refer to systems then what they actually mean are betting systems. The reality of the situation is that no betting system that has ever been devised can overcome the odds in roulette on a random wheel.

But the key word in all of that is “random” because under certain specific situations then the result isn’t random. The job of a croupier and the job of a roulette wheel are to make the result totally random so that no mathematical system can ever succeed and to simply allow the odds that are built into the game to do their job.

However if it is the purpose of the croupier to try and ensure a random result then this underlines how the wheel cannot accomplish these feat on its own. I have heard many different roulette experts say the same thing but differently and whether you want to call it the “dealer’s signature” or whatever…….the fact of the matter is that croupiers either advertently or inadvertently can affect the randomness of an outcome.

How do I possibly know this? Well as a croupier and gaming inspector for nearly nine years then I ought to know. The casinos do not wish it to be common knowledge and so hide the fact. But there isn’t a single casino manager that I have ever worked with that didn’t know and understand how vulnerable roulette was under certain conditions.

You don’t need a lot of money to have a good time inside a casino be it online or live. Some weeks ago I went to casino around forty miles from my home and with my partner and her sister and both of them had a great time spending no more than $10 (pounds) each. They bought into a roulette game where the chips were £0.25 each and so a stack of twenty was £5. Needless to say that they both won as first time players tend to do! Both of them were scandalised that I put an entire £5 chip on red and then thought that it was high stakes gambling that I let that ride to £10 and then £20 when they won.

The entire episode was actually pretty funny because I doubled the bet up from £5 all the way to £80 before I stopped. I like the thought of spinning up small amounts of money as I often do it in poker. But you can try to do this in roulette as well and you can do it for as little as $5 if you are selective about which tables you can do it with. Buying in for the table minimum stakes allows players to play roulette with little or no stress of losing and at the end of the day……casino games should be about entertainment and having fun for the least amount of money possible.

In terms of making money inside casinos then you are always going up against the house edge. That edge is there for a reason and is to make the casino money for clearly obvious reasons. So what this means is that the casino isn’t in business to be –EV or to lose money at any stage to anyone. So whether it is blackjack or roulette or stud poker it makes no difference. So if you want to extract money from any of these areas then stealth tactics is what you need to have in order to successfully get away with it.

Card counting is a way to theoretically make money but even that practice is shunned by casinos as it provides the player with a positive way to become +EV. So card counters will be prevented from playing or prevented from seeing positive situations in the shoe. This could be done by having rules like no mid shoe entry for example to prevent back counting or reducing the amount of cards being dealt from the shoe.

So when casinos are actively trying to prevent their clientele from taking money from them or becoming +EV against them which is the same thing then using stealth tactic becomes every bit as important as knowing and understanding the technical side of the game! In fact I would go as far as to say that 99% of all people who have ever tried to make money from card counting have either failed or had their “career” terminated through being prevented from playing or realising their full earning potential.

If you do not know what a biased roulette wheel is then it is simply a wheel that for whatever reason is producing numbers more than what sheer chance would have them arrive and that those numbers are not arriving by accident. It is beyond the scope of this blog to go into the reasons behind wheel bias but suffice to say that locating a biased wheel these days is not only very difficult but also very time consuming.

I simply think that there are far better uses of your time than trying to go down this road even though I spoke about this at length in my book “Killer Roulette”. I would never advise people to do this these days as there are simply far better ways to make money full stop inside casinos. Online then you have the online poker option and even if you were a novice player then I would still advise you to learn to play better poker as a possible income stream. The combination of the new modern low profile wheels and the fact that casinos are far more clued up these days with regards to wheel bias means that finding and then exploiting them is difficult.

Plus in order to exploit one then you have to wager significant amounts of money. If the edge is very small then you could still end up losing money despite having spotted a biased wheel. Also there would be absolutely nothing to stop any casino from removing an infected wheel from circulation and replacing it with one that they had in the back room.

There are essentially three types of people who play roulette. There are the largest percentages of players who basically have little to no knowledge of the game and this is where the casino makes its profits. Then there are a tiny percentage which is probably in the region of around 5% if truth be known who are more than aware of the casino edge and how much it is. These players may also be utilising system based play to reduce the casino edge to the absolute minimum.

These two types combined account for nearly all of the people who play roulette…..probably 99.99% of them……but not all. This is because there is also one other type of player, a rare type and a type who knows that the 35/1 pay offs are not a weakness at all but a strength. So just how can roulette be attacked and beaten……certainly not by mathematical systems for sure. But it can be beaten by cheating, biased wheels and reading a careless dealers spin.

The reading of a spin is a skill in its own right but it is far easier to do when dealers do not reverse spin. The act of reverse spinning is done to thwart players who can read the spin. However there are still many casinos who do not tell their dealers to do this. These are precisely the casinos that can get targeted by players who are adept at exploiting careless and sloppy dealers.