bwin – the world's biggest online gaming platform

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.

Many gamblers decide to use a betting strategy system to help them in the game of roulette especially when they are first starting out. If you are new to roulette and don’t know much about the rules and how to play the game, the majority of the betting systems are a bit difficult to understand. In addition, some systems require larger bets in order to be lucrative.

Beginners have to start somewhere and that is exactly where the 2 Up 2 Down system comes into play. This system is designed for those that are new to the game of roulette and don’t have a super huge bankroll to play around with. This system was developed for even-money bets meaning odd and even, red and black, as well as high and low. The system is nowhere near complex yet very efficient producing results.

The Sequence and How It Works

The sequence that gamblers utilize with the 2 Up 2 Down system is simple and easy to remember – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Easy enough, right?

You’ll begin your wagers at 1 unit. You can start at any denomination; just make sure it fits within your bankroll. For explanation purposes, 1 unit will be equal to €1. You’ll bet €1 until you lose two consecutive times. Once you have lost two consecutive spins, you will up your bet to 2 units, which in this case would be €2. You will continue with the €2 bet until you lose two spins in a row, in which case you would increase your bet to €3, or until you win two spins in a row, in which case you would lower your bet back to €1.

With that being said, if you win two consecutive spins, you will lower your bet to the previous number in the sequence and if you lose two spins in a row, you will increase your bet to the next number in the sequence.

Once you finish the sequence, you can start it all over again or you can go up in your sequence with 6, 8, and 10. So long as you maintain the betting system of 2 Up 2 Down, you should be good to go no matter what type of number sequence you want to utilize.

The 2 Up 2 Down betting system is ideal for beginners to roulette – those that are just getting their feet wet to see if they enjoy the game or not. It is also the perfect strategy system for those that have smaller bankrolls to play with.

While many deem blackjack as the most popular casino game, roulette is right up there along with it. Roulette is a casino game that has a number of strategy and betting systems to go along with it. The most popular of these systems are D’Alembert and Martingale; however, many more are becoming available and known across the world such as the Fibonacci.

1000 years ago, an Italian man known as Leonardo Piano designed the Fibonacci strategy system. The name of the system comes from his nickname, which he was better known for, Fibonacci. This strategy system is based on the slow, natural succession of numbers. Many claim that the Fibonacci system is one of the safest systems to utilize because this system isn’t as aggressive as many of the other systems, which require larger increases in your wagers.

The Sequence and How It Works

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377…

Don’t be intimidated by all the numbers and how they got there. It’s not nearly as frightening as you think it is. You simply just need to know how the sequence works in order to understand the numbers and their order.

Take the first number and add it to the second number and the outcome will be the third number. Take the second number and add it to the third number and the outcome will be the fourth number. Looking at the numbers, you can take two of the numbers that are side by side, add them together and get the next number in the sequence. If you take 34 and add it to 55, you will get the next number, which is 89.

Applying the Sequence When You Lose

Each time you lose, you’ll want to increase your wager for the next round. Unlike in the Martingale system where you would double your wager, you’ll simply use the next number in the sequence as your next wager.

As an example, you would start at 1 unit. If you lose this round, bet 1 unit again. If you lose again, you’ll bet 2 units, then 3 units, then 5 units and so on.

Applying the Sequence When You Win

Unlike in the Martingale betting system where you would stop your sequence as soon as you win, with the Fibonacci system, you will eliminate the previous two numbers in the sequence and then bet the new number. When you are back to the beginning of the sequence and betting a single unit, the sequence ends.

As an example, let’s say you were betting 21 units. When you win, you would cross out 21 and 13; therefore, your next wager would be 8 units. If you win in the next round with 8 units, you would eliminate 8 and 5 and your next wager would be 3 units.

Better for Beginners

The Fibonacci system works at a slow pace and creates a problem with more experience and advanced roulette gamblers as this strategy system tends to hold them back from their potential at the table.

This Fibonacci system is perfect for a beginner at roulette wanting to try a betting system. The reason for this is because you aren’t required to make large bets over short periods of time meaning that you can take smaller steps rather than taking a huge leap and falling flat on your face.

There are many people who think that numbers that come in certain situations can be predicted in advance. This goes for areas like the lottery, bingo and games like roulette. I am always amazed when I see things like lottery systems as to why people are sold on the idea that there is someone out there who has devised a system to predict events that have no memory. Card counting is different because the memory comes from the cards that have been dealt that cannot be re dealt during the course of that shoe.

However what confuses many people is the concept of sample size. Let us say that a player was playing roulette and had been taking down the numbers on a note pad. They had seen four consecutive reds and were thinking that the next bet should be on black because the numbers even out. Firstly there is some logic to this thinking because the numbers do in fact even out and because of this fact then this is why the idea convinces people that black is a good bet.

Firstly the evening out process only takes place over a very large sample size over thousands upon thousands of spins. In fact we could probably take that to mean millions of spins. However another problem is that this player has seen four consecutive reds but as a snapshot in time! This means that even if those four consecutive reds had come at the very start of the shift then the sample size also includes events the previous day….week….month etc where the player wasn’t present to see what happened. So those four consecutive reds could be part of another correction that is part of a process of evening out a long series of mainly black numbers……see the problem.

I have maintained for years that roulette has been vulnerable and it is the 35/1 pay offs that make it so. Most people believe that those same pay offs are what makes the game unbeatable simply because no system can beat those odds. This is true but it also presumes that the game can only be approached by systems. It was true in the 1960’s when the great Ed Thorp was discussing ways to beat roulette using computers. The technology simply wasn’t there though during that era and this was the same during the 1970’s when a group of University students tried once again to make the theory work.

But once again they were let down by insufficient hardware and software at that time. I believe that it was tried again and exposed again during the 1980’s. However the latest news that a group of individuals took a casino for a large amount of money using computers with lasers comes as no surprise to me. I wrote in an article years ago how there simply had to be people even as we speak devising ways to beat roulette because roulette spins and roulette balls and wheels do have strong predictive qualities.

So roulette can be beaten……it cannot be beaten easily and in fact the process of beating roulette for people like us would be impossible because we simply do not have the proper knowledge and expertise……but there are many people out there that do have this expertise and all they have to do is point that expertise in the direction of roulette and the beating of it and some casino somewhere is going to be in a lot of trouble.

There must be as many unknown causes of wheel bias as known causes that casinos are aware of. During my time in gaming which was over eight years, I was aware of several wheels which were biased or faulty to my knowledge and these wheels were allowed to remain in existence. In my experience I think that most casinos do very little to combat biased wheels and for one very simple reason. This is because the overwhelming number of players who frequent casinos have no idea of wheel bias or if it even exists.

This ignorance basically keeps casinos safe from harm or safe from losses however you want to look at it. I never utilised my knowledge of wheel bias and how to take advantage of it until after I left gaming. However the new Saturn wheels are the best in the world and many of them have bias detection software attached to them which makes it very easy for casino staff to know if a wheel is biased or not as the computer readout will tell them.

Very few casino staff could tell if a wheel were biased with the naked eye. Spotting that a certain wheel was producing certain numbers say once every 32-33 spins instead of once every 37 is difficult to spot unless you manually write down a large amount of numbers. I would advise anyone to do some research on wheel bias if they are considering playing roulette although do be advised here that I am talking about manual roulette and not electronic roulette played on the internet.

Some years ago around 1985 we had people who were using primitive computer software to predict the outcome of roulette. This was not their idea, Ed Thorp the noted blackjack player and stock market speculator was coming up with a similar idea twenty years earlier. But what Thorp suffered from was not a lack of knowledge to make it work, it was a lack of software and hardware at that time. Even in the late seventies and early eighties the problem wasn’t all that much better.

So when you consider the massive advancements of computer software and hardware over the past ten years especially then I can only believe in my own mind that there are people out there who are using highly sophisticated computer programs to gain an edge on roulette by predicting where the ball will land. But do not misunderstand what I am trying to say here, when I am referring to “prediction” I am certainly not saying that if a ball lands in numbers 17, 21, 32 and 8 in succession that a computer could predict that.

There is too much randomness in the results of roulette wheels for that to ever be possible. But just like with stock market specialists, some sort of order can be made from chaos. Prediction means long term profitability and not 100% accuracy. If you make money over time in the stock market then this does not mean that you have or even can predict ever possible movement or every top and every bottom, that simply isn’t possible. But in roulette prediction then being able to predict that just two numbers out of 37 wouldn’t arrive on a certain spin would be enough to guarantee an edge. If a computer predicted that the result of a spin would be one of 35 numbers in a 37 number wheel then you are approaching it wrongly if you fail to make money in that situation.

I have been asked many times about roulette betting systems and the overall effectiveness of them. Novices tend to believe too much in betting systems and with it the most popular of the lot which is the Martingale. Sceptics basically rip them to pieces but are they correct to do so? Well the true value of roulette betting systems cannot be underestimated. If you wanted to go into a casino on any one individual evening then using a betting system would offer you a fantastic way to end the evening ahead.

One thing that you need to remember about roulette betting systems is that they need not be the Martingale which can quickly spiral out of control because of the doubling up nature of the system. But there are many systems that are used or can be used that are cancellation systems which do not have anywhere the same level of bankroll requirement and certainly do not escalate like the Martingale does.

However where betting systems can prove their effectiveness is when they allow the player to maybe qualify for other casino perks and benefits whilst seeming to be a “player”. Casino comps can sometimes be substantial and it can definitely be in a players best interests to try and qualify for these in the cheapest way possible. In the famous book “Thirteen against the bank” written by Norman Leigh, he described a classic cancellation system that reportedly took the casinos in France for £66,000 which in 1966 was a massive amount of money at that time.

You recall me talking about “The Salmon”…..if anyone does not understand what I am talking about here then see my previous post. The next instance of me seeing him on roulette occurred a few days later.

I recognised him instantly because of his looks and also because of what he had done on roulette a few days earlier. This time I was watching him like a hawk but I was more concerned in allowing him the opportunity to bet so I could observe him more.

What I didn’t want to do was to blow him away from the table by dealing aggressively and also speeding up the wheel to a ridiculous level. So I kept the wheel at the same speed which was quite slow and before long he was buying in for a £5 stack of colour chips.

He watched my spin for a few minutes and then started to bet. His first few spins missed but each of them was not far away and he was unfortunate enough to have three spins where the ball landed next to his number.

He lost his initial £5 but he then bought some more colour chips and started to spread his bets more. Within thirty minutes he proceeded to win back the money that he had lost and about another £50 on top.

I also noticed that when I left the table for a break……so did he. This got me thinking that there was obviously something about my spin that he liked. I became intensely fascinated by what he was doing and he almost seemed unbeatable. It could just have all been luck so I then decided to track the amount of money that he was winning.

I already knew that he was about £650 ahead over the two sessions that I had seen him. Over the next few months, I managed to watch him an awful lot without him knowing both when he was on my table and also adjoining tables that I could observe clearly.

I kept a running total of bets that I could see. I expanded this by bringing in someone else to help me watch him. We both had a keen interest in controlling a roulette ball and visual prediction. The following three months was alarming, out of a total of 44 sessions, “The Salmon” lost just 7 times and each loss was only in the region of about £20-£50 but when he won he would win anywhere from £50-£150.

These were figures which the casino never bothered to clock but his total over that period was that he was ahead in the region of about £2500……now I was really taking notice.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
Experience the thrill and Play Roulette online at bwin

It is common knowledge that roulette systems fail because of house limits. In fact the great gambling figure of the seventies and eighties John Scarne once remarked how casinos should protect themselves from system players by reducing their maximums and their minimum to maximum ratios.

In theory of course, a casino with no or very high limits and a punter with a massive bankroll could ensure profits. But in reality this simply isn’t the case. The overwhelming majority of system players do not have adequate bankrolls so they stop doubling up before they reach the maximum anyway or they are fearful of losing more money.

The trouble with roulette system players isn’t in the house maximums but in how roulette systems are applied. If you asked any person to describe a roulette betting system then they would undoubtedly talk about the classic doubling system. They may not even know it by name as the “Martingale” but they would be aware of this way of betting.

They could either be unaware of the chances of reaching maximums after a number of losses or they may be thinking along the lines of the house maximums being a deterrent to roulette systems. These are myths and faulty knowledge for the simple reason being that there are many roulette systems that prohibit reaching the table maximum or the chances of it being highly unlikely. They also don’t need a massive bankroll like the Martingale does as many of them are not doubling up systems.

In fact why people persist in the Martingale is beyond me, a sequence of losers with a $5 minimum and a $1000 maximum would go like this….$5, $10, $20, $40, $80, $160, $320, $640. The next bet takes them over the maximum. But a total of $1275 has been lost already, how many players have this sort of money on them and how many would be prepared to take it this far?

What would be the point in risking all this money to win one measly dollar? What would be the point in making yourself incredibly tense and nervous for a dollar in profit? In all my years in gaming I only ever saw one system player reach the maximum who was prepared to bet it on roulette. I saw something similar on blackjack with a player who used basic strategy and a progressive betting system.

But the trouble with roulette systems isn’t the house maximum but the ignorance of the player using the system.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson   www.bwin.com