How to MAYBE beat the house in Roulette

Posted On Sunday, 31 July 2011 09:32

by Joey Ricard

I remember when I went to Vegas with a couple of friends at the age of 21. I had an older friend named Joe, that would always tell me stories about him going to Vegas, playing around with $2,500, betting, losing, winning, always coming out $1,000 up, but also getting free meals, free hotel rooms, free return flights, etc. Because of him telling me stories, actual true stories, I thought to my self, “Why not try?” so I did.

I first went to blackjack; I lost about $50 thinking I could figure out the system. I gave up on blackjack and proceeded to roulette. I then pulled out another $50, randomly picked numbers based on the previous results, and thinking I could figure it out, lost it. At this point, I said to myself “I am not a good gambler and I should quit”. So, what did I do next? I called Joe, he told me the following in 2 min, “Its not to hard, go there play progressive, put $5 down on either red or black, if you lose, put $10, if you lose that, put $20, each time double down until you win. Then when you win, start it all over.”

So I then went to the ATM, grabbed my friend, and headed to the roulette table. Now with a handful of $20s and new confidence, I walked to the table sure I was going to be a winner.

I put down the table minimum, $5 on black, and won. Did it again, lost. Then I put $10 on black and won. I then repeated over and over. I was up to $550 in less than an hour. Then I got cocky; I started putting down $25 on the first spin because I wasn't winning fast enough. Then it hit me; I had a losing streak, I lost four times in a row! They say, “the house always wins.” right? Well, a four time losing streak would only have been OK. Losing five times would only have been $155. That would not have been a problem when you start with $5 and have over $750 in cash. The problem was, I started with $25 as the first move instead of $5.  I lost four time in a row, $25 + $50 + $100 + $200, now its $375 lost, and then it came down to this final spin, $400 on black, just to gain what I lost, and make that original $25 profit.

I put the rest of my cash, $400, on black. I watch the ball spin, slowly bouncing, hitting every red number. It finally stops and I am biting my lip, $400 at 21 was a lot of money to me. Wow... I can not believe it, it actually landed on black. My heart rate is pumping very fast; I am now at $775 richer in an hour of roulette. My whole trip is now free.

When I played at that time, I was really lucky. I didn’t look at the probabilities; I didn’t think about the min or max on the boards, I didn’t think about how the free alcohol clouds your judgment, I just put my chips on the board.

Now, How to MAYBE win in roulette

First of all, you have to understand the probabilities of winning. Roulette has the best odds in the house for winning. Understanding the probabilities and the table will help leverage your chances of winning. Most people go and do all the wrong things with the lowest probabilities.

Roulette Probabilities:

Choosing a single number (1-36) – Odds of winning 2.63% - Losing 97.37%

(Split) Choosing any two numbers – Odds of winning 5.26% - Losing 94.74%

Corner (Choosing four numbers) – Odds of winning 10.53% - Losing 89.47%

Choosing a 3^rd (1-12, 13-24, 25-36) – Odds of winning 31.58% - Losing 68.42%

1-18, 19-36, Even, Odd, Red, Black – Odds of winning 47.37% - Losing 52.63%

Now the odds of losing are ALWAYS greater than winning, but how do we get from the losing bracket and more into the winning bracket?

There are three options to choose from:

1. You can pay off the employee; they can slide your chips to the winning section, but soon after you may both get dragged to the back and be eating out of a straw the rest of your life.
2. You can grab the chips and run, again, same straw scenario, or jail, depends on who gets you first.
3. You can calculate the odds of losing verses the multiplier of amount of times allowed to play by looking at the minimum and maximum of the table.

The odds of losing once, using either red or black, is 52.36%, lets round it up to 53% to be safe and make the numbers easier. The odds of losing twice is .53 x .53 so the odds of losing twice, ($5 on the first spin, $10 on the second) is about 28.09%.

Now lets get the odds of losing even lower.

Losing on spin number 1 - 53%, Spin 2 - 28.09%, Spin 3 – 14.9%, Spin 4 – 7.89%, Spin 5 – 4.2%, Spin 6 – 2.2%, Spin 7 – 1.2%, Spin 8 - .6%, Spin 9 - .3%

Now, what does this mean?

This means the more of a multiple of cash you have to cover each spin, the LESS likely you are to lose. I just happened to get lucky that I only lost four times in a row. If I lost a fifth time, the house would have won. And the odds of me losing everything was only 4.2%, but at the time, I wasn’t thinking odds, I was thinking “I want my money”.

So if we started with $5, this is how the breakdown of cash flow requirements would be.

Spin number 1 $5, Spin 2 - $10, Spin 3 - $20, Spin 4 - $40, Spin 5 - $80, Spin 6 - $160, Spin 7 - $320, Spin 8 - $640,

If you add all that up, the odds of losing .6% (8 spins in a row) would require you to start with $5 on the table, and you would need the following cash: $5+10+20+40+80+160+320+640= $1275

You may be thinking ‘that’s not bad, the odds of me losing .6% and winning 99.4% of the time will only take $1275.’ Now, if you wanted to go to 9 spins, it would only change the odds of losing .6% to .3%. That’s not a big difference in odds, but would require another $1280, double the amount as .6%.

The main thing is not having the amount of cash to MAYBE beat the house in roulette, it comes down creating rules for yourself and following them.

Here are the rules:

1. Start at the table's minimum requirement to gamble.
2. Make sure you have enough cash to cover an 8 spin spread based on the MINIMUM of the table.
3. Add up the minimum with an 8 spin spread; make sure the MAXIMUM on the table is above that number you calculated.

The house typically sets a $500 maximum on a table that starts at $5, which will only allow you to get to about 7 spins, keeping the odds of you losing no better than 1.2%.

If you are in a casino, you can easily figure out if you can win by covering the table with at least an 8 spin spread. There are a lot of electronic ones that have very low parameters, they start with a min of $1, and have a max of $500, these are easy to make money on, but I personally don’t trust the machines.

Next time you go to a casino, don’t play with the slot machines, that’s typically the worst odds of winning, why do you think they have so many?