I know what you’re up to. If you’re even bothering to look up roulette strategy guides on the Internet, you must fall into one of two categories: beginner or delusional maniac. If you fall into the first category, do yourself a favor and quit reading. Forget the table, forget the wheel, forget the ball, forget the whole game. Just “X” out of here right now. Go away before you slip over into the second category. Stick to blackjack or slot machines or something.
Ugh, you’re still here? Fine then. Let’s come right out and say it: all roulette “strategies” are total and complete lies. Some of these lies are very elaborate; others are based on simple-but-faulty logic. Either way, the truth is that winning “strategies” cannot exist for the game of roulette because each and every possible bet on the roulette table–when you boil things down to pure math–is, in essence, the exact same bet.
Let me show you what I mean with a very simple example. First, take a straight-up one-number bet. You have a 1-in-38 chance of winning 35 chips. Compare this to a “safe” bet like betting two of the three thirds. With this bet you have a 12-in-19 (not quite 2-in-3 because of the green 0’s which aren’t in any third) chance of winning 2 chips (but always losing at least one–so in reality, it’s a 12-in-19 chance of winning one chip.)
The bets look different on the table, but mathematically they work exactly the same. In 38 spins, you’ll statistically “win” about 34 or 35 chips with either bet–or to be a little more pessimistic but a little more accurate, you’ll lose a little more than 3 chips every 40 spins with either of these bets. Betting on the thirds might be a little more interesting because you’ll win more often, and betting a straight-up number might be more exciting because of the big payout when (if) it hits, but when you turn it into a matter of math, these bets are the same. And they’re both bad bets. And, in fact, everything on the roulette table is a bad bet.
My friends, we will never “beat” the roulette wheel. Unless we start considering the use of highly-sophisticated (and more or less illegal) timing methods, regular people like me and you are not going to win at the roulette table. Sure, we might have a good night–we might even have a string of good nights. But we simply can’t win at this game in the long term. Realism is the only long-term “strategy” I can offer here. Play for fun because you can’t play to win. The sooner you give up on this impossible dream, the sooner you can feel like a winner.
You can bet the inside or the outside. You can bet consistently or you can change your bet with each spin. You can bet a certain side of the wheel or a certain side of the table. You can bet in patterns or you can bet randomly. You can bet with trends or against them. You can bet reds or blacks or low numbers or high numbers or just the zeros. It’s all exactly the same. All you really have control over is how much you bet and how many bets you make per spin: how fast do you want to lose your money?
The difference between roulette and “winnable” games like blackjack or video poker is that no “basic strategy” exists at the roulette table. The strict and simple math of the table coupled with the complete unpredictability of the wheel does not leave any room for strategizing. Even within the arbitrary world of slot machines, you can use the strategy of always betting maximum credits to improve your odds of walking away a winner. No such simple tricks exist in roulette. You’re at the mercy of a little ball that can’t be tricked and doesn’t care whether you win or lose.
But that randomness–that true, real randomness–is also what makes roulette worth playing. There is no computer chip telling the wheel to pay out a certain percentage. There is no deck of cards containing a definite number of each card. The number 24 might hit ten times in a row, or it might not hit for three days straight. If you’re going to play roulette, don’t play because you think you can “win.” Play because it’s the last true game of chance left. Everything else is on the casino floor is a carefully-calculated illusion, but the roulette wheel–even despite it’s simple, inherently unbeatable math–is still real.
