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Martingale Strategy Roulette: Does The Martingale System Work?

Martingale Strategy Roulette: Does The Martingale System Work?

The Martingale strategy is one of the most popular roulette strategies due to it being one of the simplest to understand and implement.

In this blog post, we review what the Martingale strategy is, if it works and why it may fail, and explain what an anti-Martingale strategy is.

What Is The Martingale Roulette Strategy?

The Martingale roulette strategy is a betting strategy that can be used by roulette players in a roulette game. The strategy requires placing even money bets such as Black/Red, High/Low or Even/Odd bets.

The idea behind a Martingale strategy is that it allegedly helps players recuperate their losses. It works by doubling your bet after each loss and returning to the starting amount following a win. For example, if you use a Martingale strategy and decide to bet £10 on your initial bet and it loses, your next bet would be £20. If this loses, the next bet would be £40, and so on.

Now, say you are betting on Even/Odd bets. The potential payout you could expect to receive from this type of bet is 1:1. If your third bet wins, the payout you receive is £40. Therefore, the round resulted in £30 lost across the first two bets but ended with being up by £10 after the £40 win.

After you make a winning bet, you can return to your initial bet. So, going with the example we made above, you would return to betting £10.

Does The Martingale Roulette System Work?

No, the Martingale roulette system does not work in the way that many think it does. For us to confidently say that the system works, it has to guarantee wins, and it does not. All casino games, including roulette, are random games of chance.

The RNG system ensures that the results from an online roulette game are unpredictable, and you can never know what will happen on the next spin based on the previous pin. That way, every single game remains fair for all players and unbiased. In-person roulette also has many variables that contribute to producing random outcomes.

The Martingale roulette system does not change the chances of winning. It also encounters issues as a progressive system. If you hit a losing streak, the wagers get larger at an exponential rate. Therefore, the maximum bet limit and your bankroll can end up putting a stop to the system before it can work as intended.

So, while the system sounds effective in theory, it may not be effective in practice. Losses can quickly stack up, and the wagers can get quite large quite quickly.

Why The Martingale Roulette Strategy Fails

The Martingale roulette system fails mainly because it depends on the notion that you will eventually hit a win. Evidently, the idea that you will eventually land a win when playing roulette is flawed because it suggests that previous spins have an effect on the subsequent spins, which is not the case. Every number has the same chance of landing on each spin.

A roulette game, and any casino game for that matter, relies entirely on chance and is completely random. That means you cannot guarantee that you will land a winning spin at all. As a result of this randomness, it is possible never to hit a winning spin when playing roulette as much as it is possible to have a winning streak.

Therefore, if you use a Martingale system that requires you to double your bet after every loss, you can quickly incur significant losses. It is possible not to land any winning combinations and be unable to recuperate those losses. 

Another reason this system fails is that most tables at a casino would have a betting limit. Since you cannot guarantee or know when or if you will eventually hit a win, reaching the betting limits before you win anything is possible because you keep doubling your bet. Besides, if you reach the maximum bet amount, it's possible that the profit you make won't make up for the losses you have incurred.

Anti-Martingale Strategy Explained

The Anti-Martingale strategy is the opposite of a Martingale strategy. So, instead of increasing your bet after each loss, you increase your bet after each win when using the anti-Martingale strategy. Then, if you lose, you decrease your bet.

In addition, the Anti-Martingale strategy suggests that you increase your bet and place the same bet you made if it won. For example, if you had placed a £10 bet on black and it won, you would then place a £20 bet on black again. But if you lose again, you return to placing at £10 bet.

That is because the Anti-Martingale strategy aims to help players profit from "favourable" conditions. That means this system suggests that if a particular bet is won, it may win again in the next round.

Judging from that alone, you can see that the system is also flawed. Firstly, it suggests that previous events affect the next events, suggesting that if you have placed a bet on Red, for example, and it wins, the next winning bet may again be on Red. As mentioned above, casino games, including roulette, are random, and each event is entirely random. Therefore, one cannot know when or if a particular bet will come up and win.

Last Word

The Martingale strategy thrives on what is known as the Gambler's Fallacy. It completely overlooks the actual odds of an outcome and suggests that after a losing streak, you have to win at some point.

For that to be true, the roulette game would have to be influenced by external events, such as a certain number of spins leading into a win or a certain number of spins leading to a loss. As mentioned above, the chances of a number landing in roulette are the same on every spin.

Even the Anti-Martingale system created as an alternative to the Martingale system does not work because, while it doubles wins instead of loses, it also operates on the idea that previous events influence the next events. 

Be that as it may, some players may implement these strategies as a form of bet management to provide some structure. You can, too, as long as you understand they will not change your chances of winning.

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*All values (Bet Levels, Maximum Wins, etc.) mentioned in relation to this slot game are subject to change at any time.