Don’t get me wrong. I’m
perfectly aware that beating the roulette wheel in the long
run is mathematically impossible. Only when 2 and 2 add up
to make 3 will you beat the wheel, and you should batter
this into your head too. The way the system was conceived
leaves no room for positive expected value for the player,
and therefore no long term winning is possible either. The
negative EV that players will have to struggle against is
‘coded’ directly into the wheel through the presence of the
0 and the 00 slots. Even if these slots were removed, you
still wouldn’t enjoy positive EV because this way roulette
would become a coin-flip, 50-50 game both for the house and
the player, which means the long term EV would be 0 for both
parties concerned.
The 5.6% house edge on
straight bets is something most gamblers are familiar with.
What some of them fail to understand is, the house doesn’t
make its money on this meager edge. The house edge is only a
small piece in a much larger mechanism called the house
drop. The house edge is the spark that sets a whole chain of
events into motion, an elaborate system which eventually
turns a near 30% profit for the
casino.
It can be mathematically
charted how every single bet that you make against a 5.6%
nominal house edge will have to deal with a bigger and
bigger real house edge all the time. In a word: if you play
long enough, you’re guaranteed to register 100% losses.
Most roulette systems
represent ways players can gain an edge over the house in
roulette. While in
blackjack (another very popular casino game) the house edge
can indeed be turned around through card counting (which is
much more complicated though than the system used to
actually count cards), in roulette players are robed of such
tools.
One method that keeps
popping up is the charting of the wheel. The theory goes
that most real roulette wheels are biased, because it is
almost impossible mechanically to create a perfect wheel
which does indeed spit out perfectly random results. While
this may be true to a certain extent, I simply do not
believe that the imperfection of the wheel can yield a
significant enough edge for the player to cling on to. For a
mechanically biased wheel to produce significantly
predictable results for players to exploit, it would take
such a blatantly obvious fault that casino authorities would
certainly notice it, quite probably well before any player
does.
The theory behind the
charting of the wheel says that it takes time and thousands
upon thousands of spins. Here’s another reason why this
system cannot work. Let’s say the casino chooses not to mend
its obviously faulty wheel. You try out several wheels in
several casinos and spend a hard-to–assess sum of money on
gaining the information you need only to find they do not
yield significantly biased results for you. After weeks of
searching and tons of money wasted, you come across the
faulty wheel. By this time though, your losses are so bad
that you’d probably need a written consent from the casino’s
management stating that they’ll let you win at the wheel in
order to commit any more money on it. Again: if the casino
decided to look the other way, maybe then you could
theoretically recover your losses, but since casinos are not
famed for being sloppy or negligent when it comes to winning
players, I wouldn’t stake my financial future on this setup.
The charting of the wheel
also includes writing down every result for weeks, data
which can then be analyzed for patterns. The problem is that
even if you do find an emerging pattern, it may well be a
simple twist of fate without any consistent basis
whatsoever.
In roulette you can only
win by taking the hit of the negative EV and by trying to
get lucky on the variance.
Don’t forget to take
full advantage of the comp programs your casino may
offer, These are just like
rakeback in poker:
they’ll take a bite out of your negative EV, making it
possible for you to chase your lucky spin for longer.
Poker
rakeback deals
will significantly enhance your positive EV in poker if
you’re a good player and diminish your negative EV if
you’re a bad one.
