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Strategy, Hints and Tips for Roulette

Here you can learn about roulette systems and strategies and find some useful hints and tips for playing roulette.

Roulette Systems and Strategies

Roulette is one of the most easy casino games to play, but one of the most difficult to strategise about as it is simply based on luck. When you start to play roulette, it’s likely that you will hear people talking about roulette systems.

What is a Roulette Strategy?

There is a big difference between a roulette strategy and a roulette system. A roulette strategy basically consists of any methods you choose to use in order to give yourself the best chance of ending your game of roulette without suffering losses. A player’s strategy does not necessarily involve following an exact set of rules, but means that they will generally stick to certain guidelines, such as setting a limit on how much they are going to spend, or avoiding certain types of bets. Roulette strategies differ from player to player, but some general hints and tips that you may like to use to form your roulette strategy are included below.

What is a Roulette System?

Roulette systems are sets of rules that have been created by people who claim that they can help you to beat the roulette wheel and win by altering the house edge. The most famous of these systems is The Martingale Roulette System, which was invented over 200 years ago. The Martingale System claims that you can win at roulette by choosing a bet with a 50-50 chance of winning (such as red or black), and doubling your bet every time you lose.

So, for example, a roulette player would bet on black with an initial bet of £10. If he loses, he will bet again on black, but increase his bet to £20. If he loses again, he will increase his bet to £40, and so on until he wins. Therefore, if his bet of £40 wins, he will have won £40 but will have an overall profit of £10 from the three spins even though he has lost two out of three of them.

Do Roulette Systems Work?

The problem with such systems is that in practice they tend to be flawed, and therefore don’t guarantee profits. With The Martingale Roulette System, for example, the overall profit is only ever going to be the amount of your initial stake. For example, if your initial stake is £10 and it takes a bet of £320 before you win, you will still only have made £10 profit, because although you will make a profit of £320 on that spin, you will have lost £310 in the previous spins (£10 plus £20 plus £40 plus £80 plus £160). Therefore you are risking a large amount of money for a ridiculously low profit. As most roulette tables have maximum limits that you can gamble, you may have no chance of making any profit at all.

You will probably come across many roulette systems being sold online that claim to beat the roulette wheel, but the truth is that no system does. If it did, why would anyone need to be selling it online when they could have made millions at casinos? Overall, although it’s often sensible to have a strategy for roulette, systems should be avoided.

Roulette Hints and Tips

• Set yourself a budget before you start to play roulette. Be prepared to lose this amount of money, and make sure that it’s an amount you can afford to lose. Don’t be tempted to “just have one more go” when you have reached your spending limit.

• If you haven’t played roulette before and want to try and get used to the rules and how to play before gambling any money, try one of the free online roulette games offered by many of the major bookmakers and casino websites. You can also return to these once you have reached the budget you have set yourself if you want to continue playing without financial risk.

• Try and play European roulette (single zero roulette) rather than American roulette (double zero roulette) as the house edge is much lower and so you have more chance of winning.

• If you are able to play with “en prison” (“surrender”) or la partage rules, do so. These lower the house edge, giving you more chance of winning.

• Don’t try to predict the outcome of the next spin of the roulette wheel based on previous spins. Although it might seem that a streak of reds, for example, means that black is more likely to win on the next spin, the wheel is random and you should consider each spin as entirely separate.

• Avoid bets with low odds such as single number bets or “the five numbers bet”. You are better off to place a bet that covers more than one number at a time, such as a square (or quarter) or columns bet. Although the payout is lower, you have more chance of winning without spending too much on chips.

• It may help to be consistent with your own personal betting system, rather than just choosing random numbers on each spin. However, part of the fun of roulette is that you have less control over what happens than in other casino games such as blackjack or Caribbean stud poker, and therefore the game is based far more than luck. If you want to bet on your own lucky numbers (family birthdates, anniversaries, house numbers etc.), then have fun with it.

• Don’t be tempted to parlay your bet (leave it on the table along with your new bet for the next spin). If a number has just been lucky, there is no reason to think that it will be lucky again next time, as roulette is purely a game of luck.

• Don’t spend extended periods of time playing roulette. As the game is based mainly on chance, you are better to play for a few spins each time and then move onto something else, as the longer you play, the more likely you are to lose anything that you have won. If you do win, set that money aside and stick to your original budget rather than betting your winnings.

• Most importantly, try to play roulette for fun rather than for profit. This way you can walk away from the table and still have enjoyed yourself even if you haven’t won.

If you now want to put your roulette betting strategies into practice, why not take a look at our Roulette – Where To Bet section?

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