The Theory of American Roulette

Roulette is one of the easiest casino games to beat. There are basically two kinds of roulette, American roulette (explained here) and French roulette. (Please note that Russian roulette is a very different game and has no relevance to traditional roulette games).

Mathematically the theory of roulette is probably quite complicated. But fortunately the layout of the game makes it very easy to understand how everything works, form a visual point of view. So, our only concern is where to place the wagers and how much to bet.

You will be playing only the even money bets using the Martingale betting system. The only disadvantage, actually more of an annoyance than a disadvantage, lays in the fact that the wheel has two slots that are not covered by any even money bets. Those two slots are the 0 and 00, both represented in green. Those two zeroes are neither red nor black, neither odd nor even and neither fall in the 1-18 not in the 19-36 range. You can completely disregard those zeroes. Those are just house commissions that are collected every now and then. Whatever money you happen to lose on those commissions, you are going to recuperate by playing the wining system. But if those zeroes are a real annoyance to you, you should look into French roulette, instead.

Probably the single most important thing about roulette is the history of numbers on previous rolls. This is why you have to keep a detailed log of all the numbers, along with the time intervals in between the numbers. In the long run all the numbers will even out. In other words, it is impossible for some numbers to come out more often than others. Just think about it, if that were the case on any particular roulette wheel, then every casino would be in trouble. Because in that case the players would know which numbers come out more often and which ones are dead, and anyone would beat the game easily by just avoiding to play the dead numbers. That is known as a biased wheel. That does not exist in any casinos, because casinos make sure their wheels are well balanced.

However, ironically, the perfectly balanced wheels also created an advantage for the players, because with perfectly balanced wheels the players know that all the numbers must equal out, in the long run. So, all you have to do is keep track of the numbers and you'll have a pretty good idea what numbers are due to roll in the near future. But please note, this mathematical advantage does not give you a sure win on every spin, it is just a mathematical advantage. What that means is simply that if you play with this mathematical advantage, in the long run you will be the winner.

Of course, keeping track of the numbers is just half the battle. The other half is money management. That is where the Martingale system comes in. You basically just have to double your bets every time you lose.