Do betting systems work? What about the Martingale?

Some players gamble entirely for fun. Recently, I was at the Las Vegas Mirage and I watched some rich German player play Roulette. He was not using a betting system. He simply liked when the casino employee pushed large stacks of $5 towards him, so he was covering every number on the Roulette felt with stacks of different sizes. As a result, the outcome was 100% dependent on luck. If you're reading this article, chances are you're one of those players that is looking for more than just luck. You may have heard of the Martingale. You want to know if there's a betting system to make you win money at blackjack, Roulette, Craps or any other table game. In another article, we mentioned that there are only 4 games in which you can have positive expected value (EV), and none of those games involve a betting system. In short, the answer is that no betting system whatsoever can make you a long time winner. The rest of this article will explain why all the books promoting betting systems are merely scams. Betting systems like Martingale will make you lose The most famous betting system is the Martingale and all its variants. The basic concept behind the Martingale is to bet money, and double your wager if you lose the first one. If you lose the second bet, you double again until you finally win, catching everything you had lost plus profits. If you're betting on a wager that has low variance such as even money Roulette bets (red/black, 1-18 / 19-36, odd/pair), Craps, Blackjack etc, you will ALWAYS end up winning if you continuously double. In theory, the betting system is flawless. In our Roulette example, betting on black and then doubling if you lose makes it so you will win 75% of the time. I've tried this betting system before, when I was still young and foolish. You win very often so you feel invincible. You can quickly make a lot of money. I wholly encourage you to do this once in a while to win quick money. Play $25 and if you lose it, wager $50. That's it. It's a betting system that will make you win frequently and pocketing $25 is always nice. On the long term, though, it is a losing strategy. The problem is that the risk of ruin is exponential using this betting strategy. Yes, in theory you always catch up and then get a profit. But realistically, say you bet that $25 and lost, are you ready to wager $800 with a 48% probability to win a meager $25? That is what will inevitably happen when using the Martingale betting system. If you double and lose 5 times in a row, doubling again will cost $800 with a total reward of $25. But in our mind, we trick ourselves into thinking that the odds are really low of losing 5 times in a row. They are. Sort of. Playing an even money wager such as black, you have about one chance out of 32 to lose 5 times in a row, so about 3%. If you're playing at an online casino and you double a couple times, your odds are reasonable and you might end up a winner for the night. But if you play several hundred hands, your odds of hitting that “1 in 32” are very high. That's if you're lucky. Because once you've lost 5 in a row, you still only have 48% chances to double and win. If you play hundreds, thousands of hands you will hit massive losing streaks at some point. It is a mathematical certainty. That is the Martingale curse: while in theory it is flawless, in practice it will leave you crippled. Why? Because either you will run out of money or you will reach the betting cap put in place by the casinos to make sure these betting systems can't work. Or, you could always lower your stakes so you can afford more doubles. I mean, losing 5 times in a row when you started by betting $1 only amounts to $16. But then again, it will take you a massive amount of wagers to win a large amount. And if you read this article carefully, you already understood that the Martingale betting system cannot withstand playing “massive amounts” of wagers. Play positive outcome games So, betting systems like the Martingale don't work in the long run. You can do it once in a while and have fun, but you'll get ruined if you try to do it too often. Knowing this, what's left? We encourage you to gamble for fun. The only way to make money on a stable basis is to play games that involve a degree of skill, not betting systems. Aside from card counting in Blackjack, your best bets are poker and sports betting. It's difficult, but it is possible to become good enough to play and profit from these games constantly. Hence why there are professional poker players and sports handicappers.

1

romeo 3-06-2009 More articles Visit my profile	Related Topics: martingale luck wager double strategy win blackjack roulette poker play

Comments

Send your articles

Write an article now; if you contribute regularly, you can be rewarded in points and even in gifts!