Reverse Martingale

While we are on the subjest of the Reverse Martingale, we ought to just touch on it's opposite: the ever famous Martingale, which has been used not only by roulette players, but by blackjack players and even forex traders.

This is perhaps the most famous roulette system of them all.

Double Up System

The Martingale is often called The Double Up Roulette System because, well, that's what you do. The Martingale is a Negative Progression System- a way of structuring your bets in a roulette session.

It's called a negative progression system because you increase your bets after a loss (compare this to The Reverse Martingale, where you increase the size of your bet after a win).

When you play the Martingale, you aim to bank your profit after a win, and invest money after a loss in the hope that you can claw back any losses.

Example

OK, to begin with you need to decide your starting bet. Let's say it's 1 unit (if you start on 10, then multiply everything below by 10).

Your betting progression is going to look like this (the bets you make on spin 1, spin 2, spin 3 etc)

1, 2, 4, 16, 32, 64, 128, .........

You start off betting 1. If you win, you drop back to the start of the progression. In this case, you were lucky and won- and you never got off the first number. So you bet 1 again.

What happens if you lose? Well, now you double your bet on the next spin. So you bet 2. If you lose this bet, you bet 4 on the next spin, and so on, always doubling your bet. You'll see, that as long as you win at some point, you'll always make a profit of 1 for each progression, whether you just bet the first number in the progression, or the 5th.

So Where's The Catch

Have you figured it out yet? It seems fool proof, right? Unless you lose an infinite number of times, and you have a bigger enough bankroll, you'll always be able to claw back any losses, right?

Well, to a certain extent, this is true. But what happens if you see 12 reds in a row, and you have been betting on black all this time? And we are not talking about the fact that you'll be theoretically betting 2047 units to make an overall profit of £/$/€ 1 (which is starting to look a little dicey). Do the maths, or math:

1+2+4+8+16+32+64+128+256+512+1024 = 2047.

Your other problem, is that ALL casinos have a maximum betting limit on the table, so if you have a long running streak, you may run out of room to double your bets. If you are betting on outside bets like red/black, the maximum bet will be lower still.

Also, remember that if you are betting outside bets like odd/even, the 0 can come in (or even the 00 if you are playing American Roulette). So you'll need another "round" to make up any losses.

Martingale Tips

So is there anything that you can do to increase your odds on The Martingale? Well, you cannot increase the odds that you get from a casino game using any system- as these are hardwired into the game and are a function of the design of the game and the payout table. But nevertheless, here are some Martingale Tips for you:

• Always play European Roulette, never American- the odds are better
• Try and play French Roulette that play "La Partage Rule"- the odds are even better on even money bets.
• Start Your negative progression low. That way, you will have the best possible run to score a win in the session
• Switch around your bets. The wheel has no memory. Instead of betting red/black all the time, switch to odd/even and 1-18/19-36 for example
• Set yourself a strict profit and stop loss and walk away when you hit either of them.
• Test out your system on freeplay before betting for real- that way you can test it risk free,
• To reduce your risk play the standard Martingale rather than the Super Martingale