Roulette Tactics and Strategies in General
Roulette is a game invented by a mathematician Blaise Pascal, although he did not intend to create a casino game. However, the mathematical formulas developed by Pascal still determine your winning odds and the advantage of the casino called the “house edge”.
For this reason, to have an idea of roulette tactics and strategies, you first need to learn these mathematical principles and possibilities. We will give you general information about roulette tactics first, then we will see how they work together to make the most use of these tactics.
Let’s start from the beginning: There are 37 or 38 numbers on the roulette wheel. The difference is determined by the rule system used by the game: American Roulette has an extra “00” section on the wheel, so the total number increases to 38. “0” and “00” are the casino’s digits. So if the ball falls to these sections, the casino is considered to have won. For this reason, the first thing we need to know is to play the European version of this game. There is only one “0” section on the wheel, therefore, this version offers a higher chance of winning. Stay away from the American roulette, the casino edge is too high because of the extra zero slot.
Which Roulette Bets Are the Best?
As is known, there is not a single bet option in the roulette game. You can bet on:
- a certain number
- a range of numbers
- certain colours
- odd or even.
For each betting option, your odds of winning vary. As you can imagine, betting on a single number offers the lowest winning possibility but the highest payout. The betting options that are most likely to win are colour and odd-even bets. When you play these bets, your odds of winning are always 47.37%. Why not 50%? Because the “0” number on the roulette wheel, as mentioned above, belongs to the casino and always gives an edge of %2.63 to them.
This information is important because almost all roulette strategies are based on these four betting options. Other bets offer very low odds that cannot be calculated. In other words, they depend entirely on luck. For these four bets, even without using a tactic, your chances of winning are already high enough: 47.37%. With a few simple strategies, you can pull this number up even further. Since the payout rates of these bets are low, you won’t become a rich person with a few spins, but you will not go bankrupt too!
You’ll see that there are dozens of roulette tactics on the Internet, but very few of them really work. The D’Alambert roulette strategy is probably the most known one. It is also the easiest tactic and can be applied even if you do not have any mathematical knowledge.
What is the D’Alambert Strategy and How to Use It?
This strategy, developed by a French mathematician of the same name, uses a pyramid shape. The greatest feature of the system is that you can keep your losses to a minimum. It doesn’t help you get very high profits, but it prevents you from suffering excessive losses.
Implementing the system is very simple. Let’s imagine you start with a CAD 10 bet. If you win, you will remove CAD 1 and play the next bet with CAD 9. When you lose, you will add CAD 1 to your previous bet. But there is another very important rule to follow: You will only place bets for the 4 options we explained above: Color, Odd/even, 1 to 18, and 19 to 36.
D’Alambert system will allow you to control your losses. It is a progression system, which allows you to have full control over your bets and budget. Here is an example:
In the below sequence, there are 4 losses and 4 wins, but despite this, you are in profit by 4. This is the golden rule with the D’Alembert – If you win and lose the bets the same number of times, you will always be in profit by the number of bets.
Bet 5 → lose
Bet 6 → lose
Bet 7 → win
Bet 6 → lose
Bet 7 → win
Bet 6 → win
Bet 5 → lose
Bet 6 → win
The maths for this is: 0 – 5 – 6 + 7 – 6 + 7 + 6 – 5 + 6 = 4
The biggest benefit of the D’Alembert roulette strategy is that it allows you to increase your bet amount more slowly. It is not an aggressive system like Martingale or Labouchere. You are less likely to lose large amounts by using this method. For example, if you lose 7 times in a row and follow the Labouchere method, you will lose 123 units in total. However, using the D’Alembert method will limit your losses to 28 units under the same conditions.
Disadvantages of the D’Alembert System
The D’Alembert system assumes that the roulette wheel has a “memory” and sooner or later, you are bound to win. This is called the “gambler’s fallacy”. We like to think that if the ball landed on black, the possibility of landing on red becomes higher for the next spin. Unfortunately, this is not true. There is no guarantee that the ball will land on a certain section, and the odds do not raise with each spin.
In fact, that 47.37% possibility is a fixed number, and although it is a high number, this gives no guarantees of a definite result. With every spin of the wheel, all possibilities are calculated from the beginning, possibilities do not increase nor accumulate. You can see this yourself by playing heads or tails: Getting heads for 10 times does not guarantee that the next one will be a tail.
For this reason, using the D’Alembert system will not give you a profit guarantee, but you will be able to control your losses. In this respect, the D’Alembert strategy is a more suitable system for beginners. Its implementation is simple and does not contain complicated rules. Set yourself an upper limit, and even if you win, do not exceed this limit. This way, you can use D’Alembert’s system most efficiently.
