Casino war techniques. Betting on the red or the black in roulette. Is this the most famous of all the roulette bets? Probably. It´s been the bet that had the most exposure in films and so on.

Odds Betting Red Black Roulette Odds
Odds Betting Red Black Roulette Games

A bet on the red or the black is an even money bet, of course, in that the house pays out 1:1. So if you bet £10 and win, you win £10, plus you get your bet back, so the house pays you £20. You use these bets in all sorts of roulette systems such as the Single Column Even Bets, for example, which combines a red or black bet with a single column bet.

You cover half the table covering numbers like black 6, 17 and 26. actually you don´t- remember there is a 0 pocket on the wheel (assuming you are playing European Roulette), and that takes your coverage down to 48.6%. The difference gives you the house advantage which is 2.6% for European Roulette and 5.2% on American Roulette (spot the obvious- always play European rather than American if you can).

If you play American Roulette, your coverage goes down to 47.4% and the house edge ticks up to 5.2%. (Tip- always play European variants in preference to Amercan).

At the very beginning of the game, the probability that the ball will stop on a red or black section is 18/37, 0.486. The probability that the zero wins is 1/37, 0.027. If Black wins, then the Red winning odds are increased like 19/37 = 0.736. When you are dealing with red or black for instance, the first spin has 2 possibilities of either red or black coming up, not 1. Your series of 10 should for figuring the odds should look like this: 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024 even though you only bet 1 unit at the first of the series. Your example above shows a series of units bet. Using the Martingale System The most effective way of using the Martingale is to only bet on even-money outside bets – 1-18, 19-36, Red, Black, Even, and Odd. They have the maximum odds of winning (almost 50%), but the lowest payout of all – 1:1. This means you win the same amount of money you bet for the spin.

Many people play red and black bets, and never try out anything else. There´s nothing wrong with that, just remember you get the same odds and table coverage on odd/even and 1-18/19-36 should you want to mix it up a bit. The odds are the same. In fact, the odds are the same for all roulette bets with the exception of the 5 Number Bet which you should avoid.

La Partage

The other thing to look out for, is casinos that play “La Partage Rule” on even money bets. This tends to be the French Roulette variants. You´ll get half your bet back if you bet on the red (or black) and the ball drops in the zero pocket. This reduces the house edge even further down to 1.3%

The Best Casino and Variant to play red or black bets in roulette?

Referring back to our note on La Partage, you will get most bang from your buck on a French Wheel. Try the French Roulette over at Royal Panda. Many strategies use even money bets like the Whittacker roulette system.

I was reading about a bet method on a published system for a different game and it seems to be worth trying on roulette. Especially for you lucky punters that have access to non-zero roulette. Or even single zero with “la partage”.

The bet selection is your choice. This bet method is based on Oscar’s Grind. That is, we increase our bet amount after a win and we keep it the same after a loss.
We have to keep track of 3 numbers. Units Lost, current bet size and a running total to be able to know when we’ve reached our win target. Losses starts out as 0, bet size starts out as 1 and of course running total starts out at zero. Every time we lose we increase Losses by the amount lost and the bet amount remains unchanged. Every time we win we increase the bet amount by 1 unit and we decrease Losses by the amount won. Every time we lose 2 times in a row, we stop betting until we have a virtual win then we start betting for real at the unit amount of the last bet we made.

This is a means of trying to prevent large streaks of losses from wiping us out. It is off-set by the reality that we may skip wins and come back to play and catch 2 more losses. If we do this once that’s 4 losses in a row, and twice is 6 losses in a row. But all in all I think stopping after 2 losses and waiting for the losing streak to end is a safer idea.

The only reason we keep track of losses is that we have a chart that comes into play after we’ve won 2 times in a row. This tells us what to bet based on how many units we are down. Using this chart is entirely optional.

Units down Bet Amount
1-3 1
4-6 2
7-9 3
10 + 4

This chart accomplishes 2 things. First, it causes us to increase our bet size more rapidly if we just had a long stretch of losses and it lets us reduce our bet size if we’re betting larger units but have recovered most or all of our losses.

4 units is the largest bet we will be making and if we lose a 4 unit bet, we end that attack and re-set losses to 0 and bet size to 1. I also suggest that you re-set any time you reach a new high bank amount. That’s the basic skeleton of the bet method. It can be adjusted to suit your personal preferences. For example you can make a losing bet of 5 or 6 the stop-loss target.

The original version has us adding an extra unit to the losses number for every loss. This gives us some guaranteed profit if we get back to zero. I didn’t include this factor because it’s just as easy to keep track of our total and make decisions accordingly.

Some observations

This is a very controlled money management strategy. It keeps the bets from escalating too high by ending the game on a 4 unit lost bet. This is a very important part of the method. Every bet selection will have periodic losing streaks. We either need to be prepared to bet a long progression, risking large numbers of units to try and stop a loss or we need to be willing to take small losses more often to keep from having to use a long expensive progression.

The above paragraph is in red because it’s the reality of most gambling systems. It has to be come to grips with if you intend to stay sane playing this game. I’m not say that a long progression is dumb, I’m just saying that if you use it, you have to be aware of the pitfalls and be willing to take a really big hit every now and then. Also, it takes a lot of guts to place the larger bet amounts so, “Know thyself” before you try to play using a steep progression.

That’s the method in a nutshell. Use it if you like it,

GLC
_________________________

A minor tweak to this progression

Use any even chance bet selection method you like. Or for simplicity, just pick one of the even chances, such as Red and play Red only. Or if it makes you mad if you happen to pick the wrong color, play follow-the-last. That way you’ll catch all steaks of either color. What you won’t like is RBRBRBRBRBRBR. But, there’s no selection process that doesn’t have a killer sequence.

The bet progression is what I’m presenting here.
We will increase our bet size after 2 wins and we’ll stay the same after a loss. The 2 wins don’t have to be in a row and it doesn’t matter how many losses are between them.

This is a possible sequence:
-1-1-1+1-1-1+1-2-2+2+2-3-3-3+3-3+3+4+4-4 = -5

Here’s a winning sequence:
+1-1-1+1+2+2-3+3+3-4 = +3

4 units is the largest bet we make.
We play until we lose on a 4 unit bet.
We can win many 4 bets but when we lose a 4 unit bet we end the attack plus or minus.

I am tightening up my rules for playing this system.

I have changed the “Chart”. For all of you who have any respect for anything I write, I’m encouraging you to look at this more closely. I suggest this because it is a very solid bet method that gives enough wiggle room to win some units without ever risking too much at one time. I suggest a 40 unit buy-in and a 10 unit win target. As you play it you can adjust these to suit yourself. I will suggest a bet selection method but you can use any even chance method you like.

1. RBRBRBRB etc… Just alternate continuously. This will keep from having long losing stretches most of the time. The rule in the system of ending real betting after 2 losses in a row and then only resuming real betting after a win works well in conjunction with this bet method.

We have to keep track of 3 numbers.
Units Lost
Current bet size
Running

Odds Betting Red Black Roulette