Odds Of Winning Roulette Twice In A Row
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to title this post until I did some research in the search engines. I knew I wanted to write a “how to win at roulette” post, but I always try to include a subtitle after the main title to jazz things up.
Roulette 18 plus gambling new york - General Questions Roulette - General Questions If one roulette same number twice bet on two columns in roulette the probability of winning would be 24/38, or 63%. Or it could've counted up or counted down or counted in 2s or landed on 17 then 7 then 17 then 7 etc etc etc but this is all pretty ldo TheRick. In total there are 37 slots for the roulette ball to land on. The odds that the Roulette ball will land on red is 18/37 = 48.6%. The odds that the ball will land on red two times in a row is 48.6% x 48.6% = 23.6%. The odds that the colour red will hit three times in a row is 48.6% x 48.6% x 48.6% = 11.4%. The odds against you hitting 2 specific numbers 2 times in a row are 1,443 to 1 against you. (1 out of 1,444 is the chance.) Again, this is the same for ANY number.
When I Googled “how to win at roulette,” I found a lot of really bad advice I know most gamblers should ignore.
This post explains how to beat “the devil’s wheel,” mostly by ignoring some of the bad advice you’ll find on other Web pages.
One of the most popular bets in roulette is a bet on a color. The ball will always land on one of the following colors:
- Red
- Black
- Green
If you bet on red, you get even money if you win. If you bet on black, you also get even money. These bets would be break-even propositions if those colors each came up 50% of the time, but they don’t.
An American roulette wheel has 38 numbers on it. 18 of them are red, 18 of them are black, and 2 of them are green. The probability of getting red is 18/38, or 47.37%. The probability of getting black is the same.
A European roulette wheel has 37 numbers on it, but the number of red and black outcomes is the same—there are 18 of each of them. The difference is the number of green outcomes; there’s only one. The probability of getting red is 18/37, or 48.65%.
An American roulette wheel also has 2 green numbers on it. The probability of getting a green result is 2/38, or 5.26%. That’s the same thing as having 18 to 1 odds.
Since the European roulette wheel only has one zero, the probability of getting a green result is 1/37, or 36 to 1. That’s the same thing as 2.70%.
Betting on any of these outcomes puts you at a mathematical disadvantage to the casino.
Let’s say you bet $100 on black 38 times in a row on an American roulette wheel. You’ll win 18 times, but you’ll lose 20 times. Your net loss will be $200.
Do the same thing on a European roulette wheel, and your net loss will be $100.
Do you see why?
$100 X 20 losses = $2000 in losses.
$100 X 18 wins = $1800 in winnings.
I’ve seen sites suggest that you bet on red or black as soon as you sit down. Then if you win twice in a row, you can pocket a small profit and keep playing with the house’s money.
Of course, you can’t literally put the casino chip in your pocket.
A bet on green pays off better than a bet on black. It’s a 17 to 1 payout on an American wheel. It’s a 35 to 1 payout on a European wheel.
But remember what the odds of winning are. On the American wheel, the odds of winning are 18 to 1. On the European wheel, the odds of winning are 36 to 1.
On the American wheel, If you bet $100 on green 38 times in a row, you will win $1700 twice, for $3400 in winnings. But you’ll also lose $100 36 times, for $3600 in losses. That’s another $200 net loss.
On the European wheel, if you bet $100 on green 37 times in a row, you’ll win $3500 once, but you’ll also lose $3600 on the other 36 spins. That’s a $100 net loss.
But this isn’t a way to win at roulette in the long run. The math just doesn’t work.
You can’t win at roulette in the long run by placing a bet on a color.
2- Don’t Bet on Numbers
You have multiple ways to bet on the numbers that come up, too. You can bet that the result will come up even or odd, for example.
The odds are still against you, and here’s why:
If you bet on even, you win if an even number comes up. But the green numbers, the 0 and the 00, don’t count as even numbers. This makes the odds of winning a bet on even has the same odds as a bet on red.
You have 18 ways to win and 20 ways to lose.
The same applies to a bet on the outcome coming up odd. The 0 and the 00 don’t count as odd numbers, either.
You can bet on an individual number, too, though. The payoff for that bet is 35 to 1.
But what are the odds of winning that bet?
On an American wheel, you have 38 total numbers. Since 37 of them are losers in that bet, the odds of winning are 37 to 1.
Bet $100 on a single number 38 times in a row, and you’ll see 37 losses at $100 each, for $3700 in total losses. Sure, you’ll have one big win for $3500, but that’s still a net loss of $200.
And it doesn’t matter which individual number you’ve bet on, either.
The odds are a little better on a European roulette wheel, but you still have 36 ways to lose as opposed to one way to win.
You can also place a bet on 2 numbers at the same time, as long as they’re next to each other on the betting surface. You just put the chip on the line separating the 2 numbers on the felt.
The payoff if either of those numbers hits is 17 to 1.
But the odds of winning are 18 to 1.
Are you beginning to see why casinos offer roulette, yet?
So far, every bet we’ve considered gives the casino a mathematical edge.
In fact, every bet we’ve looked at so far has the same mathematical edge—5.26% on the American roulette wheel, and 2.70% on the European roulette wheel.
Remember how we keep seeing that average loss of $200 over 38 bets?
If you average that $200 loss into the number of spins you’ve seen, that’s $5.26 per spin that you’ve lost.
On the European roulette wheel, you’re averaging a $100 loss over 37 bets, which is an average of $2.70 per spin that you’ve lost.
This is the house edge for almost every bet at the roulette table.
In fact, there’s only one bet at the roulette table with a different house edge.
There’s only one bet on the table that has a different house edge, and it’s called the basket bet. It’s also called a 5-number bet.
It’s a bet that one of the following 5 numbers will come up:
- 0
- 00
- 1
- 2
- 3
This bet isn’t even available on a European roulette wheel, because the American wheel has twice as many green zero slots as the European wheel.
The payout for this bet is 6 to 1, but is that a good deal?
Let’s look at the numbers:
You’ll lose this bet 33 times at $100 each, or $3300 in total losses.
You’ll win this bet 5 times at $600 each, or $3000 in total winnings.
Your net loss is $300.
That’s worse than a net loss of $200.
That’s an average loss per spin of 7.89%.
I hope you weren’t thinking the basket bet was going to be the key to winning at roulette.
In fact, it’s not even close.
You’ll lose money even faster making this bet than you will making any other bet on the roulette table.
4- Don’t Play Free Roulette Online
I saw one well-meaning writer suggest that you can win at roulette by practicing on the free roulette games online.
Let’s talk about how those games work:
Online casinos use a variety of promotional tactics to attract new players willing to gamble real money on their games. There’s nothing wrong with that.
All businesses advertise.
One of the tactics these casinos use is to let you play their games for free to see if you think they’re fun. They give you play money to use at such tables. It’s like playing with casino chips that have no value—you can’t cash them in for money, regardless of how many you have.
The casinos’ hope is that you will win a few of those worthless chips and get confident. Then you’ll deposit money in their real money game and try to win some chips that actually have value.
I’m not suggesting that online casinos are offering games with odds that are unfair. I’m sure that the roulette games on the internet offer the same odds of winning as a roulette game in a traditional casino.
But you can’t beat those games in the long run.
The odds are against you, and they’re in favor of the casino.
The most common advice you’ll see about how to beat roulette is to stick with European roulette instead of American roulette.
That won’t make you a winner, either.
The idea behind this advice is well-intentioned enough:
The house edge for an American roulette game is 5.26%. This means that statistically, you’re expected to lose 5.26% of every bet you make on that game.
In other words, every time you bet $100 on an American roulette game, you’re expected to lose an average of $5.26.
Of course, it’s impossible to actually lose $5.26 on a $100 roulette bet.
You’ll either lose $100 or win $100 or more.
That’s a long term average—something you’ll see over thousands of bets.
But in European roulette, the house edge is “only” 2.70%.
This means that instead of losing an average of $5.26 per $100 bet, you’re losing an average of $2.70 per $100 bet.
Yes, losing $2.70 is better than losing $5.26.
But that’s not the same thing as WINNING.
The point to all these posts is supposed to be to explain how to WIN at roulette.
Advising people to play European roulette instead of American roulette is just advising them how to lose their money half as fast at the same game.
That’s not the same thing.
You should expect more from your gambling advisors.
6- Don’t Use the Martingale System
You’ll see folks advocating for a betting system called the Martingale System. At first glance, it seems like a no-brainer way to win at roulette.
With the Martingale System, you double the size of your bet if you lost your previous bet. In this way, you recoup your previous loss and still profit by the size of your bet. You stick with the even money bets, of course.
Here’s an example of the Martingale System in action:
You bet $10 on black, and you lose.
On your next bet, you put $20 on black, and you lose again.
On your 3rd bet, you put $40 on black, and you win.
You’ve won back the $30 you lost on your first 2 bets, AND you have a $10 profit besides.
At first, this system seems foolproof.
But people who’ve studied the concept of compound interest see the flaw here pretty quick.
The size of your bets gets REALLY big after just a few losses in a row. Since you don’t have an unlimited bankroll, and since the casino has maximum betting limits, you’ll eventually lose so many times in a row that you can’t place the next bet in the sequence.
Let’s assume you’re playing roulette at El Cortez in Las Vegas. The minimum bet there is $1, and the maximum bet is $100.
Here’s how fast you’ll hit the maximum bet if you start at $1:
- $1
- $2
- $4
- $8
- $16
- $32
- $64
- $128
Notice if you lose 7 times in a row, you’ll be unable to place the next bet in the sequence.
Also, once you’ve lost 7 times in a row, you’ve lost $127.
But, you might think, how likely is it that I’ll lose 7 times in a row?
The truth is that it IS unlikely that you’ll lose 7 times in a row.
But it happens more often than most people think.
In fact, it happens often enough that the house edge for the game remains exactly the same—5.26%.
Over the long run—thousands of spins—you’ll still average a loss of $5.26 for every $100 you bet.
The ONLY advantage to using the Martingale System is that it makes it slightly more likely that you’ll have a small winning session. This is compensated for by the occasional larger losing session.
In other words, if you limit yourself to one-hour session, you might walk away a winner 4 sessions out of 5. You won’t have big winnings, but you’ll have some profits.
But after 1 session out of 5, you’ll lose enough money to wipe out all those small winning sessions and then some.
The Martingale System only SEEMS to be a way to win at roulette.
Like the other ways to win at roulette I’ve mentioned so far, it’s a fool’s proposition.
I read one page that claimed that the following strategy gives you the best odds of winning.
Here’s how this so-called James Bond strategy works:
You bet $10 on the 0.
You also bet $140 on the numbers 19-36. (An 18-number bet.)
Finally, you bet $50 on the numbers 13-18. (A 6-number bet.)
Here are the possible outcomes:
If you win the bet on 0, you win $350. (That bet pays off at 35 to 1.) But you also lose $190 on the other bets, so your net win is only $160.
If you win the bet on 19-36, you win $140. (That’s an even-money bet.) But you also lose $60 on the other bets, so your net is only $80.
If you win the bet on 13-18, you win $250. (The 6-number bet pays off at 5 to 1.) But you also lose $150 on the other bets, so your net win is only $100.
If you lose, then you’re out $200.
Let’s look at this through the prism of what would happen on 37 statistically perfect spins.
On 1 spin out of 37, you’ll win $160.
On 18 spins out of 37, you’ll win $80, for total winnings of $1440.
On 6 spins out of 37, you’ll win $100, for total winnings of $600.
Your total winnings for those 25 spins will be $160 + $1440 + $600, or $2200.
But on 12 spins, you’ll lose $200. That’s $2400 in total losses.
Your net loss for all 37 spins is $200.
That’s $200 in losses on 37 spins, so, as you can see—even though you’re going to see a winning bet 25 times out of 37, you’re still going to lose more money than you’ll win in the long run.
Odds On A Roulette Table
You’re seeing an average of $5.40 lost per spin, and since you’re risking $200 on each spin, that’s 2.70% of each bet.
Coincidentally, that’s the house edge for this game.
8- Don’t Claim Online Casino Bonuses
Some people think that claiming the free money offered by online casinos gives you an opportunity to profit from roulette.
Here’s how these signup bonuses work:
You deposit a certain amount of money at an online casino, and as an incentive, the casino matches a certain percentage of those funds.
Here’s an example:
One popular online casino offers a 200% matching bonus on your first deposit of up to $750, which means you get $1500 on top of your $750 to play with.
You deposit $750, but you have $2250 to play with.
It would seem like a no-brainer that you could just gamble that free bonus money on roulette and almost guarantee yourself a win, right?
That would be the case if the casino didn’t have “wagering requirements.”
To prevent players from guaranteeing themselves a profit, casinos require you to wager your deposit plus bonus a certain number of times before cashing out.
With this specific offer, you’re required to place 30X your deposit + bonus in wagers before cashing out.
30 X $2250 is $67,500 in wagers.
If you play American roulette, your predicted loss on that kind of action is 5.26% of everything you’ve bet, or $3550.50.
If you start with $2250 and lose $3550.50, you have no profits left.
But what if you played European roulette instead?
Doesn’t the predicted loss drop dramatically with a 2.70% house edge?
The answer is yes, of course it does. 2.70% of $67,500 is $1822.50.
If you start with $2250 and lose $1822.50, you have a predicted profit of $427.50.
Have we finally found a way to win at roulette?
If those were the only terms and conditions attached to that bonus offer, then indeed, yes, we would have a bona fide way of winning at roulette.
Unfortunately, the online casinos who plan these promotions can do the same math we can.
I found this in the terms and conditions of the bonus, though, buried in the fine print:
Best Odds For Roulette
Be aware that you may only play slots and scratch cards for this bonus.
I’m just kidding about the fine print part, by the way. This clause was easy to find and read.
It also eliminates this means of getting an edge at roulette.
And, in fact, it’s customary for online casinos to have clauses like this to make it impossible for you to use their signup bonuses to win at roulette.
You’ll find plenty of people telling you how roulette wheels are mechanical devices. As such, they’re imperfect, and the odds aren’t exactly what you’d expect. Such wheels have a mechanical bias.
The idea behind this strategy for beating roulette is that you’ll clock which numbers come up on the wheel more often than they should. Then you start betting on those numbers instead of just betting randomly.
This would, in theory, give you an edge over the casino.
Odds Of Winning Roulette Twice In A Row 5
This strategy used to work, too. You can read an entire book about a gambler who beat casinos in Europe for millions using this strategy.
The reason it no longer works is simple enough, though:
Modern casinos use state of the art equipment and replace it when it starts to wear out.
They also change the locations of roulette wheels and tables on a regular basis.
Even if you spent the hours necessary to be statistically confident, you might not be facing the same wheel in the same location the next time you play.
Odds Of Winning Roulette Twice In A Row 4
10- Get Lucky in the Short Run and Call It Quits
Everything I’ve written so far about roulette concerns long term results.
Remember the examples I gave where I mentioned the 38 statistically perfect spins?
You won’t see 38 statistically perfect spins when you’re playing roulette.
It’s a random game.
So yes, some people do walk home after winning at roulette. In fact, if they didn’t, no one would ever play.
But the casino doesn’t worry about that, because they’re in it for the long run.
Your only hope of winning at roulette is to get a quick win in the short run and then get out of there.
I have a system to suggest, but it flies in the face of what most people think is reasonable.
Choose a number—any number.
Bet on it every spin 38 times in a row.
Sometimes a number will come up twice during 38 spins. When it does, you’ll walk away a big winner.
The trick is to stop playing after 38 spins.
This won’t win roulette for you in the long run.
Odds Of Winning Roulette Twice In A Row At A
But it will give you a chance of seeing a pretty good-sized profit once in a while.
Another option for players who hate volatility is to bet on black for 38 spins and then quit.
Odds On Roulette
Sometimes black will come up more often than statistically predicted, too.
I might seem bearish about your prospects of winning at roulette. That’s because the odds are against you, and ignoring that fact is foolish. You should approach gambling like you would any other activity in life—realistically.
But I’m not opposed to playing roulette or trying to win at roulette, just so long as you understand that you’re likelier to lose than win.