Roulette offers its players a great, exciting gambling experience. It does not, however, offer any loopholes. The only sure thing in the game of roulette is that the house will always win… in the long run. While there are probably thousands of different specific roulette systems that promise to turn your game around, the truth is no gambling strategy can turn the house edge on its head and put the odds in your favor. Having said that, there is no reason that a betting system can’t make you money in the short run or even just make your game more fun.

The martingale is possibly one of the most popular betting strategies and it spans over nearly every type of gambling. The martingale system’s greatest value is in its simplicity, but in the modern age, even a system this simple may be obsolete. Basically you make a bet of a small amount and wait for the outcome. If you win, then you are already ahead, but if you lose, don’t worry. It is simply part of the process. After a loss you are required to make  bet worth double that of your original bet. After each bet the process continues, which means after a large series of losses, you will be betting considerably more than your first bet.

When you finally do win, the doubling process ensures that your overall, net winnings, are equal to the value you placed on your first bet. Sounds like a sure thing right? Wrong. Even if you had an infinite amount of money, and could afford to double any sized starting bet forever, you cannot successfully apply the martingale system in the real-world casinos. This is a direct result of table betting limits. Your first bet cannot be smaller than the table minimum, and you cannot advance your bets in this manner beyond the table maximum bet.

If roulette casinos have defended against it, where exactly might the martingale system work? The best answer to this would be that they won’t work anywhere. Even if you are playing craps on the street, or making sports bets, anyone you are playing against is likely to realize what you are doing, and if they’ve got any brains, they likely won’t want to have anything to do with you. Doubling your losing bets and walking with the win is a sure way to get a bad reputation, even if you are not inside a controlled casino.