Martingale System

This page provides an overview of the popular Martingale Betting System which is often used by players (particularly in Roulette) to determine how they will bet during the game.  Right off the bat we should tell let you know that the Martingale System has never been proven to be a winning casino strategy and that it requires a substantial amount of money to even be used for a prolonged period of time.  That being said, there are still lots of players who buy into this system and truly believe that it increases their odds in winning in various casino games.  The simple truth is that using this or any betting system will not swing the house edge in your favour, however since it’s so popular we have provided an overview of how to use the Martingale betting system below.

The basic premise of the Martingale System is that by using a controlled betting pattern you can limit your risk of ruin when playing a casino game.  The system states that each time a player places a winning wager, they will take that wager off the table and continue betting with one unit.  If the player losses a wager, they will then proceed to double their bet on the next round and continue to double until they win again at which point they would return to betting one unit.  The idea here is that by doubling your bet after any losing session you will always make up the money lost on previous bets and will not lose over time.  This of course is not that case and as I am sure you can imagine Martingale can get quite costly as is shown in the example of using the system below.

Say for example you are playing Casino Roulette and are placing your bets on either red or black for each round which is almost a 50/50 bet.  You start out with placing $20 on red and the spins end up resulting in a series of blacks coming up in the game.  This would mean that using Martingale you would need to bet $20, $40, $80, $160, $320, $640, $1280 and so on until you hit a winning set of bets.  Obviously if you had an unlimited bankroll this strategy could indeed be used effectively for some period of time, but in reality most casino players do not have unlimited resources to bet with making this strategy unrealistic to use in play.

Over the years various simulations have been done using the Martingale Betting System and while some showed a positive expectation for the player in the short run, they all resulted in loss of bankroll over a prolonged period of time.  One experiment was conducted using the Martingale System for 1,000,000 spins in Roulette and the bankroll was almost fully depleted after just 10,000 spins.

For those of you still wondering exactly why the Martingale System does not the main thing you will need to get an understanding of is the House Edge and how it applies to every game you will find in a casino.  The house edge is the profit margin that the casino expects to generate from each casino game and this is a mathematically proven percentage which is always in favour of the house.

In Roulette for example the overall house edge on all bets is 5.26% meaning that for every $100 you bet at the table the casino expects to make a profit of $5.26 in the long run.  While this can fluctuate a lot in the short run it is virtually guaranteed over time which is how casinos end up making so much money.  The house edge is probably the most important factor to consider when examining betting systems such as Martingale because if the system cannot change the house edge in favour of the player, then it simply WILL NOT be profitable no matter what happens in the short run.  For those of you wondering if there are any legal systems that give the player an advantage the only one that is proven to date is casino Card Counting which has been used to gain a positive player expectation in the game of Blackjack by tracking the cards that are dealt.

In conclusion, while the Martingale System sounds really appealing and can in fact deliver a decent profit in short run betting, this method unfortunately will not give the player a consistent profit over time.  While I’m sure we all wish that there was a rock solid system for all casino games, the casinos have been studying the angles long before the players and have ensured that their assets and profit margins are tightly protected.  For more information on casino betting systems that we have reviewed you can check out our online casinos homepage which features a number of articles on casino games & betting systems.