First, let’s learn the basic strategy of the casino. It doesn’t depend on the game you end up playing. This is a common strategy for all kinds of casino games such as roulette, blackjack or slot machines.
Is there an optimal gambling strategy?
First of all: all online casino games, demos, except for poker, depend on luck. The rules of roulette, blackjack or slot machines are set in such a way that the casino will always win in the end.
Therefore, in the long run, it is impossible to earn money by playing in a casino. Sure, you can have a lucky streak or occasionally leave the casino as a big winner, but in the long run, the money will always go home.
Unlike poker, where you play against other players and where you can make money using the optimal strategy, casino games are a losing trade.
For this reason, it should be clear that there are no professional roulette players and that you should focus on how to get the most out of your money before it stays in the house.
If you have reached this goal with the following strategies: entertainment for a long time. Let’s study this in more detail.
Bankroll management in a casino
Bankroll management is a very important term for all games that are played for real money. This applies not only to casino gambling, but also to games of skill such as poker or investing in stocks.
Bankroll management aims to use your gambling capital so that you can win a decent amount of money and minimize losses. The same strategy should be used at the roulette or blackjack table. We can illustrate this beautifully with the following simulation.
Simulation of bankroll management in roulette
In this simulator, we sent the player to a virtual casino to play European roulette. To achieve meaningful results, this player sat down at the roulette table 100,000 times and played 100 games each time. Only equal bets have been placed, this means: for example, “Bet on red” (one-time). Take a look at the red circles in our drawing. Here you see:
- Our player does not lose just over 5% of the time. More than every twentieth night at the casino ends for our virtual player with the same amount of money he started with, or even profit.
- In 50% of visits to the casino with 100 roulette games, our player lost less than 8 bets.
- In 95% of cases, the loss was less than 21 bets. This means that only once in 20 loses more than 21 bets in 100 games.
- Thus, losing more than 30 bets in 100 games is practically impossible (this only happens every 250th time).
What does this mean for you specifically? Bet only a small part of your capital each time and play only even bets (single odds). When playing roulette, your deposit should not exceed 1/20 of your money.
Then there’s about a 95% chance that you haven’t lost all your money after 100 games. Concrete Example: If you have a total of $200 to play roulette at a casino, you should not wager more than $10 on each game to make sure you can play 100 rounds – which means you will have a lot of fun for a long time.
By playing Black Jack using Bankroll Management and betting 1/20 of your capital every time, the prospects get even better. With an optimal strategy, your expected value is greater than 0.99, while at the roulette table it is 0.973. Therefore, using this strategy, it is almost impossible to lose all your money.
This is not entirely true for slot machines. We will return to this later. But there it is better to play slots with a minimum deposit.
Doubling strategy – Martingale betting system
The doubling strategy, also known as the Martingale betting system, is already causing a lot of controversy. It’s about doubling your deposit every time you lose.
The idea is that you will win sooner or later when you play roulette with one chance (and blackjack, where the probability of winning one game is approximately 50%). So by first losing $10, then $20, then $40, and then winning $80, you will have a total profit of $10, which is equivalent to the initial deposit.
The Martingale strategy, named after its inventor, does not work because casinos set minimum and maximum deposit amounts. So you can only land a certain number of doubles, and it’s only a matter of time before you lose your $2,560 bet (after losing 8 times in a row).
Regardless, something doesn’t feel right when you bet more than $2,000 to make a $10 profit. As a result, you risk losing large amounts of money, with only a chance to make a small profit.