Betting systems are as old as the games they try to outwit, with many hustlers trying to break the games that have kept players coming back to the casinos time and time again. In the decades and even centuries that certain casino table games have been in play, there's been a lot of betting systems which have come and gone, with only a handful sticking around as apparently reliable moneymakers.
Although we can't guarantee any of these bet systems are going to make you rich, we can still take a look at the most popular betting systems that have been tried out through the years. They are designed to work with binary bets, offered by games like roulette and blackjack, both of which you can try over at GoWin Casino.
The Martingale System
The Martingale system is a betting strategy that we've looked at before, but we can quickly sum it up here as it's arguably the most famous betting system out of every strategy on this list. Martingale relies on a simple rule: “whenever you lose, you double your bet.” The idea behind the Martingale system is to make up for your losses on every win, while walking away with a small profit.
Since the binary bets of roulette and blackjack always pay out 1:1, then if you double your bet each time you will always walk away with the total amount that you've lost and a profit of your original bet. If you ever win, you then return back to your original wager and repeat the process if you lose again.
To give an example, lets say you start betting with £5 and lose, then your bet on the next round will be £10. If you win this round then you'll make back £20, which covers the £5 you lost in the first round, plus the £10 you bet in the second round. This gives you a profit of £5, whilst covering all your previous losses.
Martingale looks really good on paper, but the small returns and potential to hit a betting limit and be unable to double your bet if you lose enough times make it far from being a sealed deal. However, Martingale is still a fun system to play around with if you have the patience and the money to spare.
Plus, if you want to get really wild, you can try out the Grand Martingale, where you triple your bet on each loss. But seriously, don't actually do this, it's a terrible idea!
The D'Alembert Betting Strategy
Named after the man who came up with it, the D'Alembert system is a less risky version of the Martingale method. Instead of doubling your wager on each loss, the D'Alembert system requires players to go up in smaller increments.
When playing the D'Alembert method, you start with a low wager and then increase your wager by a single unit every time you lose. When you win, instead of returning to your starting wager, you will decrease your wager by a single unit instead.
As an example, let's say your first wager is 1. If you lose your first round, you'll then increase your wager to 2 and if you lose that second round, your third round will have a wager of 3. If you win that third round, you will decrease your wager to 2. You then continue this pattern of increasing when you lose and decreasing when you win, with your bet only going as low as your starting wager.
The idea with the D'Alembert system is to cover your losses, much like with Martingale, but do it in a less drastic way that doesn't increase in such large amounts and risk you going over your maximum bet limit. However, D'Alembert can still get out of hand and a net number of losses will eventually see you cross that maximum bet, albeit very slowly.
The Labouchere Betting Sytem
The Labouchere betting system follows the same general rule as the previous two systems, in that the aim is to make up for your losses by increasing your bets. However, the way the Labouchere system works out your bets is through sequences of numbers, which can be completed, giving you periods of time where it's safe to leave the game and cash out.
You start by working out a sequence of numbers. For this example, let's start with: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50. Your first bet will the total of the first and last number in the sequence, which comes to 60 (10+50). If you lose that first bet, then you add another number to the end of the sequence, which would be 60 in this case, making your sequence look like this: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 60.
Same as before, you then add your first and last numbers, and place your bet, making your bet in round 2 total to 70 (10+60). If you then win this round, you have win back £140, which covers both your bet and your original loss, giving you a profit totaling the smallest bet in your sequence. Every time you win a round, you remove the first and last numbers in your sequence, which would be 10 and 60 in this case.
You then repeat the process, adding together the first and last numbers in your sequence and placing that as your bet. Your new sequence would be 20, 30, 40, 50 and your new starting bet would be 70 (20+50). So the rules that you have to follow are:
- Pick a sequence of numbers that follows a pattern
- Place a bet totaling the first and last numbers in the sequence
- Every time you lose, add a new number to sequence and re-bet the first and last number
- Every time you win, delete the first and last number, then re-bet the new first and last number
Each time you remove all the numbers in a sequence, you have completed a round of this betting system and it is safe to cash out, as you have made profit. Alternatively, you can create a new sequence and start betting once again. As with all these betting methods, you probably won't hit the maximum bet limit especially quickly, but with enough losses, it's certainly not an impossibility.
The Paroli Betting System
The Paroli betting method, also known as the Parley method, works in the complete opposite manner to every other method we've looked at so far. The Paroli system asks you to instead increase your bet as you win. If you're playing a table game and your first bet was 10 and you won, then your next bet for the second round will be 20. If you win that bet, you then increase your bet to 40 and so on. You can stop increasing your bet at any time, or simply bet with smaller units if you're feeling cautious.
The Paroli betting method throws caution to the wind and is only effective if you're on a winning streak, as any loss would quickly eat into your profits. The Paroli system is certainly not for cautious players and is arguably barely a strategy.
The Chaos Betting System
The Chaos betting system is even less of a system and even more arguably not even a system at all. The Chaos system simply asks that you jump into a game of roulette and place random bets on any numbers you feel like.
The aim is that hopefully through sheer random chance you end up winning something back, since roulette is fundamentally random. On the whole, it's not the most reliable system, but it is fun and actually will probably work about as well in your favour as any of the above methods.