The
Martingale betting system increases your chances of
winning in the short
term.
It's a fact. How can we say this when the
most respected gambling math authority on the
planet, the Wizard
of Odds, says that "all betting systems are
worthless"?
Simple: The Wizard's only criteria for
the worth of a system is whether it beats the house
edge in the long run. But the point of a betting
system isn't to overcome the house edge in the long
run, it's to make you more likely to win in the
short run. Most of us play for a few hours while on
vacation. For short gaming periods like this, a
betting system can make it more likely that you'll
finish your session a winner. Even the Wizard
wouldn't dispute this.
So how is it that the Martingale can make you
more likely to win in the short term? You
increase your chances of winning, but if you do
lose your loss will likely be bigger than normal.
Like most things in life, it's a trade-off.
What
is the Martingale?
The Martingale is one of the oldest betting
systems around. Here's how it works: You make
your standard bet, say $5, on an even-money bet,
such as red in roulette or banker in baccarat.
Every time you win you make the same bet for the
next hand. But if you lose, you double your bet for
the next hand. When you eventually have a winning
hand after a series of losing hands, your net win
will be $5. In fact, every time you win a bet,
you'll be up another $5, regardless of past
losses.
Here's an example: You bet $5, you win,
so you bet $5 again. Then you lose, so you bet $10.
You lose again, so you bet $20. You lose again, so
you bet $40. You lose again, so you bet $80. Then
you win. Your net win on that series was $5, and
since you won $5 before your losing streak, you're
ahead a total of $10.
If you could always double your bet when you
lose you'd be guaranteed to always come out ahead.
But in real life you can't always double your bet.
First of all, you'll run out of money at some point
and be unable to double your bet. If you start with
$5 and lose thirteen bets in a row (it happens),
you'll have to cough up $40,960 for your next bet.
Ouch.
Bet even if you had that much money, you
couldn't bet it anyway, since most casinos limit
maximum bets to $500-1000 on a $5 table. And
usually, the higher the maximum on a table, the
higher the minimum, too.
So that's the risk of the Martingale: If you
lose enough times in a row, you'll go broke and not
have enough money to make the next bet, or you'll
bump up against the table limit. So while the
Martingale can work in the short term, the longer
you play, the more likely you are to have a long
losing streak during which you couldn't double your
bets high enough. How short is short enough? Well,
the shorter the better, but an hour is about right.
You can certainly play for longer, but the longer
you play, the more likely you are to lose.
An
example: Increase your odds of winning from 46% to
82%
So now that we know how the system works,
exactly how much does it increase our chances of
winning? The answer depends on many factors:
which game you play, the amount of your initial
bet, and how much money you have to gamble (your
"bankroll"). Let's take a game of roulette, where
you bet $5 on red, you play for an hour (30 spins),
and you have $1000 total to play with. Betting $5
every time (no Martingale), you'll win only about
46% of the time, with an average win of $16. You'll
lose the other 54% of the time, with an average
loss of $28.
Now let's use the same setup except we'll use
the Martingale, and double our bet after every
loss. All of a sudden our chances of winning our
one-hour session shoot up to 82%! But when we win
our average win is only $66, and when we lose our
average loss is $462. Bing! There's the
tradeoff.
Remember that the Martingale works best in
the short term. The longer you play, the more
likely you are to lose, because the longer you
play, the more likely you are to lose several bets
in a row and then run out of money or run up
against the table limit. In fact, if we use the
example above with an eight-hour session,
then our chances of winning with the Martingale are
only 38%. (Our chances with flat-betting $5 every
time are 22%.)
Another thing that decreases your chances of
winning is having a smaller bankroll. You have
to have enough money to double up your bets when
you hit a long losing streak. In our one-hour
example above, we had an 82% chance of winning if
we brought $1000 to the table. But if we bring only
$500 to the table, our chances drop to 72%.
Increase
your odds by playing a better
game
The odds on a standard American roulette
wheel are pretty bad in general -- the casino has
about a 5.3% advantage over the player. You can
increase your chances of winning by playing a game
with a lower house edge instead, such as craps or
European roulette. Craps is the preferred game,
because it's much easier to find than European
roulette.
Blackjack offers good odds with proper
strategy, but to use the Martingale with blackjack
you need a bankroll that's four times as large as
normal. That's because you might need to split
hands or double down, and will need extra money to
do so. If you had this much extra money and wanted
to use the Martingale, you could use it to much
better effect with craps or European roulette. The
extra money would allow you to survive a longer
losing streak with those games.
Baccarat has a low house edge (1.06%) so it's
a good choice for the Martingale, but only if you
can get a slow game. Mini-Baccarat is played
about five times faster than craps or roulette in
terms of rounds per hour, and as you recall, the
more you play, the more likely you are to lose. The
whole point of the Martingale is to try to win in
the short term. Of course, if you're playing online
instead of in a casino, then all games are played
about the same speed and it doesn't matter which
game you play -- but you'll need to be extra
careful that you don't play too long. How long is
too long? See note at the beginning of the table at
the end of this article.
European roulette wheels offer better odds
than American roulette wheels. American wheels
contain both a 0 and a 00, while European wheels
have just the 0. The house edge on a European wheel
is 2.7%. Some European-style game offer a
"surrender" feature which means you lose only half
your bet if the ball lands on 0, or an en prison
feature which is complicated to explain but is
effectively the same thing. Either feature lowers
the house edge to about 1.35%. European wheels are
hard to find in land casinos in the U.S., and where
they are available they usually come with high
table minimums. Online it's a lot easier. For
example, Bodog
has a single-zero European wheel (2.7% edge), but
only in the download version (not in the Flash
version).
Should
you use the Martingale?
Should you use the Martingale? That's a question
only you can answer, but we can give you some ideas
to help you decide. The Martingale may be for
you if:
- In exchange for increasing your chances of
winning, you're willing to lose a larger amount
than normal if you do lose.
- You have at least a $200 bankroll if you're
making $1 bets, or a $1000 bankroll if you're
making $5 bets.
- You're going to play for no more than a few
hours.
The Martingale is NOT for you if:
- You only skimmed this article and you think
the Martingale will make you a guaranteed
winner.
- You don't have at least $200 for $1 bets or
$1000 for $5 bets.
- You're planning on playing for long periods
of time, especially if you plan on playing
American roulette.
Want
to try it?
You can't use this system at just any table
-- the table has to allow a bet spread at least
$1-$200 or $5-1000. Casinos that offer this
range abound in Vegas. By contrast, the betting
range at many online casinos is too tight, but
there are exceptions. Our preferred casino,
Bodog,
lets you spread from $1 to $500. And William
Hill allows bets between $0.25 (!) to $5000.
(They also meet my criteria for recommendation by
having their payouts professionally audited, in
this case by Price Waterhouse Coopers.)
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