Flawed Online Roulette Strategies
With online gambling all the rage, literally thousands of casinos are doing business on the internet. Poker is king, coming on the heels of "Rounders", tournaments televised on ESPN, and the tradition of smoky university apartments. Sports betting is big as millions of people wager on events like the Super Bowl. However, there is something special and sexy about the classic casino game of roulette. The highs are high, the lows are low, and they each happen quickly.
Online roulette is a game of chance and it is important to remember that the casino would not offer the game unless the house had a built-in advantage. Many players use strategies and systems to maximize their winnings; however, they usually rely on flawed thinking. Let's examine some here.
Online roulette strategies
Martingale system: Using this system, a gambler begins betting X dollars and doubles his bet each time he loses. This means that he would net a sum of X dollars after each win. For example, let's say you wager $10 and lose. Then you raise your bet to $20 and lose. You raise your bet to $40 and win putting you up $10, your initial bet. Therefore, no matter how many times in a row you lose, when you finally win, you are winning back everything you lost and then some.
What's the problem? One, in theory, this strategy only works over the long-term if you have an infinite amount of money. If you have $100 for example, it would only take three straight losses to cause your fourth wager to exceed what you have! Second, the casinos are smarter than that. If you don't lose money on a losing streak, at some point you will be unable to double your bet because the casinos set maximum bets.
Gambler's fallacy: This strategy is not unique to online roulette but for dice games as well. Red: you lose. Again. Another red. Surely black has to come up next so you double your bet. Another loss-ouch! You have just succumbed to the gambler's fallacy which states that past spins of the wheel (or roll of the dice in other games) affect future spins. Even if red comes up 10 times in a row, the odds of red coming up the 11th time is still exactly the same (18 out of 38 on an American wheel.)
How can that be? Each spin is independent from the others, or as some gamblers say, "the wheel has no memory". While 10 consecutive "red" spins is highly unlikely, once 9 have come up, the 10th one is expected to arise just under 50% of the time, just like the previous 9 spins.
Have fun spinning... just be sure you know not only what you're doing, but also what you should not be doing.
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