The limits of the Martingale strategy

Even if the roulette game, as one of the most popular games of chance in the world, has quite simple rules, there are several strategies that players at the roulette table use again and again in order to achieve the very best results, i.e. winnings. Probably the best known strategy is called Martingale strategy and there are u.a. also a Paroli strategy, the Fibonacci strategy and the Progression d’Alembert strategy. So if you play in an online casino real money roulette, you will sooner or later be confronted with these if you want to win big.

The most popular strategy is, as said before, the Martingale option. This strategy is also called doubling strategy and the variants are a so called super martingale or the reverse martingale strategy. For red-black or even-odd, 1-18 or 19-36 bets, i.e. those with a 50% chance of winning, you place a certain initial value. Let’s take 20 euros as an example. You wager this and win €20. You immediately bet the winnings again, namely then €20, to continue winning. However, if you lose, you have to double your bet, i.e. bet €40. If you lose again, the bet is 80 euros. Theoretically you will win at some point, no matter if you were unlucky for a few rounds in between. After you have already won after your first bet, your next bet will be twice as big. How to make your winnings big fast.

Limitations of the Martingale Strategy

A restriction here, however, is the zero on the roulette wheel (or in roulette variants, such as American Roulette, even an additional double zero). The house advantage of the casino hereby naturally becomes larger and the strategy is no longer as perfect as it seems. In addition, the casinos at the roulette tables prescribe maximum stakes. Even if you follow your strategy and want to bet your high stake after your loss, you may not be able to do so because the table has reached its limit. So you simply cannot double your bet and the strategy ends there.

Besides, you don’t have unlimited betting possibilities, so you reach the limits of the Martingale strategy. At some point there comes a time when you would have to make such a high bet, for which you simply do not have enough money or this is again higher than the table limit, exactly. The doubling of your bet quickly becomes so big that you can hardly think it through.

A calculation example for this:

Your betting limit that you have set (or simply the money you have deposited and have available) is €1000. That sounds a lot when you start with €10 stakes, yes. This is 100 parts, so it should be enough for 100 bets, but here you can see how fast the €1000 can be gone:

• You lose the first round with €10 bet, now you have €990
• You lose the second round with €20 bet, now you have €970
• You lose the third round with €40 bet, now you have €930
• You lose the fourth round with €80 bet, now you have €850
• You lose the fifth round with €160 bet, now you have €690
• You lose the sixth round with €320 bet, now you have €370
• Your bet in the seventh round should now be $640 according to the Martingale strategy, but you do not have enough of your €1000 left to make the bet. And here you have reached the end of the strategy.

While it is not that likely to lose 6 times in a row, it is quite possible and can happen in any real money casino and more often than you think. The Martingale strategy is interesting, but has its limitations, as you have seen here.