As long as casinos have existed, people have attempted to identify ways to somehow beat them. Forget the fact that every wager placed in a casino has a house edge it’s working against – they believe they’ve figured out something others haven’t.
Rest assured if there were ways to beat the casinos, casinos would now about it – and in the examples of things like card counting or advantage play slots, they do. If they don’t like a player, they can simply refuse to do business with them and ban them from the property (and if we don’t like how a casino treats us, we can similarly avoid them).
Here’s part of a reply (originally in all caps; we’ve cleaned that up for your benefit) from a player who claims to have figured out a way to beat the system:
To beat Blackjack simply double up every turn. As long as you can cover the double you cannot lose. You may have to double 6 or more times but because you must win even after a certain amount of doubles, you will always win a chip, thus Blackjack you make more, thus that is how you beat Blackjack. Just make sure you can cover the doubles.
To beat Roulette, simply double up on the same number after 30 spins. You must win and as long as you have doubled every 30 spins you must win. Now when your number hits two or three times in 30 spins you make a fortune.
Terry S.
What Terry’s referring to are variations of the Martingale system, a well known system for those who have spent enough time at casinos. The idea (in his Blackjack example) is simple. You start with one betting unit. If you lose your bet, you double to two betting units. If you lose that, you double again.
The idea is that at some point you’ll win a hand, and you’ll have won back all your losses plus one betting unit, so you’ll be ahead. Continue to do that and over time you’ll collect those winning betting units.
There’s two flaws to this system, both creating limitations that will at some point cost a player everything.
Your Bankroll
Terry covers this here, but if you run out of money before achieving that win, that’s the game. Let’s say you have a $500 bankroll and are at a Blackjack table with a $10 minimum. Here’s the progression, along with how much you’re in at each point.
| Hand # | Wager for Hand | Total Bet |
| 1 | $10 | $10 |
| 2 | $20 | $30 |
| 3 | $40 | $70 |
| 4 | $80 | $150 |
| 5 | $160 | $310 |
| 6 | $320 | $630 |
In this example, lose five hands in a row, and you don’t have enough left to make that sixth wager. I can certainly recall examples of losing more than 5 hands in a row – just because it doesn’t happen all the time doesn’t mean it can’t, or won’t, and makes it far from a guaranteed winner – “you must win” is very confident for something that’s probable to happen periodically.
If you had $1,000, you could make it to 6 hands, but the 7th would be out of reach, and that’s starting with a $10 bet. Now consider the fact that many casinos can have minimum Blackjack bets of $15 or $25, and you can see one of the challenges of this method.
Table Maximums
But let’s assume you have a virtually unlimited budget. The other problem you’ll encounter is that casinos set a table maximum – the most you’re allowed to bet on a single round. That table maximum will get in the way at a certain point, keeping you from continuing to double indefinitely and making up your losses.
So ultimately, once you hit your table maximum, coming back from your losses is much harder, and may be in a given session unable to be overcome.
Beware of Bad Math
When players look at systems, the other thing to be conscious of is if the math makes sense. Terry’s Roulette example is one where it’s not. The system proposed is to bet on a single number, and again start with one betting unit.
With Roulette, you win 35 to 1 for a win on a single number. But there’s 38 numbers on an American Roulette table (39 on a 000 one and 37 on a European one). So betting 30 times to get your number could be one of those things where it just doesn’t come up.
So then Terry says to double your bet for the next 30 spins. But let’s say you go all 60 spins without a win. You bet 30 betting units (one per spin) for the first 30 spins, and 60 betting units (two per spin). So that’s 90 betting units. But when betting two units, you’ll only win 70. So on that 60th spin you’d still be down. This amplifies as your bets grow – at 90 spins you would have bet 210 units while chasing 140.
Add to that the minimum bet requirements on a Roulette table ($10-$25 per spin on the inside on lower limit tables) and that will add up fast, so again you need a significant bankroll to attempt this, and could still lose based on the proposed structure.
Takeaway
Systems don’t avoid the house edge. It’s better to play consistently and go into a casino with the budget you’re comfortable losing, as opposed to trying to beat the system. It’s that thinking and logic that can cause many to lose more than they should, risking money they can’t afford to lose, chasing losses to attempt to flip back into profit.
