Gambling and strategy may seem contradictory, but you’d be surprised at the impact some properly deployed strategy can have on your luck! Whether you play online at a fine establishment like Betfair Casino or you’re a die-hard member of your local land casino, if you get your head around a few basic strategy elements, you can ensure your relaxation time lasts longer and might even yield better responses. Simple strategies like rationing your bets and making sure you don’t lose your entire bankroll on one spin is a good example of simple strategies you can use to help keep yourself in the game.
But for some games, strategy is more viable than others and is an important consideration before you start. It’s fairly well known that Blackjack is the advantage player’s game of choice, and for a couple of reasons, but one of the big ones is that Basic Strategy is a firmly established method that helps you to make the most informed choice you possibly can when confronted by any combination of cards. While blackjack is far from a ‘solved’ game, as there is always an element of randomness, Basic Strategy ensures you’ll make the best choice possible for any given hand. Adding in elements like card counting can help to improve your chances yet further to the point Blackjack is now ubiquitous with high rollers and players who want to have the biggest advantage.
But what about other games, what about the most casino game of them all, could roulette ever have a perfect strategy for placing bets?
Roulette and Strategy?
The short answer is no, but the reason why there can’t be one is quite fascinating.
There’s a significant difference between Blackjack and other table games – quite simply, other table games don’t use a deck of cards. The fact it uses cards means that there is a measure of predictability to the results and this is why card counting works. It also allows you to make a decision based on knowledge you now have (i.e. you have been dealt a hand and so you know what you need to win) whereas with the other games you must bet on the result with no prior knowledge.
Roulette is a prime example where every spin will be completely independent of any earlier results – so attempting to predict from what numbers have already come up means you fall into something called the ‘Gambler’s Fallacy’. Never was this more apparent than in Monte Carlo in 1913 where the ball fell on black 26 times in a row. Every spin, gamblers felt sure it would land on red after such a long run of black but it continued to land on black over and over and cost bettors thousands.
In order to form a strategy, you need some insight into events to inform a decision – with blackjack you have the hand you’ve been dealt to make a choice (and if you card count what came before), with roulette you can only trust in luck and manage your bankroll accordingly.
Some people regard things like the Martingale as a strategy, where you double your bets after every loss, but it relies on the gamblers fallacy to be effective. In our opinion, there is no strategy that will help you master roulette. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun playing the game!