Can Casino Betting Systems Beat The House?
For as long as there have been online casinos, there have been casino betting systems which claim to be able to beat the house. The casinos are still standing, still making a lot of money and yet the faith of those seeking the ‘perfect’ system remains unshaken. This article takes a close look at the different casino betting systems and the arguments for and against them.
First up, I have covered the house edge, why systems always revert to the average over the long run and what this means. After that, I’ll look at the most common types of systems, which are grouped into negative progressions and positive progressions. Finally, a word of warning about those people claiming wonders for the latest and greatest systems and a reminder of why the casinos are still confident that they will keep their edge.
Casino Betting Systems – The House Edge, Smoothing Runs And Risk Of Ruin
All casino games have a house-edge built into them. This varies from between 0.4% (for blackjack) to upwards of 7% for some side-bets on table games. Even low deviation bets like Red/Black on roulette and pass-line betting in craps has around half of one percent built in. It is a mathematical fact that over a huge sample size of millions of tries, you will end up with losses equivalent to the house edge.
Betting systems acknowledge that an individual does not have enough time to ‘revert to the average’ and can switch up their bets to ensure they are profitable. As far as math is concerned this is nonsense. Casino games have no memory, it does not matter how you change up your bets because thousands of slightly negative bets in a row can’t result in a profit.
What systems like the famous Martingale sequence can do is smooth out the small losses a certain percentage of the time. Stake-doubling risks ever more to get that $1 lost back and this will be successful many times in short bursts. The reason we still have casinos today is that over time, all those bets with -0.5% in favor of the house add up to profit that lines the casino owners pockets.
This is not what many gamblers like to hear. The only people making money with casino betting systems are those people selling them. What systems can do for you is smooth things out in the short-run, or even help you parlay up the occasional bigger win at the expense of a few more small losses.
Casino Betting Systems – Types Of Casino Betting System
There are two basic ideas behind all systems. Some are Negative Progressions (where you increase your stakes after a loss) and others Positive Progressions (where you increase after a win). There are many fancy variations and creative looking charts when it comes to betting systems – inevitably they are based on one or the other.
Here are the most popular systems:
The Martingale System: This is the most famous of all casino systems, it has been the ruin of many a gambler. ‘Martingaling’ is a negative progression, after you lose a coin-flip bet (with a small house edge of course), you double your stake, which wins you that initial dollar.
For example, you are betting $1 on roulette that the number will be odd. An even number hits, so next time you bet $2. If you win that bet, then you win $2 more for an overall profit after both bets of $1. If instead an even number hits again, you go to $4 (winning this returns your $1 + $2 bet stakes and gives you that $1 in profit). This carries on if you lose several in a row. While usually you will hit your 49.7% chance eventually – sometimes you will not. This is the fatal flaw of negative progressions.
Here are the stakes for different runs of odd / even.
- 1 - $1
- 2 - $2
- 3 - $4
- 4 - $8
- 5 - $16
- 6 - $32
- 7 - $64
- 8 - $128
- 9 - $256
- 10 - $512
- 11 - $1,024
- 12 - $2,048