Not only do bettings systems fail to beat casino games with a house advantage, they can't even dent it. Roulette balls and dice simply have no memory. Every spin in roulette and every toss in craps is independent of all past events. In the short run you can fool yourself into thinking a betting system works, by risking a lot to win a little. However, in the long run no betting system can withstand the test of time. Furthermore, the longer you play, the ratio of money lost to money bet will get closer to the expecation for that game.
The biggest gambling myth is that an event that has not happened recently becomes overdue and more likely to occur. This is known as the "gambler's fallacy." Thousands of gamblers have devised betting systems that attempt to exploit the gambler's fallacy by betting the opposite way of recent outcomes. For example, waiting for three reds in roulette and then betting on black. Hucksters sell "guaranteed" get-rich-quick betting systems that are ultimately based on the gambler's fallacy. None of them work. If you don't believe me here is what some other sources say on the topic. A common gamblers' fallacy called
'the doctrine of the maturity of the chances' (or 'Monte Carlo fallacy')
falsely assumes that each play in a game of chance is not independent
of the others and that a series of outcomes of one sort should be
balanced in the short run by other possibilities. A number of 'systems'
have been invented by gamblers based largely on this fallacy; casino
operators are happy to encourage the use of such systems and to
exploit any gambler's neglect of the strict rules of probability
and independent plays. Encyclopedia Britannica (look under "gambling.")
The number of 'guaranteed' betting systems, the proliferation of myths and fallacies concerning such systems, and the countless people believing, propagating, venerating, protecting, and swearing by such systems are legion. Betting systems constitute one of the oldest delusions of gambling history. Betting systems votaries are spiritually akin to the proponents of perpetual motion machines, butting their heads against the second law of thermodynamcis. -- The Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic (page 53) by Richard A. Epstein Vegas Click also has a good expose of the gambler's fallacy.
Every week people are asking us about the betting system by which a player doubles his/her bet after a loss. This system is generally played with an even money game such as the red/black bet in roulette or the pass/don't pass bet in craps and is known as the Martingale. The idea is that by doubling your bet after a loss, you would always win enough to cover all past losses plus one unit. For example if a player starts at $1 and loses four bets in a row, winning on the fifth, he will have lost $1+$2+$4+$8 = $15 on the four losing bets and won $16 on the fifth bet. The losses were covered and he had a profit of $1. The problem is that it is easier than you think to lose several bets in a row and run out of betting money after you've doubled it all away. In order to prove this point I created
a program that simulated two systems, the Martingale and flat betting,
and applied each by betting on the pass line in craps (which has
a 49.29% probability of winning). The Martingale bettor would always
start with a $1 bet and start the session with $255 which is enough
to cover 8 losses in a row. The flat bettor would bet $1 every time.
The Martingale player would play for 100 bets, or until he couldn't
cover the amount of a bet. In that case he would stop playing and
leave with the money he had left. In the event his 100th bet was
a loss, he would keep betting until he either won a bet or couldn't
cover the next bet
The Internet is full of people selling betting systems with promises of beating the casino at games of luck. Those who sell these systems are the present day equivalent of the 19th century snake oil salesmen. Under no circumstances should you waste one penny on any gambling system. Every time one has been put to a computer simulation it failed and showed the same ratio of losses to money bet as flat betting. If you ask a system salesman about this you likely will get a reply such as, "In real life nobody plays millions of trials in the casino." You're likely to also hear that his/her system works in real life, but not when used against a computer simulation. It is interesting that professionals use computers to model real life problems in just about every field of study, yet when it comes to betting systems computer analysis becomes "worthless and unreliable", as the salesman of one system put it. In any event, such an excuse misses the point; the computer runs billions of trials simply to prove that a system is unsound. If it won't work on a computer, it won't work in the casino. Gambling systems have been around for as long as gambling has. No system has ever been proven to work. From an inside source, I know that system salesmen go from selling one kind of system to another. It is a dirty business by which they steal ideas from each other, and are always attempting to rehash old systems as something new. System salesmen usually promise ridiculous advantages. For example, even with just a 1% advantage on an even money bet, it would not be difficult to parlay $100 into $1,000,000 by betting in proportion to bankroll. I was asked to prove this claim so I wrote a computer simulation based on the toss of a biassed coin, with a 50.5% chance of winning. At all times the player bet 1% of his bankroll, rounded down to the nearest dollar. However, if a winning bet would put the player over $1,000,000 then he only bet as much as he needed to get to exactly $1,000,000. In addition, I ran simulations with a 2% advantage and for a starting bankroll of $1,000.
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