Roulette, just like any other casino game, comes with the risk of emptying out your pockets within minutes. Keeping track of your bankroll is the wisest tactic to avoid losing every penny when gambling. Whether we play roulette, poker, or video slots, it is always crucial to have a money management plan in place, even though it cannot change the realities of casino gambling – that the house has the edge.
Importance of Money Management
Understanding the importance of money management is fundamental to long-term success when playing roulette online or in a land-based casino. The concept of managing one’s bankroll and adjusting the playing style accordingly is practically the same whether it is a live game or virtual roulette.
First and foremost, players should know that no money management plan, no playing strategy or betting system will shift the odds in their favor – each casino game is structured in such a way that it gives the house a mathematical advantage. As a negative expectation game, roulette is a wonderful example of that and over time, casinos will always make a profit from players’ losses.
Depending on whether they feature an American or a French/European wheel, roulette games may have a house edge of 5.26% to 2.70%, which means that players are expected to ultimately lose 2.70%-5.26% of their bets on average. This is just a theoretical expectation, though, and in a real-life situation, some players may lose over half of their bankroll, while others may end up in a profit.
And this is where money management comes in – with careful planning and a good money management strategy, players have a chance to maintain their bankroll for longer. In other words, money management cannot guarantee profits – it can only help lose money in a much slower fashion so that you can enjoy your gambling experience to the full.
Last, but not least, money management helps players maintain discipline and self-control even after a long losing streak that could easily stir up some negative emotions. Chasing losses is never a good idea so following a strict bankroll management plan will help players make wiser decisions and quit playing at the right time.
Money Management Strategies
There are many different money management strategies and tactics and they depend on the players’ personal preferences, experience on the roulette table, and tolerance for risk. There cannot be one universal method for managing your gambling bankroll, so below we have selected some of the most widely used tactics among roulette players.
Setting Up Loss Limits
Having Winning Goals
Single Session Strategy
Monthly Money Management Method
Setting Up Loss Limits
A widely used method for money management not only in roulette playing but in gambling as a whole is setting up a loss limit and leaving the casino when you reach it. The loss limit could be any amount or percentage of the bankroll – it is up to the player to decide. A safe method is to choose a limit that does not exceed 50% of your bankroll. This way, you will be certain that you will never lose all your money in one game session.
Of course, players can also set up a loss limit of 20%, 30%, or 40%, depending on how conservative they are. If the loss limit is 30% and we have a bankroll of $500, we should stop playing the moment our losses reach $150. With such a limit, we will still have $350 in our bankroll.
Another tactic is to stop playing after generating a certain number of consecutive losses. This method is particularly popular among players in land-based casinos who believe that the croupier or the table is “cold” or that a person or an object brings them bad luck. When playing online, some of them would close the game and start a new one after 4 or 5 losses in a row.
Note that the reasoning behind such “strategies” is flawed – luck does not actually exist and understanding the basics of roulette, we should know that you cannot predict the future based on past outcomes.
Having Winning Goals
Some roulette players also set up winning goals and once they reach a certain amount of profit, they leave the table until the next game session. Such a strategy helps them secure their profits, however small and insignificant they may be. If, for instance, we play online roulette with a bankroll of $500 and after a while, we have $600 in our bankroll, we have a profit of $100 or exactly 20%.
Inexperienced players might even find it better to use a winning goal of 10%. They should stop playing after generating $50 in total profits. This may not seem like a huge amount of money but it is a great tool for helping novices getting used to basic money management strategies when playing online roulette. In time, they will feel more comfortable having greater expectations and a goal of 30%, 40%, or 50%.
Single Session Strategy
Many casino players would probably wonder what their bankroll should be – the amount of money they dedicate to a day of play, for one week or month? A convenient way of breaking up your entire bankroll is to allocate funds for a single game session. This is quite a simple model and helps you avoid overspending. For instance, you may have a bankroll of $1,000, which is all the money you can afford to dedicate to gambling this month.
To determine a session bankroll, decide how many times you wish to play roulette – it may be 30 times for every day of the month or, let’s say, 8 times for playing only over the weekend. In this case, you can divide $1,000 by 8 and you will have 8 separate bankrolls of $125 each. You can also combine this strategy with other methods such as setting up loss and win limits.
Monthly Money Management Method
Other players may find it easier to manage their bankroll for the entire month since they will be able to plan all their earnings and expenses. Note that using a monthly bankroll and setting loss or win limits to it may not be very effective since these limits will be quite large – a loss of 30 percent, for instance, would be devastating. Dividing the monthly budget for playing roulette into multiple session bankrolls is advisable.
Choosing More Favorable Rules
As we have explained above, no money management plan can change the odds of the game. All casino games give the house a certain mathematical advantage, which is built into the rules and payouts. This is why players should always look for types of games with a lower house edge. When it comes to roulette, the European and French-style wheels offer better odds and a house edge that is half of that in the classic American roulette.
Single-Zero Roulette
How to Further Reduce the House Edge
Single-Zero Roulette
The European and French variants of roulette have a wheel with 37 pockets in total. There are 18 slots for red numbers, 18 slots for black numbers, as well as one green pocket for the 0. In comparison, the American-style wheel has two green pockets for 0 and 00. Since the zero does not fall into the three major bet types – red/black, low/high, and even/odd, nor is it part of the dozens and columns bets, it is considered a house number. This is the number that gives casinos the main advantage over its patrons.
Players should know that despite the different odds and payouts, all bets in French or European roulette have a house edge of exactly 2.70%. The American, double-zero roulette game, however, has a house edge of 5.26%, except for the five-line bet, which has an even higher edge of 7.69%. Clearly, the single-zero wheel is more favorable to players, so they should avoid American-style roulette games if possible.
How to Further Reduce the House Edge
There are several rules that are sometimes found in French roulette and they reduce the house edge to 1.35%. They are known as La Partage and En Prison and are used when the ball lands on the zero. If the La Partage rule applies in a single-zero roulette, players who have placed an outside even-money bet will lose only half of their stake even though the winning number is 0. En Prison is a variant of this rule but if it is used, the bet remains on the table for the next spin, allowing players to recover or lose the entire amount.
Another great way to increase one’s chances of winning over the long term is to place bets with a higher probability. Even though the house edge remains the same for all bets, some bets are more likely to win than others. To be more precise, the best bets are outside even-money bets – red or black, low or high, and even or odd. They have a probability of 0.48648648648 or in other words, they are likely to win 48.64% of the time. In comparison, splits will win around 5.40% of the time, while bets on single numbers – 2.70% of the time.
Progressive Betting Systems
Progressive betting systems are extremely popular among roulette players and they can be applied to both online games and traditional games played in land-based casinos. Unlike the strategies for playing other games such as blackjack or poker, betting systems do not involve decisions on how to play the game. Instead, they are usually applied with one type of bet (even-money bets) and include adjusting the bet size based on past outcomes or on the expectations for the future.
These systems, often called betting progressions, comprise of simple rules that determine the size of the stake at any given moment during the game. Sometimes, they also include sequences of numbers that demonstrate how many units one should bet after a win or a loss. Players should know that there are several types of betting systems, namely positive, negative and flat and some of them can be extremely risky for their bankrolls.
It is also important to understand that these systems do not give any guarantee that you will generate any substantial profit over time. On the contrary, using some progressive systems may lead to quickly depleting your bankroll – for example, some of them require you to double your bet after each loss. This is why they should be applied very carefully and analyzing their pros and cons.
Positive Progressions
Negative Progressions
Flat Betting Systems
Positive Progressions
Positive betting progressions are those systems that require players to increase their stakes after a win and decrease the bet size after a loss. Popular positive progressions are the Paroli, the 1-3-2-6 System, the Reverse Labouchere, and the Contra D’alembert. The Paroli System, for example, says that we double our bet after a win and return to our initial bet size after a loss. The progression stops after 3 wins and its purpose is to generate small but consistent winnings. This method is considered mildly aggressive and having an average risk of financial loss.
Negative Progressions
Negative progressions are even more popular – with them, players increase the bet size after a loss and reduce it after a win. The best example of a negative betting system is the Martingale, which has players double their stakes after a loss. Following a win, they need to return to their base bet size. This is a quite aggressive system and most experts recommend avoiding it altogether.
Flat Betting Systems
Flat betting systems are quite simple and different from the standard progressive systems used in roulette play. With a flat system, players make the same bet every time – there is no bet adjustment, no number sequences to follow. However, flat bets are typically made on straight bets or splits and the idea is that even after losing multiple rounds, players will be able to recover their losses with a high payout of 35:1 or 17:1. Of course, some players prefer to provide more coverage of the wheel by placing a couple of straight-up bets paired with an outside bet such as red or black.
Taking Advantage of Comp Points
Most online casinos have loyalty or VIP programs intended for regular players. They reward patrons for their activity on the website – i.e. their gambling, with points that can be exchanged for cash or other perks and rewards. Roulette players can take advantage of such schemes and offers but before claiming a cashback bonus or some other reward as part of the loyalty program, they should carefully review the T&Cs of the casino.
There are multiple restrictions and conditions applying to cashback or other types of bonus funds – maximum bet per spin, wagering requirements, maximum cashout, etc. Players should also check how many loyalty points they can earn while playing roulette – some casinos reward more points for slots play, for instance. To make the most of a casino loyalty program, players should also take into consideration the following factors:
- Comp return rate or percentage
- Speed of the game
- Number of hours played
- Average bet and the total amount wagered
- House edge and theoretical loss per hour
