Why Top Gambling Strategies Don’t Work

Aside from looking to find the best site to bet or gamble on, one of the most popular searches following this is to see which is the best gambling strategy. We are all in this to make some money, so it makes sense that people are looking to follow other people’s footprints when it comes to successful gambling systems.

A quick search will find you plenty to choose from. The results can be anything ranging from a roulette strategy to using betting exchanges to lay off sports bets.

Whilst there are dozens, if not hundreds to choose from, the reality is that most don’t work or at least, people have the wrong perception of what a gambling strategy can do. Throughout this article, we want to talk about some of the flaws these strategies have and use it as a “debunk” type of article for gambling strategies.

What are Gambling Strategies?

Any offline or online gambling strategy has been designed to make the user money. It’s a process that needs to be undertaken to make as much money as possible from a game or bet.

Strategies can range, but lots of them include betting patterns that require the player to alter stakes based on the result of their hand or bet. This is mainly targeted at casino games given that they are where people look to apply a strategy the most, but it can be linked to other products offered by casinos and online gambling sites such as sports betting, bingo, blackjack, poker, and other table games.

What usually happens is that players can see short term success from a process they have tried. They can use this process to win money, usually over a very small sample size, then package this up as their strategy.

When it comes to other players copying this process, what you will get from each result is almost always variance. This is either in the player’s favour or it’s against.

Variance and How it’s Linked to Most Strategies

We need to talk a little more about variance in gambling and how this has a massive effect on what most people link to the best gambling strategies.

For those that don’t know, variance is a statistical measurement that states how far a result differs from what should mathematically occur.

An example of this would come from a simple coin toss. The odds of flipping a heads or tails is even money with each coin toss. If you flipped a coin 100 times then the numbers would suggest that this would have an equal number of heads and tails, in this case, 50 of each.

But in reality, this is likely not going to the be case. It could be that the ratio is 60:40 or it could even be as extreme as 100 flips of heads in a row.

The reason that these results could occur is variance.

To overcome variance and get a “true” reading you need massive samples. You might need to flip a coin a million times (or more) before you get an even number of heads and tails.

This ties into casino gambling strategies because most can’t compensate for variance. If they can, then casino or gambling sites have rules in place to make sure they can’t. When we look a little later on at some real-world examples, you will get a better understanding of how variance is generally not your friend when it comes to gambling.

Gamblers Fallacy

We can’t go too much further into our article without talking about gamblers fallacy. This is all based around the theory that just because an event hasn’t happened in a while, that it is more likely to happen because it’s not overdue.

We can go back to the simple coin toss to debunk these myths. We know that the chances of flipping a head or a tail is 50:50 or even money.

Let’s assume that we flip the coin 10 times and each time it landed on heads. This is unlikely, but not at all impossible or unfeasible. Gamblers fallacy would suggest that because so many heads have come in a row, it’s now more likely that a tail will come because it’s due.

The reality is that with each toss the odds reset, regardless of past outcomes. So, we then move back to a 50:50 chance of a head or a tail landing with each spin. Just because 10 head has landed, does not make it more likely a tail will land for the 11th flip.

This is taken into account with most casino games and even sports bets. The casinos and bookmakers have their bets and edges covered on pretty much all basis. Each game is set up to be in the casino’s favor and for sports, each price that you see is in the sportsbooks favor.

Gambling Strategies That Won’t Guarantee wins

We now want to move into the section where we break down some of the higher-profile gambling strategies and explain why they don’t work. As we have already pointed out, a lot of these fail over a long period of time and they may fluctuate over the short term (variance).

The Martingale

The Martingale is probably the most well-known and widely used gambling strategy in the industry. It can be used on just about any casino game in some form, with different results served up from each.

Applying this strategy is simple. All you need to do is bet on 50:50 outcomes and double your original stake each time you lose until you win.

Common bets for this are red/black in roulette or the pass line in craps. Both bets are around a 49% probability.

Here’s how this strategy would work.

Let’s assume that you start by betting 1 unit and then if that bet loses, you double your bet. In this example, you lose the first 4 bets and win the 5th. It would look something like this:

• – 1 + 2 + 4 + 8 = 15 units wagered
• – 16 x 2 = 32 = 16 profit from that bet
• – 16 – 15 = 1 unit profit total

As you can see, it’s taken 5 bets, costing 31 units total, to win 1 unit.

The main issue here is that 4 losing bets in a row is not a long losing streak. It’s highly plausible that you can double this amount of losing bets and this will then cost you 511 units.

In reality, most people are going to run out of money much faster than they make it. The rewards are very small and risk, for most people at least, can be very high.

An obvious argument to this would be: what if someone had an unlimited bankroll?

The same principles would apply to bettors who are betting millions with huge bankrolls where the money is merely an afterthought. They could plausibly just keep going until they win and then bag any profits from that every time.

Well, the casinos got smart on this a long, long time ago and introduced something called table limits. You’ve likely seen them, but often not paid much attention for most players. But all casino games come with a table limit attached.

This is where the strategy falls apart. If the table limit was 500 units, then we would only be able to make 7 losing bets in a row before we were no longer able to double a bet. This means that you’ve lost 500 units all to chase a single unit win.

If you were to do this then you would need 500 winning runs without a losing streak of up to 7 just to break even. That’s almost impossible and the main reason why The Martingale strategy does not work.

The Martingale with Sports

We are aware that some sports enthusiasts include this technique for their sports betting strategy. Whilst it doesn’t add up when playing casino games, it’s financial suicide when sports betting.

You see, with sports betting there are no fixed odds. When bookmakers set a price or create a betting line, they are doing so on their best judgement. This is not a machine with fixed odds and fixed outcomes. Sports betting is subjective, so a 50:50 bet is not is based on stats, data, or opinions.

Flat Betting

A lot of the main principles that we spoke about with The Martingale strategy is applied to flat betting. This is essentially where you bet the same amount on even money bets until you get ahead.

The variance applied to this method is much lower than The Martingale, however, it’s still just as terrible in terms of betting systems as you are set up to lose over a longer period of time.

When you include a flat betting strategy you essentially take on the house edge from the casino of the margins from the bookmaker. You can’t beat these over a long period of time. It’s mathematically impossible, which is why casinos and bookmakers are so profitable.

Let’s move back to our trusty coin toss, but instead of a casino, we will apply this to sports betting. There are sports where you can bet on the outcome of an actual coin toss, such as cricket, before the start of the game to signify who will bat or bowl first.

When we talk about a bookmaker’s margin, we talk about the amount of money they take per bet. There are lots of factors, but the price you will see is not the “true odds” for that bet.

For example, if you went to bet on the toss for a cricket match you will be able to choose heads or tails. The true odds for this bet, as we know, should be even. But the bookmaker will likely have a margin on this to make money, so they might offer you odds of 1.90 on each outcome.

This means that assuming they take the same amount of money in wagers on both heads and tails, for every 1 unit they take, they pay out 0.9 units, and keep 0.1 units as profit.

Flat betting will mean that you place the same stake for each even money bet. The more bets you place the closer to breakeven you will be. Over a huge number of bets, eventually, you will have succumbed to either the bookmaker’s margin, as per this example or the house edge, if you were playing a casino game.

What you get from Flat Betting that you don’t from The Martingale system is a slow death. This means that your exposure at any one time is the same for each bet. Usually, bankrolls can cope for longer with flat betting, but eventually, you will be down.

Labouchere Betting System

The Labouchere betting strategy is another that targets even money bets, usually on casino games, but could theoretically be switched to sports betting as well. It’s not too dissimilar to The Martingale system in this respect, but unlike The Martingale, players only need to win a third of the time to show a profit.

Like many betting systems, Labouchere requires the player to first state the amount of money that they have as a bankroll and the amount that they want to win. The idea is that with each bet they tick off the stakes, adding and subtracting as they go, before then, hopefully, hitting their goal.

Let’s run through a quick checklist of how this system needs to work:

1. Player needs to state the amount they want to win and the bankroll. This might be a $100 with a $1,000 bankroll.
2. The winning goal needs to be divided by 10. This would give us $10.
3. We then list the amount 10 times in a line. So, 10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10
4. Each bet needs to be the sum of the left and the right number. The first bet in this example would be $20.
5. If the bet wins then player crosses off the left and the right number. They would then repeat step 4 until they lose.
6. If the bet loses they need to add the total amount staked to the right of the line then go back to step 4.
7. A winning process will be when every element has been removed and the goal has been hit

The main issue that players will have here is that losing streaks can really start to add up and take their toll on the amount that needs to be wagered. Many players often exhaust bankroll before hitting their goal for this exact reason.

As players get nearer the goal, losses become even more crippling. It could be that they are just a couple of wins away, still with relatively small stakes, but have used huge chunks of their bankroll to get there.

Let’s apply some numbers. Assume that we have a bankroll of 500 units and we want to win 50 units by playing the Player Bet in Baccarat.

The probability of hitting our goal is 97.53% and the average number of bets needed to get here is 21.184. The average unit bet is 209.45, which is almost half of our bankroll for each bet, on average.

This means we have an expected win ratio of -2.588 and then a ratio of money lost to money wagered of 1.236%.

One of the most interesting parts of these numbers is the ratio of money lost to money wagered. We see that the number is 1.236%. This is interesting because the house edge for this exact bet is 1.235%.

This means that our “strategy” is actually equal to the house edge for the same bet. In other words, we have decreased the house edge by 0.001%, which is technically zero.

What the Labouchere strategy does is allow players to go broke, slowly. It wouldn’t matter if they were betting random amounts at random times, the house edge does not change. All that changes are betting patterns and our good old friend, variance.

Betting System Challenges

This page has likely debunked a number of the more common betting systems that you come across on a search query on Google. There are dozens of others but they are all unreliable in the same way that none of the above strategies work.

To try to help people who are new to understand more about these and to essentially prevent them from falling for them, several high-profile sites have set up betting strategy challenges with rewards worth up to $30,000.

These challenges require people to submit a strategy and then the data to show how it works or the process involved. The site will then debunk the numbers and explain how it’s not possible.

Many of the challenges have been running for decades now and still not had one single player come up with a successful strategy. The terms are highly favorable for the strategist as well, allowing them to choose the house rules for the game in question (must be an actual casino game) along with several other factors. As of yet, no winners.

Final Thoughts on Why Gambling Strategies Don’t Work

We could have included dozens of strategies in this article, but to be honest, they all have the same floors or are very similar. They are:

• Players will eventually run out of money
• Strategies infrequently better the house edge
• Bet sizes are limited on tables to prevent endless streaks of bet sizes increments
• Games are mathematically set up in the casino’s favor. If there were loopholes, they would just remove them

The world of live and online gambling strategies is unfortunately a highly lucrative one. Sites scam people out of money to show people systems that don’t work. Lots of them work initially or over a short period of time, but none will work over a huge sample.

Any short-term success is essentially just variance. You could bet blindly on any even money bet at a casino or sportsbook and potentially hit a winning streak. This is what will have happened to many gambling systems before declaring that it’s successful.

What we will add is that you can learn the game and you can lower variance with some games. Blackjack games, for example, can be learned to lower house edge, which is a lot more exciting than simply betting red or black on roulette. This, however, is not a gambling strategy, just an optimal way to play.

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