Labouchere’s roulette system has seen mild popularity with players but never caught on like the Martingale. It requires a bit more focus, and you may need to bust out a pen and paper for it. That said, it comes with some obvious advantages, which we will discuss here.
Choose Your Bets
When Henry Labouchere first devised this system, he did so with even-money outside bets. You have an almost 50% chance of winning them, which makes the system work. Available wagers include:
- 1-18
- 19-36
- Red/Black
- Odd/Even
The payouts for all of the above mentioned stakes is 1:1. That means you get your money back, and one more chip as a reward for winning.
How it Works?
Your next step is determining how much you plan to win. We recommend going with an affordable sum to make it easier to track what you are doing.
As an example, we will plan to win $10. We split that 10 into a sequence of bets, like so:
1 – 1 – 2 – 2 – 2 – 1 – 1
Now, we take the first and last numbers from the sequence and add them together. This is the bet we will make for the upcoming spin. In our example, we would add the two ones and have to wager $2. When you win, you remove those numbers from the sequence. Meaning our example will now look as follows:
1 – 2 – 2 – 2 – 1
For our next bet, we would again add one and one together, which means another $2 wager. The sequence keeps going until all the numbers are removed, which means you have won the amount you were originally targeting.
If you lose, you do not remove the numbers. Instead, you move the numbers to the rightmost side of the sequence. That means our example would transform as follows:
2 – 2 – 2 – 1 – 1
Simply apply the strategy again, and follow the rules. Keep going until you complete the sequence.
Flaws and Problems
As you are not doubling your bet after every loss, Labouchere’s system is more manageable for punters. However, this strategy suffers the same problem that Martingale does; it cannot help you against losing streaks. In fact, a losing streak is bound to demotivate you even more. You will have to pile on increasingly large numbers in your sequence.
