The 5 Best Roulette Strategies (For Online Casino)

The game of roulette has been around since the 18th century, and over time players have devised many strategies to guide the way they play. These can be applied to both online and brick-and-mortar casinos.

On this page, we will discuss 5 of the best roulette strategies based on popularity by online casino players.

These are essentially bet management strategies. They help to implement a structure rather than betting blindly, which can allow the losses to get larger and harder to recover. They could help to avoid a game getting too out of hand.

These strategies are all designed to be used only on even-money bets; these are the outside bets, including red, black, odd, even, high, and low. These bets have the best odds of all roulette bets at just under 50%.

Whilst these strategies are effective in theory, it is important to note that there are no guarantees as to their effectiveness in practice. These are for bet management and offer a structure but nothing else; they do not change the outcome of roulette or affect the house edge. Ultimately, this is still a game of chance.

The Martingale Roulette Strategy

The Martingale strategy is the most popular and well-known of the roulette betting strategies. It is easy to implement and keep track of; therefore, it’s the one most turn to when looking to implement a bet management strategy.

The strategy is as follows:

• You select your desired starting bet amount – we will use the example of £1 (this may differ based on personal choice or minimum bet requirements).
• If you were to lose on this spin, you double your bet, so the next bet placed would be £2.
• Should this also be a losing spin, then a bet of £4 would follow, and so on. 
• Should you win, you return to the initial bet amount (£1) and repeat this process. 
• If you win on the initial bet, keep placing the same amount (£1).

This strategy is simple yet effective, continuously doubling the bet amount on consecutive losses in order to reclaim losses and avoid them building too much.

The downside to this strategy is that it requires a larger bankroll to be effective, as the bet amounts can increase quickly if on a losing streak. Not to mention, the table betting limit could put a stop to this strategy quite quickly; this then leaves you hoping for multiple back-to-back wins to try to recover losses.

The Fisher Roulette Strategy

The Fisher strategy is one of the more complex strategies but has been growing in popularity due to the low number of wins required to recover losses. Similar to the Martingale strategy, you increase your bets, but less frequently. This helps to avoid the Martingale strategy’s issue of running into the bet limit as quickly.

The strategy is as follows:

• Select a starting bet amount – we will use the example of £10. If you lose, then bet the same amount another 3 times.
  • If you lose the 4 bets overall (net loss), triple the bet amount. The bets in this strategy are played in series of 4.
• Now betting the new amount (£30), this is done for a maximum of 4 turns. If you make your money back within the 4 turns, return to the initial betting amount.
• If still in a net loss following this series, triple the amount again, so the new bet will be £90. Again, use this amount for the next 4 spins.
• This continues until you see a net win.

Again, this strategy works well in theory, allowing for the bet limit and the potential of a losing streak. If a win lands on a newly tripled bet (i.e. the first in the new series of 4), then it can take a larger chunk out of the losses.

However, this also has the potential to have your bankroll run its course before you reach a net win. Although it doesn’t require many, it does require some wins in relative succession in order to work; if this doesn’t happen, then the continuously tripling amounts can begin to stack up.

The Labouchere Roulette Strategy

The Labouchere strategy is a bit more difficult to keep track of, so it may be best to keep a note of bets placed when using this one. This strategy involves making a sequence of numbers and manipulating said sequence as you progress to determine what bets to place.

The strategy is as follows:

• Pick a target win amount to aim for – we will use the example of £10.
• Split this target amount into smaller numbers and place them in a sequence – our example might look like this: 

1, 1, 2, 3, 2, 1

• Add the 1st and last (leftmost and rightmost) numbers in the sequence; this will be the bet amount – so our first bet would be £2 (£1 + £1).
• If you win, you would remove these numbers from the sequence and add the new left and rightmost numbers for the new bet amount – our sequence would now be:

1, 2, 3, 2

And our new bet amount would be £3 (£1 + £2).

• If you were to lose, then you would add the bet amount to the end of the sequence on the right, whilst leaving in the original numbers that provided the bet amount – the sequence would now be:

1, 2, 3, 2, 3

And the next bet amount would be £4 (£1 + £3).

• You repeat these events in an effort to eliminate all numbers in the sequence, which will pay out the target amount.

The Labouchere strategy can be tailored to suit your betting capabilities, and you can choose a low amount to avoid table limits.

However, it also requires a lot of spins to go your way. A losing streak can lengthen the sequence and result in a prolonged playing time to meet the original target, which may not have been that high to begin with. 

In the above example, a losing streak could see us having to play multiple winning spins in a row just to try to win £10.

The D’Alembert Roulette Strategy

The D’Alembert strategy is based on increasing and decreasing bets by a set increment; this is done through the initial bet amount being classed as a single ‘unit’. So, for example, if you choose to bet £5 first, then £5 will be the unit by which increases and decreases are made for this strategy. 

The strategy is as follows:

• Keeping with the £5 initial bet example above, if you lost on this spin, you would increase the bet by one unit – so the next bet would be £10.
• Should you then lose this bet, you would increase the amount by one unit and bet £15.
• But say you won the £15 bet, then you would decrease the amount of the following bet by one unit – so the next bet would be £10 again.
• If you win on the initial bet of £5 or manage to hit a winning streak and end up back down to £5, you would just continue to use this same amount.

This strategy is popular as it is simple and easy to implement, not to mention it is hard to deviate from as you are only concerned with one amount/unit. In addition, this strategy utilises systematic, less sporadic betting. 

However, depending on the size of the unit, the bet amount could end up running quite high following a losing streak. A smaller unit can avoid this, but as they are even-money bets, the payout deters people from doing this, as when the wins do hit, they aren’t as substantial. The main issue with D’Alembert is that the wins may not make up for the losses.

The 1-3-2-6 Roulette Strategy

The 1-3-2-6 strategy is similar to D’Alembert, in that it works in units, with the titular numbers representing multiples of this amount. The unit is the starting bet amount; in this example, we will have this set as £2.

The strategy is as follows:

• The first bet will be £2. If you lose, bet the same again. If you win, move to the next step.
• The next bet will be £6 (3 x £2). If you lose, start over at £2. If you win, move to the next step.
• The next bet will be £4 (2 x £2). If you lose, start over at £2. If you win, move to the next step.
• The next bet will be £12 (6 x £2). If you lose, start over at £2.
  • If you lose at this stage, you will still break even – this step is essentially a double or nothing.

Notice the only money you would have put in, that isn’t winnings, is £4 – the original £2 bet and then an extra £2 for the second round to get 3 x £2 as you also use your winnings from the first round.

Again, this method seems nice in theory as it has the potential to result in an overall win of 12x your original stake, and after the first 2 rounds, you are only betting winnings.

However, this strategy relies on hitting 4 wins in a row to gain the full benefit, not to mention securing at least 2 back-to-back wins to avoid losing money. This is a tall order and cannot be guaranteed.

Can Online Roulette Be Beaten?

The above strategies can provide structure to your roulette casino games, rather than placing bets randomly, or they can simply offer an alternative way to play. However, these are not sure-fire ways of generating wins or making money. Wins are still required, sometimes in a particular order, for these strategies to work as designed. 

This is why these strategies are designed for even-money bets, to have the best chance of hitting multiple wins. But, ultimately, the chances of this occurring are the same whether using a strategy or not.

Roulette remains, above all else, a game of chance.