Martingale Strategy

What is Martingale Strategy?

Before we answer this question and tell you everything there is to know about this betting strategy, let us tell you some background first. Initially, Martingale was any kind of betting strategy that was first introduced in France approximately in the eighteenth century. That was the time when gambling was becoming more and more popular, so there was a need to invent a betting strategy to help gamblers organize their betting rituals in such a way that they could avoid heavy losses and eventually compensate all the small losses.

A so-called father of the Martingale strategy is its inventor the French mathematician Paul Pierre Levy. On that early stage, the main premise of the strategy was doubling down. The strategy was improved by the American mathematician Joseph Leo Doob, who introduced the strategy the way it works nowadays and successfully used by many gamblers worldwide. Paradoxically, the strategy was named neither after its French inventor nor after its American improver. In fact, the strategy name comes from the British owner of a few gambling houses in Great Britain John Henry Martingale.

So, first the strategy was created specifically for the game whose main idea was to throw the coin and see what comes up, an eagle or tails. In this case, the stake wins if the eagle comes up, and the gambler loses if there’s the tail. The main idea of the betting strategy was the following: every single time there comes tails and the gambler loses, the next bet needs to be doubled. In such a way, the first time you win after doubling the bet you can compensate for all the previous losses as well as gain some profit that equals to your original stake. In such a way, in the long run, you’ll never really lose. The worst scenario is to end up in balance, which means to win exactly the same sum of money that you’ve spent on gambling. Consequently, you won’t really win anything or something not substantial, yet you’ll have fun because of real money gambling without any losses. It’s basically the long-run profit expectancy. Quite a working strategy, huh?

Check the table below to see the visualization of the way it works. Mind that the game outcome is random. Evidently, it can be better and it can be much worse, either more wins or more losses. Since the outcome is hard to predict precisely, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be lucky enough, yet in the table you can see that despite all the losses that were even bigger than winnings, the final balance is positive and it’s higher than the original bet size. Besides, we warn you not to apply the Martingale strategy if you intend to play for several hours or more. As you can see it in the table, it works best with short time betting.

There is the problem though with Martingale strategy in its original way. Any idea what kind of problem there could be? Well, it’s quite easy to guess. The thing is that you need to have limitless money in order to double your bets every single time you lose. We bet you aren’t such a happy owner of limitless finances. That’s why the exponential growth of your bets is probably not the best strategy to follow unless you wanna risk to end up as a bankrupt. In such a way, we do recommend to use the Martingale strategy instead of placing your bets randomly or follow solely your intuition, yet we don’t really guarantee that it’s definitely a winning strategy because you can win only if you possess unbounded wealth, which is highly unlikely.

Don’t get too disappointed and don’t stop reading this article though! No need to rush to conclusions right away! Just give it a chance. We promise there’s much interesting info for you to learn about the Martingale strategy. What we do guarantee is that if you follow our recommendations, you will learn how to apply this strategy reasonably and make it work on you no matter what!

Martingale Strategy: Pros and Cons

Before we proceed, let’s summarize the previous section regarding the advantages and disadvantages of applying the Martingale strategy for you to compare them and decide if it’s reasonable for you to follow this very strategy or if it’s better to look for alternatives.

As you can see, it’s really a tough choice to decide if it’s worth or not using the Martingale strategy since it’s not that clearly. What we can tell you though, you can disregard all the cons in case that you set a budget for a specific casino game and follow this strategy until you start winning and manage to compensate your losses. Besides, this strategy is definitely not the best option if you intend to play for several hours or the whole day. You’ll end up bankrupt unless you’re immensely rich. That’s why we don’t recommend that you play using this strategy for long. An hour is the maximum. The less you play, the better. If you bear in mind this really important piece of advice, you’ll be able to successfully apply the Martingale strategy! In such a way, some of the cons can be disregarded if you approach them properly and find reasonable solutions.

Martingale Roulette Strategy

One of the most popular games where you can apply the Martingale betting system is roulette. Even though, this betting system might not be the best option for other casino games, your winning chances with roulette Martingale strategy are extremely high indeed. As we have mentioned before, most of your roulette sessions (specifically, 80% of all your roulette games) will bring you winnings providing that you don’t play it for too long using this strategy. The reason is already known to you.

Evidently, the smaller bankroll you have, the less your winnings chances are. That’s why it’s really important for you to have a decent bankroll if you intend to apply the roulette strategy Martingale in order to be able to double your bets after every time you lose. If there are three or four losing streaks, your bankrollers needs to be even higher. If you want to learn how to increase your bankroll, you might find it useful to check various credit cards options for Canadian gamblers on our NativeCasinos website in the section dealing with different depositing methods for gamblers from Canada.

As you apply Martingale strategy roulette, it’s also really important to choose the appropriate type of roulette to make sure that the odds are higher. In case you doubt what type of roulette to choose, opt for the European Roulette whose house edge is 2.7%, which is much better compared to the American version or any other alternative. In addition, playing the European Roulette, you’ll get a surrender feature that can be used in case you wanna switch into another betting system to mitigate at least some of your losses.

Anti Martingale Strategy

Among the best alternatives to the Martingale betting system, there definitely must be mentioned the Anti-Martingale betting strategy. Here, the premise is the following: you have to half the bet every single time you bet and double it after every winning bet. As you can see, it is absolutely contrary to the Martingale system where you double bets after losses, basically, that’s why this betting system is known as the Anti-Martingale.

You might think that it’s an improved version or literally the best variation of the Martingale strategy. In fact, it’s absolutely not so. Frankly speaking, sooner or later, you will hit a streak, so your losses will eliminate all wins. That’s quite a disappointment, huh?

Nevertheless, there’s still a chance to win using the Anti-Martingale betting system. Wanna learn how? Similarly to the Martingale betting system, the betting process here works best in case it’s applied over a very short time without counting on long-term possibilities since there are none of them. Yet if you follow our recommendations and play using the Anti-Martingale strategy only for a really short period of time, you’ll definitely like it!

Reverse Martingale Betting System

Here is another alternative to the Martingale System known as The Reverse Martingale betting system or Paroli. It’s quite advanced compared to the original betting system since it’s a progressive system that requires you to increase the bet only if specific conditions are met unlike it’s in the Martingale System where the only option you have is to double your bet every time you lose. In contrast, here you need to double the bets only after every win. The best strategy is to start with the minimum bet that is only allowed at the casino. We recommend that you always bet on even numbers. In addition, you need to stop increasing the bets and start it over with the minimum bet every time you lose.

In the table below, you can check how this strategy works in practice. It’s a very optimistic scenario, yet it serves to illustrate you the betting process in case you have consecutive wins. In the column, you can also check the probability of your winning chances.

The main idea of this betting system lies in the fact that in most cases wins and losses come in streaks. That’s why it’s quite reasonable to bet more money in the period of winning streaks and bet less when there come losing streaks. That’s why the Reverse Martingale Strategy is considered to be the most stable and the safest betting strategy of all.

Conclusion

To sum up, the Martingale Strategy is among the oldest betting strategies that come from France of the eighteenth century. The main idea of this betting strategy is to double your bet every single time you lose in order to compensate for all your losses on the long distance. Among the most important privileges of this betting system, there can be listed the following: it’s really easy to learn and apply, can be used for different casino games, lets you win back your losses and improve your net winnings by doubling the bet every time you lose. Overally, it’s a really good strategy for short time betting with unlimited budget. Actually, there come its substantial drawbacks listed below: the longer you play, the higher your losing chances, in other words; because of the unfavourable odds, the longer you play, the more you are likely to lose; in most casinos, there are max bets limits so there comes the moment when you can’t double your bets any longer; it’s the best option for high rollers, yet it doesn’t work really well for gamblers with rather a limited budget for gaming. Having weighed all the pros and cons, it becomes evident that the Martingale Strategy might not be the best option for you. Instead, we recommend you to consider an alternative really progressive betting system known as The Reverse Martingale betting system or Paroli, which is definitely the best option out of all mentioned in this article. For more info and really useful advice, check the FAQ section below.