Basic Martingale

I have seen this ridiculously simple and commonly known strategy posted all over the internet by people seeking to make gains out of it and claiming it is their own invention. The Martingale Strategy is a very simple staking plan and is very commonly used. It is one of those strategies which you just *have* to know as a real foundation to any other gambling knowledge you may gain. Indeed it often forms a foundation for other gambling strategies and systems which we will explore later.

Well, i'll get straight down to business and tell you about the strategy...
In it's simplist form, Martingale should only be used with 50-50 bets. There is of course very few 50-50 bet opportunities available due to the house edge (which is where the casinos make their money!) Some games it can be used on are Blackjack (make sure you know basic strategy for blackjack first), and roulette (red/black, odd/even, etc).

The strategy involves doubling your bet every time you lose. When you win, go back to your original starting bet. Always double your bet every time you lose.

That's it. It never ceases to amaze me how wannabe pro gamblers can keep on selling this strategy, as basic as it is. You will often see it sugar-coated with proof of how it works and testimonials, claims that you can never lose, etc.

Let's take a look at how it could be practically applied to a betting scenario. For simplicity i will use the example of betting on red/black on the roulette table.

Bet A: I bet 1 unit ~ I LOSE
Bet B: I bet 2 unit ~ I LOSE
Bet C: I bet 4 unit ~ I WIN

1 unit can be whatever you'd like it to be. It could represent $1.00, or £1.00, or $10, or £10,000 - whatever you want it to be, as long as you decide before you start what your unit represents and stick to it throughout.

What happens in the example above is that our first bet lost.
We were 1 unit down at this point.
We doubled up as per the strategy.
Second bet lost.
Now 3 units down.
Doubled up again.
Got lucky and won.
Yippee we just "made" 4 units profit on bet C and now can use three of those units to pay off our "debt" incurred from the losing bets and pocket the 1 unit in proft.

Keep repeating the process. When you get used to doing it you could perhaps win around 20 units an hour no problem (many more on faster games like Blackjack). Hey presto - $20 an hour betting with only $1 units. Not bad.

HOWEVER, and this is a big point to note, you do not always get simple runs of one or two losses. How about this scenario:-

Bet A: I bet 1 unit - I LOSE
Bet B: I bet 2 units - I LOSE
Bet C: I bet 4 units - I LOSE
Bet D: I bet 8 units - I LOSE
Bet E: I bet 16 units - I LOSE
Bet F: I bet 32 units - I LOSE
Bet G: I bet 64 unts - I WIN (phewww!)

If you think that you cannot get 6, 7, 8 or even 9 losses in a row then i would encourage you to think again. One only needs to spend a handful of hours sitting at a casino even odds style game before seeing strings of losses exactly this length.

What if Bet G had lost above? That would have been a total of 64+32+16+8+4+2+1 units lost = 127 units. Ouch, that is some hit right there. Where would we go next? 128 units? Are you sure? Have you got the guts to put 128 units on the table?

Hopefully you get the idea and spot the problem. This strategy works and works very well but only on the assumption that you can always continue doubling up (yes even into the millions!) and also that the casino will LET you double up. Even if you have enough money to bet the martingale system you will run into problems with the table limits. Some casinos allow a spread of 1 - 500 units, which would effectively mean you COULD bet that 128 units, then lose that, bet another 256 units, and then *oops* run out of room to bet.

Finding you have just lost a 256 unit bet and you have blown out your account in the pursuit of 1 unit of gain doesn't feel particularly good.

This strategy can be fun to play and everyone should try it once (money permitting). The key, as with many casino strategies, is in making sure you LEAVE when you money is up. A discipline which is much easier said than done i know. If you get away with betting the martingale for an hour, or find you have reached your goal for units (try 40 units or so), then QUIT. Count yourself lucky that you didn't hit a big losing streak this time and got away with it. Get lucky enough and you could get away with this for some time, such that when you do finally bust out on your account you already gained enough (and withdrew enough) to make it worth your while.

Anyway, we'll go into more detail on basic martingale later, that was just the core information for now. For those of you with more mathematical minds and who want to get into the nitty gritty of martingale and learn more about its origins, etc, you may like to check out this wikipedia article - i don't really want to bog down the blog here with my ramblings too much!