How To Beat Roulette - Labouchere System

By David Morris

The Labouchere System is a betting strategy that has been used for years in the attempt to beat the roulette wheel and although it is not the most common roulette system to be found or to be put into practice, the fact remains that it can be quite a bit more effective than more widely-used strategies such as the Martingale system.

To use Labouchere, you must employ some extremely basic mathematics, and I mean basic to the point that just about anyone is capable of doing it.

First, you decide how much money you are wanting to win in this session of gaming against the roulette wheel. For this example, I'll use a relatively easy number and go for 20, meaning that we wish to hopefully win $20.

The first thing we would do is to write out a random series of positive numbers (meaning no negative numbers such as -4) that add up to the amount of money we wish to win. You can use as many or as few numbers as you wish, as long as the total adds up to the amount you want to win, and finally, you must have an even amount of numbers written down. So, because we wish to win $20, our line could look like this:

4, 2, 1, 1, 1, 3, 6, 2.

Like I said, it doesn't have to be any specific numbers at all, as long as they add up to the amount you wish to win.

What you do is to take the first and last number from the line, add them together and then bet that amount on the roulette table on a bet where you have the highest odds of winning. So for roulette, this would be a red or black bet, an odd or even bet, or a first half or second half bet.

If once you've bet you win, you simply cross the two numbers off the line and move onto the next two numbers in the line. If you lose however, you would take the number representing the amount you just wagered and move it to the end of the line and continuing to bet as normal. Once all numbers have been crossed off, you would have won the amount of money you wanted to win in the first place.

With the Labouchere system there comes the risk of a large unrecoverable losing streak which could cause an immense loss, so because of this it is not the most effective way of beating roulette, however it is a much more sound option than using a method such as Martingale.