Labouchere

Casino Gambling Strategies come in many different forms. The Labouchere betting system is one that appeals to many gamblers due to the mathematics behind it.

The idea behind this system is that you only place even-money paying bets, like Black or Red on a Roulette table, say. On average, these will pay out 50% of the time—and as the system only requires you to win one third of the time, at first glance it appears that you should surely enjoy more winning sessions than losing ones!

It should however be pointed out that gambling is always, well, a gamble! There is no guaranteed winning system. If Labouchere, as described below, does appeal to you, you should nevertheless be aware that there’s always a significant chance that you may lose when putting it into live play at any casino site!

OK, let’s now get down to the nitty gritty of the Labouchere betting system. To begin with, much like with any other betting system or betting strategy, you need to set your winning goal: the sum of money you hope to make in this particular gaming session. We’ll use a basic example so you can quickly get your head around how this system works.

Let us say your winning goal is 30 (pounds, euros, dollars, it doesn’t matter for these purposes). You will then need to split this sum up into three chunks. Grab a pen and a piece of paper and write down 10, 10 and 10.

You then sit down at a Roulette table. Your first bet—and in fact every bet you place at the Roulette table—will be the sum of the first and last numbers on your list. 10 plus 10 is of course 20. This means that you need to place a 20 bet on any of the even-money positions on the Roulette betting table.

Should this wager win, cross off the first and last digits from your list. The next bet you need to place, again on an even-money paying positions, is a 10 chip, as this is the only number remaining on your list. You cannot add the first and last numbers together as there is just one number left.

Should that bet be a winning one, great! You have won a total of 30, which was your goal. However, should any bet you place not be a winning one, the amount of the losing bet needs to be placed at the end of your list of numbers. If the first bet you placed lost, in this example, then your new list of numbers would read 10, 10, 10, 20, and your next bet in the sequence would be 30 (the first number on your list, 10, plus the last number on your list, 20).

This system is a popular one because, if you have a losing sequence of wagers, the progression of bets raises in value only very slowly, instead of rapidly as in systems like Martingale, in which the bets can quickly spiral out of control.

You should ideally divide your winning goal into as many low number as possible: in our example, instead of writing a 3×10 list,, you could write a 10×3 or even a 30×1. This way the progression of numbers is even lower, if you catch a few losing spins in a row.