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Bet two dozens at $5 each and lose: -$10

Bet two dozens at $10 each and lose: -$20 (-$30 total)

Bet two dozens at $20 each and win: +$20 (-$10 total)

So, it is what you think it is. What is it that you think you are missing? If the same dozen hits a bunch of times in a row, or hits an inordinate number of times within a relatively small number of spins, you're screwed.

"Small and medium winning sessions," is a very relative term. You would have various winning, "Sessions," that add up to less than your inevitable devastating losing session(s) would.

It doesn't seem like you're missing anything. Suppose your total bet could go:

10-20-40-80-160-320-640 (half of each bet on each dozen) and then the table limit would come into play.

(14/38)^7 = 0.00092132121

1/0.00092132121 = 1 in 1085.39778434

So, for every 1,085 (roughly) initial spins, you'll expect to have a loss of $1,270 without even winning any. Unfortunately, as you will see below, that's not your only problem.

From Random.org: (37's and 38's represent 0 and 00)

Let's look at this. We're going to pretend that we were betting the first two dozens. Here's how it went:

W $5

W $5

W $5

W $5

L-W-L-W-L-L-W-L-L-W-L-W-L-W-W-W-W $5

L-W-W $5

L-L-W-W-W $5

W $5

L-W-W $5

L-L-W-W-W $5

W $5

W-W-W-W $20

L-W-W $5

W-W $10

L-L-L-L-L-W-L-W-W-W-W-W-W $5

W-W-W $15

L-L-L-W-W-L-W-W-W $5

L-W-L-W-L-W--W $5

W-W $10

L-L-W-L-L-L-W-W-W-W-W $5

L-W-W $5

W- $5

L-W (Unfinished)

Okay, so this particular session would have had $145 in profits. That's on 65 winners and 35 losers (assuming I counted correctly), so pretty good session.

Let's do one more:

W-W $10 (2)

L-L-W-W-W $5 (5)

L-W-W $5 (7)

L-L-L-W-L-W-W-L-W-L-W-W-W $5 (14)

Six Wins $30 (20)

L-L-W-W-W $5 (23)

L-L-L-W-W-L-W-W-W $5 (28)

***L-W-L-L-W-W-L-W-L-L-L-L-L-W-L-L-L-W-W-L-W-W-W-W-W-W-L-W-W $5 (43)

W $5 (44)

L-L-W-W-W $5 (47)

W $5 (48)

L-W-L-W-W $5 (51)

W $5 (52)

L-W-L-W-L-W-W $5 (56)

L-L-W-W-L-W-L-L (59)

After this set of 100 spins, you have one that is still unfinished and only made $100 in profits. That's only if we conveniently ignore the fact that you hit the Table Max that I originally proposed (see below). You could not have made another bet as you were seven levels behind, at one point.

The one we didn't finish went L-L-W-W-L-W-L-L-W-W-L-W-W.

I guess the, "Part you're missing," is that the results are not going to distribute perfectly because result distribution does not care to go out of its way to make betting systems work.

Every attempt that takes more than one spin starts with a loss, because it has to. At that point, whatever you're prepared to do bankroll-wise (and the house is prepared to let you do by table limits) is to get to the point where you win one more than you lose. The second session above was completely randomly selected and I did it this way so that I could illustrate to you why this system does not work.

The second session wasn't great in that you only had 59/100 winning spins, but is that really that unusual? 14/38 = 0.36842105263

The answer is: Not really. 41 (or more) losses with 14/38 ways to lose will happen more than 20% of the time in 100 spins.

***HERE is the other problem. You're screwed in this session. The losses don't have to be in a row because your Martingale does not cancel out all losses. In this particular series, you've effectively lost the seventh one in a row and the series would have ended.

Conclusion

Therefore, I conclude if you are missing anything, they are these two things:

1. It doesn't take seven losses in a row for this system to fail. This system is not a Martingale, even, it's kind of like a Martingale/Labouchere hybrid.
2. Even your winning sessions aren't going to be distributed such that you consistently get 26 units in profits.

But, you know the important part: That Roulette has a big house edge working against you and that you cannot expect any system to beat the game. I am very happy that your question was more, "Why does this system not work?", as opposed to actually thinking it might work.

I hope my post has helped.

And, my post did help! Yay! I love it when people accept math!

Answer: What difference does your first sentence make?

You will not earn risk-free commissions because there is no, "Safest way," to handle the zeroes. There is a way that has the least Variance and all that way will do is guarantee that you lose money rather than make it extremely likely that you will lose money. The only way to beat the House Edge is to be getting back in excess of the House Edge. There are no ifs, ands or buts.

I think you will have an advantage on Blackjack if the House Edge is less than 0.8% and you are getting back 0.8%. In fact, I know you'll have an advantage. I don't know whether you will win or lose, (except, with limitless funds, you would win in the extreme long run) but I know you'll have an advantage.

Follow-Up Question: i just wondering how much i will make per month if i just get 0.4% advantage in blackjack hand by hand betting $50?

Answer: There are obviously a few unknowns, here:

1.) I would have to take it for granted that you're playing Optimal Strategy.

2.) I don't know how many hours you intend to play in a month.

3.) I don't know how many hands per hour you'll get in.

If you fill in the blanks on two and three, then it is really simple multiplication. Take however many hands you can get in an hour, multiply that by how many hours you'll play in a month, multiply that by 50 and then multiply all of that by .004. So, if I assume 60 hands per hour and that you will play 160 hours per month:

(60 * 160 * 50 * 0.004) = 1920

Thus, you would EXPECT to profit $1,920/month based on those parameters.

I also want to note that you should avoid using terms like, "I will," because it's gambling, so you don't know whether or not you'll do anything. When you're talking about 9,600 initial hands (as in my example) and the $50 bet you mentioned, that's going to be $480,000 total in base bets. (This will be increased by splits/doubles). In other words, I don't know that you WILL even profit. You could lose a few grand. You could make five grand, you could lose ten grand in a month.

More importantly, I don't know what you're bankroll is. Even with the advantage, if your bankroll is $1,000, you're much more likely than not just to eventually bust out at some point because your bankroll cannot sustain the swings of a $50 bet.

Lesson: There are a few very general lessons here:

1.) Sometimes the overall question is ridiculously simple

Don’t fall into a bonus or rebate trap blindly! Had Rajarolet decided to play his bonus on Roulette without asking that question, who knows how much he would have lost before figuring out that he was guaranteed to lose!?

I think I know exactly what his angle would have been. He would have bet something like $37 on Red, $37 on Black and $1 on Zero. We all know the House Edge of each bet is 1.35% on his Roulette game, so that means he is going to lose 75 * .0135 = $1.0125, per spin, in exchange for 75 * .008 = 0.60. In other words, he would literally hand the house $0.4125 every single spin until he noticed the problem!

I imagine that he and a confederate may well have deposited $1,000 each and just played until one of them were to hit zero. I certainly hope it wouldn’t have been anymore than that!

Anyway, this is a direct percentage of all of your bets back, so it’s a ridiculously simple overall question: Is the percentage that you are getting back greater than the House Edge? If the answer is, ‘No,’ then you do not have an advantage; if the answer is, ‘Yes,’ then you do have an advantage.

2.) Even if you have an advantage, you must consider any bankroll limitations

He figured out that he would enjoy a .4% advantage on Blackjack, so he thought about playing $50/hand and, BOOM! Payday, right?

Not so much.

I don’t know what his actual total bankroll is, but I went with $1,000, and the rest of the post seemed to scare him off of this idea a little bit. This kind of goes back to our Standard Deviation discussion from earlier, so we want to look at how likely someone is to bust out with that sort of bankroll.

The first thing that we can figure out is how much he would need to make in total bets in order to get his $1,000 back. That’s easy. 1000/.008 = $125,000. He is betting $50/hand, so that’s going to be 2,500 hands not counting splits or doubles, so let’s call it 2,000 hands with those.

I found a Blackjack with a Standard Deviation of 1.14 per hand and House Edge of 0.46% per hand on the simulator, so we’ll call that close enough.

Deposit: 1000

Bonus: 0

Wagering: 125000

Bet Size: 50

Simulations: 10000

Our bust rates are 74.75% and 75.54% over two sets of simulations. In every single one of those cases, he would bust out on the $1,000 while taking some kind of loss. He would certainly get back some amount in rebates, but it would be less than the $1,000 deposit, thereby causing a loss overall.

The result is that, while he may have an advantage and an expected profit, if the $1,000 is all he has to do this, he will lose nearly three of four times without making a profit overall.

If we reduce the bet size to $5, then the probability of busting out before making $125,000 in total wagers drops to 43.93% and 43.81% over two sets of simulations. That means that he is more likely than not to make wagers such that the rebate exceeds $1,000 in total dollars, and he still has money left from the $1,000 to continue to play.

The downside is that his profit per hour would drop significantly:

(60 * 160 * 5 * 0.004) = $192

Over 160 hours of play at $5 base bets, at sixty hands per hour, he would expect to earn $192, which comes out to about $1.20/hour. I guess the good news is the casino will be a lot less likely to notice or mind the arrangement even if they do.

At a bet size of $1, he is at 13.87% and 13.86% to bust over two sets of 10,000 simulations. Therefore, his initial deposit is much safer, but he’s only earning about $0.24/hour.

This is one of those cases where just having an advantage isn’t enough if it’s not going to be worth your time. You have to make sure that the hourly is worth your time, but that you also have the bankroll such that you are likely to sustain that hourly without busting.

Unless you just want to straight up gamble. Which is fine. Even if you’re more likely than not to lose, at least you would still have an advantage.