Professional Roulette Players
Roulette is a popular game that has been existing for hundreds of years. Its most famous versions are American, European and French; the key difference between them is the amount of sectors: the American one has one more due to the double zero; the French one has the En Prison and La Partage special rules. If you are a roulette player, you should know these differences because they directly affect your winning chances.
Who Are Professional Roulette Players at Casinos
Gambling is popular all over the world, thanks to which various offline and online casinos attract many customers. However, not all players can boast of regular and especially large winnings, since most of them see cash games as just another way to relax and have fun.
However, some managed to turn poker, blackjack, or roulette into a stable source of income — these players are considered professionals.
This does not mean they have a certain set of knowledge and skills that allow them to never lose. However, they have enough to significantly increase the likelihood of their success, due to which their total amount of winnings in the casino, as a rule, exceeds the total amount of losses.
Best Professional Players vs. Roulette Odds
If you are a beginner, roulette may seem quite complicated to you at first, so you may most often bet on equal chances — red/black, even/odd, or over/under. In fact, there are many more betting options in roulette and the ones listed above refer to outside bets, which, despite the high probability of a win, bring the smallest winnings in the game.
| Outside Bet | Payout | Odds in European Roulette | Odds in American Roulette |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red/Black | 1:1 | 48.65% | 47.37% |
| Even/Odd | 1:1 | 48.65% | 47.37% |
| Over/Under | 1:1 | 48.65% | 47.37% |
| Column | 2:1 | 32.4% | 31.6% |
| Dozen | 2:1 | 32.4% | 31.6% |
Therefore, professional roulette players in the USA prefer inside bets, which are more risky, but still can provide a much better payout ratio when winning — up to 35:1. In other words, the less likely it is that a ball will land on the sector or group of sectors, the more funds you can receive.
| Inside Bet | Payout | Odds in European Roulette | Odds in American Roulette |
|---|---|---|---|
| Straight | 35:1 | 2.7% | 2.6% |
| Split | 17:1 | 5.4% | 5.3% |
| Street | 11:1 | 8.1% | 7.9% |
| Square | 8:1 | 10.8% | 10.5% |
| Basket | 6:1 | N/A | 13.2% |
| Double Street | 5:1 | 16.2% | 15.8% |
Regardless of which bets you prefer for playing roulette — those that are simpler or more intricate, the house will always have the edge, because gambling is arranged that way. And even the best strategy cannot protect you from this simple fact.
Understanding this is the best incentive to set a betting limit for yourself, decide on the amount you are ready to lose painlessly, and try to stick to it in the future if the game goes against you.
Losses will definitely happen along with inspiring wins, because chance can play both against you and for you.
How to Play & Win Like Popular Pro Gamblers
Despite the fact that an online casino has more chances of winning by default, this does not mean that the mission to beat it at roulette is basically impossible, because in the game everything is decided by luck. Therefore, you need to do everything in your power to increase your winning chances.
We have created a list of recommendations that will help you make the game of roulette as profitable as possible:
- Play those types of roulette in which your odds against the casino are the greatest. This is the French and European versions of the game with 37 sectors. In the American roulette, there are 38 sectors thanks to an additional double zero. This increases the house edge from 2.7% to 5.26%.
- If possible, choose the French roulette with the special En Prison and La Partage rules. They are used during the game for equal chances when zero comes up. Usually, you just lose your bet; however, applying these rules allows you to return half of it back or make another move. If your bet wins this time, it will return to you; otherwise, you will lose it forever.
- When playing for equal chances, use a mathematical strategy. This will help you overcome the temptation to end the game when you go into the red due to several unsuccessful moves in a row.
- Using a strategy for betting on equal chances, take care of the money that you will need to bring the game to a positive ending — they should be enough for at least 50 base bets.
- To be in the black for thousands of spins, you should play on a small number of sectors — from 3 to 5.
- A “wide” game with closing half or more sectors allows you to stay with a small profit at a maximum distance of 20-30 rounds. At the same time, hundreds of spins with bets on 18+ numbers almost completely guarantee you a loss.
- Do not use roulette with a spread of 1-100 or lower to play, since this indicator is decisive in your ability to raise bets after losses.
- Use the services of online casinos that offer you promotions and tournaments.
The best strategy for playing roulette is to treat it not as a way to earn money, but as entertainment. Then you can not only receive guaranteed pleasure from the process, but also the satisfaction from the result (sometimes).
Using Laws of Physics & Finding Biased Wheels
There are indeed strategies that allow the roulette player to gain an advantage while playing with the casino. For example, physical strategies consider the features of a roulette wheel or a dealer roll and involve the collection and further processing of the received statistics.
There is nothing perfect in the real world, and the roulette wheel is also no exception. Its errors can lead to the fact that some sectors will fall out more often than others. Knowing this information allows you to significantly increase the winning chances. The same principle applies to dealers, a throw often has stable indicators of speed and strength, which allows you to predict the sectors in which the ball can complete its movement.
Unfortunately, you can only use the listed methods to increase your winning chances in offline casinos. In an online casino, you can only rely on luck or the strategy you have chosen.
Most Famous Professional Roulette Players
The history of roulette knows a number of players who, using one method or another, managed to turn this gambling game into a good source of income, earning hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars in casinos.
Carol & Richard Jarecki
One of the most famous roulette players in the USA proved that casinos can be beaten at roulette even at a long distance in the 1960s. And he did it at once in several casinos in the USA, France, Germany, and Italy. On average, Richard tracked the availability of statistical errors in roulettes over 10,000 spins and, having found a suitable one, bet on the necessary sectors that had the highest chance of falling out. It is believed that his total winnings amounted to more than $8 million in today’s money.
Charles Wells
This man became a real legend, breaking the bank in one of the Monte Carlo casinos as many as 12 times in a row in the summer of 1891. At the beginning of the game, he had 4,000 francs in his pocket; at the end, he already became a millionaire. This was made possible thanks to 23 winning spins out of 30. In the autumn of the same year, he again returned to the capital of gambling and again won more than a million francs in three days using the Martingale system.
However, this story does not have a happy ending, in the winter of 1892, Wells ended up losing outright after six broken banks.
The loss was only the beginning of a black streak, this was followed by a series of arrests for fraud and death in complete poverty in 1926.
Joseph Jagger
An ancestor of cult musician Mick Jagger, who worked as a mechanical engineer, came to the same conclusion as Richard Jarecki back in the 19th century — wheels in roulette can have static errors, which allows some sectors to fall out more often than others. Having hired several people to collect data, he analyzed the results and, having found the right wheel, he soon became the owner of a $1 million by today’s standards.
Chris Boyd
Unlike previous lucky ones, Chris Boyd didn’t rely on a system or sample of statistics. All he had was the $220,000 he had accumulated and his luck. He bet all this amount on red at Binion’s Horseshoe Club and was able to double it thanks to the dropped 7 of the corresponding color. Deciding not to risk any more, he left the casino with a fortune in his pocket.
Laszlo Kovacs
Laszlo Kovacs used microcomputer calculations of the rotor speed of the wheel and the ball in order to predict where the ball would fall. In 2005, he was arrested at the Star City Australian casino and charged with fraud. However, in the end, the unlucky player was simply deported, allowing him to keep the winnings of $200,000 received before the detention.
Norman Leigh
Unlike the previous heroes of our list, this roulette player did not use a physical strategy — calculating the speed of the ball or the error of the roulette wheel — to win $ 1.3 million. He used the reverse Labouchere mathematical system which is still popular among players today.
Ashley Revell
Ashley Revell was another lucky player who bet all his savings on red and doubled his bet with red 7 sector. Only his case occurred 20 years later — in 2004, and the bet amount was $135,000.
Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo
Gonzalo is another gambler who managed to make a millionth fortune by studying the statistical deviations of roulettes. When he became universally recognized, it was still no longer possible for him to play roulette, as the casinos did everything to interfere with the use of his system, for example, they changed the wheel at his table. Then he switched to poker, and Juan Carlos Mortensen became the world champion in 2001 thanks to his mentoring.
Edward O. Thorp
While other players tried to find defective wheels that would help them beat the casino, Edward Thorp, as a professor of mathematics, sought to find a way to defeat absolutely any wheel. In 1961, the result of such research was a portable computing device that predicted the final result of the roulette wheel with a probability of up to 44%, based on the speed of the ball and wheel.
Pros & Cons of Becoming a Professional Roulette Player
I was bankrupt twice and a millionaire the same number of times, the game is my life, and gambling is my bread!” the world poker champion once shared. The life of professional roulette player is full of excitement, but also full of risk; therefore, despite all the possible benefits, it has many disadvantages, which you better get acquainted with before you decide to spend a fair amount of time on becoming a professional in this gambling sphere.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Potentially big income | Uneven income |
| Lots of exciting emotions | Big risks |
| Traveling around casinos across the globe | Training takes a lot of time and money |
