Support UkraineLabouchere Strategy for Roulette (Test & Analysis)
Another very popular strategy that players may be keen to explore is Labouchere. Labouchere is often cited as if not the best roulette system, then one that is known for its slightly different gameplay, and still sound theory crafting. The Labouchere roulette strategy was not invented by a mathematician per se, but rather by a British journalist, Henry Labouchere who was keen to find a way to play roulette and win a little more. The system he pioneered has been known under many different names, including split Martingale, American progression, and even cancellation system.
Today, players have a good and time-tested stratagem on their hands that they can use freely and dictate the amounts they are comfortable with. Essentially, the strategy asks you – how much do you wish to win? And then lets you calibrate the size of each bet. Let’s take a closer look at how it works so that we can help you decide if this strategy is something you would be interested in.
How the Labouchere System Works
The Labouchere roulette system is actually rather easy. First, you will decide how much you want to win from the strategy. There is no time limit here. You only end the strategy sequence once you have won the amount you have aimed at. Understandably, the lower the amount you try to win, the easier it will be to end the sequence and conversely, the higher the amount you are trying to win is, the harder it is going to be to actually end the sequence.
Let’s say that you have decided to win 20 units. This is excellent. Now, you need to split the 20 units into bet sizes. Here is one way to do it, 5, 4, 1, 2, 4, and 4. The sum of these numbers is 20. You may of course add more numbers, lower, and increase the value of any of the bets on this list. Labouchere tells you to put together the leftmost and rightmost bet together and bet.
In our case, this would be 5+4 = 9. If you win, you cross out 5 and 4 from the sequence, and now you only have 4,1, 2, and 4. If you lose, however, you will add the losing wager to the right of the sequence. Assuming we lost the 9 bet we then have a sequence that now looks like so: 5,4, 1, 2, 4, 4, and 9 again.
To bet again, you need to place 5+9 = 14 units. This will immediately tell you that it’s often worthwhile to place smaller bet sizes when you are using the Labouchere system. The appeal of the strategy lies in the fact that players are free to decide how they want to set up the bets they wish to place down, and how much of a risk they want to take.
The strategy works with Even Money or Outside Bets, and you can set up short-term goals to help sustain you in the long run. Remember that you should not quit until you have reached your goal, and this may take a while, so calibrate your goal accordingly.
Alright, now that we have some understanding of the strategy, we want to help you understand Labouchere strategy how to use it in gambling. Let’s take a look at another example. Let’s say we want to win $10 and have split our bets as follows: 1, 2, 3, and 4.
- Step 1
We bet 1+4 and bet 5 units. We lost.
- Step 2
Now we bet 1+5 = 6 units because the sequence is 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. We win.
- Step 3
As a result, we remove the 5 and 1 from the sequence, which now looks like this 2, 3, and 4. We bet 6 units and lose, adding 6 to the sequence as well, and bet 8 units.
- Step 4
Our sequence now we only have 3 and 4 in the sequence. We bet 7 units and if we win, congratulations, we end the sequence and have won 10 units in total. If we lose, we add the 7 and keep playing. Let’s see what happens.
- Step 5
We lost. So we now have 3, 4, and 7 as our sequence.
It sounds like a great strategy to try, and the added benefit of having so much control over the outcome pleases many players.
Testing Labouchere
Before you can decide if Labouchere is for you, let’s take the case of four individual players. These players do not exist. We ran simulations of how their game would have turned out if they had used the Labouchere system. Right, so for each of these players, the following conditions were met:
- Each player has a bankroll of 1,000 units
- The game is played over 500 rounds
- Two players (1 and 2) start with 10 unit win goal and 1,2,1, 3, 1, 1, and 1 sequence
- Two l payers (3 and 4) start with 15 unit win goal and 1, 3, 4, 4, and 3 sequence
- The strategy is tested with the European roulette wheel
- You have a 48.6% to win using this strategy and a 51.4% chance to lose
Graph 1 shows that Player 1 placed a maximum bet of 46 units and did not face any serious declines during the sequence. He also managed to win 474 units in net gain.
Player 2 faced sharper downturns with the biggest bet placed at 199 units. However, Player 2 ended the sequence with a significant net gain of more than 900 units.
Play 3 did similarly well. His largest amount bet was 41 units and he finished the sequence with a significant net gain of more than 600 units.
Last but not least, Player 4 saw his progression actually hit a max bet of 160 units. He too ended up with a good amount of profit.
Pitfalls of Labouchere System and What to Do
Alright, so are there any pronounced downsides of this system? As you can imagine, there are potential instances where you may end up betting big amounts. For example, at one point, the fourth player had this sequence to deal with 16,24,36,48,64,80,96,112,128. Yet, the good thing about Labouchere is that it builds towards large amounts very slowly, especially if you start at a tamer sequence.
As to the actual pitfalls that the strategy entails, we feel that the biggest potential issue is with you miscalculating the initial win goal. It’s important to understand that once you have achieved a win, you can start over again. None of the player tests we ran had a winning goal of their actual profit in the end. We just restarted the sequence each time a player won 10 or 15 units and managed to win again.
The simulations were crucial in highlighting that sometimes, it’s possible for bets to become unwieldy when using this strategy. However, on balance, there was little to suggest that the testing sessions would end up in calamity. This doesn’t mean that the strategy doesn’t have it other drawbacks. It may take long on occasion to end a sequence, although we have observed that most end sooner rather than later.
One really important thing that many new players using this strategy ignore is writing down the actual numbers they have played through. It’s often the case that players could miss a number unless they are writing it down. This means that good note-taking, simple as it may seem, is an important part of the process.
What to Make of Labouchere System?
At the end of this all, Labouchere is one of those roulette systems that, upon extensive testing, shows that it can be an excellent way to strengthen your understanding of roulette in general. It allows you something that other strategies such as Fibonacci and Martingale do not – decision-making as to how much money you want to win. It’s a way to mitigate risk and spread the weight across multiple wagers instead.
Many players enjoy this strategy because of this precisely. With our virtual players, you saw that one was able to hit more than 300 units as their minimum win and the other, 900 units at the end of the 500 rounds. This ought to tell you that the strategy itself is a really good way to try your luck at a game of roulette, and potentially win. More testing could reveal other scenarios, but we are happy after having played the game through simulations for 2,000 rounds.
However, you need to still bring a substantial bankroll with you, as you definitely want to have at least 1,000 units of funds ready to go. Of course, Labouchere suffers from other issues – such as the repetitiveness of adding and crossing out numbers. Some players enjoy it, some do not.
The bottom line is that Labouchere System is the one that shows the most promise when playing roulette. So, why not give it a go? Yes, you cannot expect a 100% win rate, but the results so far are encouraging.
Your new strategy is waiting to be tested - play roulette for real!
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