In the online gambling world, players are always looking for the next big trick to beat the house and to ultimately reign in significant prizes. Among the popular systems that gamers employ is the Martingale system, a simple trick that holds the significant promise of beating the gaming odds set in place by the gaming providers. Its premise is simple: double your wager after every loss you experience, and a single win will recoup all the prior losses you incurred.
Many punters are drawn to this double-or-nothing approach due to its simplicity. It’s a strategy often attempted in famous brick-and-mortar gaming establishments in London, and across the major gambling spaces in the UK, as well as on online platforms like Fortunica casino, where games such as roulette and blackjack offer the perfect opportunities to test this theory. The pertinent question remains: does this underlying wagering technique work in practice, or is it another illusion that will ultimately crumble under the huge pressure of real-world constraints? Let’s find out, shall we?
An In-Depth Analysis of the Martingale Technique
The bet-doubling technique in question here has been around for a whopping 300 years. Before we dive into how it is implemented, let’s just give you a brief context of its history. This risk escalation method, so to speak, is believed to have been invented in the 18th century by a group of Math geeks in France. However, its use caught on when John H. Martindale, a casino owner in London, would wander around his establishment and encourage punters to double their wagers after losses they incurred. The method garnered more steam in 1891 when gambler Charles De Ville Wells, commonly known as the “man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo”, won over 1 million francs at Monte Carlo playing Roulette. It is widely reported that Charles was using the Martingale system to play on that day.
Having looked at the history, now let’s explain John H. Martindale’s system in detail. Let’s say your goal is to win £100 in a day. To keep things simple, we’ll keep the juice out of the equation and assume you are utilising even moneyline wagers. Let’s say you place your first bet and win. Congrats, you’ll have achieved your £100 goal. If you have lost, you will then double your bet size to £200. Should you win the £200 wager, you’ll be up by £100, meaning that you’ll have achieved the initial goal you had set out to achieve. If you lose the £200 wager, then you double your bet to £400. A winning wager will once again return a total profit of £100, meaning you’ll get to recoup your prior £300 losses that you incurred. You get the drill now? It seems pretty simple in theory, so why has it not worked for so many people in the betting world?
The Allure of the Strategy
There’s something so alluring about this bet-doubling technique, and it has to do with psychology. For gamers implementing this system, there’s a safe feeling that exists, that a win is just a matter of time. Be that as it may, many active punters will attest to the fact that gaming isn’t always as straightforward as this concept sells it to be. Rather, you can find yourself in exponential situations that will highly limit your ability to fully leverage such techniques, and even put you at a disadvantage. Here’s how:
- Your bankroll needs to be substantial: With how this system works, you’ll need to be heavily stacked to keep up. Losing streaks are inevitable in the gambling world. Following the premise of this strategy, it would mean you’ll need to fork out significant cash sums to keep up. Ultimately, you’ll find yourself in some scenarios where you have to win big or go home. Imagine a situation where your £1000 wager is up for grabs after using this classic gambling progression technique? Talk about the ultimate stress trigger! The pressure that comes with this method is, at times, too much to handle, especially if you aren’t a high roller gamer by nature.
- Wagering Limits: To protect themselves against exploitation by this method, casinos impose caps on how much you can wager on a single bet. This means that this limit will eventually stop you from continuing the system.
- Losing Streaks are painful when paired with this strategy: As we mentioned before, it may take a day, a week, a month, or even several months, but losing streaks are inevitable in any competitive sport. Let’s go back to our £100 a day profit-seeking example. A 12-game losing streak would mean close to a million pounds wagered just to keep this streak alive. Gamers who actively and stubbornly implement this system will always look back at their betting history and discover a streak of wild amounts wagered. This system pretty much goes against every sound bankroll management technique that is out there. It may, in fact, be the origin of some problem gambling cases.
So, Does the Martingale System Work?
In the short term, yes, it can be a useful tool that gamers may employ. Anecdotally, gamers have seen attractive short-term wins with this technique. The caveat of the preceding statement is that these wins are usually erased with a single bad gaming streak. While it is attractive in theory, strong evidence suggests that it is a method that is deeply flawed for long-term usage. In the end, it is always vital that punters play for fun, know their limits, and have the background knowledge that the house always has an edge.
Bottom line, you will win modest amounts, but your day of reckoning will eventually come when you’ll give back these amounts and some more. So, it’s better to steer clear of the Martingale system for long-term gaming. Rather than going with this aggressive technique, there are other, less volatile methods you can use, like the progressive Fibonacci. Regardless of the system, always approach gaming as an entertainment, not life or death.
