Roulette often gets bandied about as the classiest casino game of all and as one favored by most casual table game fans. However, the truth is that experienced gaming establishment patrons love doses of wheel action when they can couple it with some betting system implementation. Aside from blackjack and baccarat, no gambling product at casino floors offers comparable winning odds as European roulette, whose house edge stands at only 2.7% when players opt to make even-money wagers. Those are bets made on even/odd, black/red, and high/low positions. These spots are the ones that provide the best winning probabilities.
Incorporating wagering patterns in roulette is nothing new, as a wealth of such systems have gotten employed since the 17th century in this game. These have gotten put to use in attempts for money to get wrestled away from operators. One of the more recently popularized ones gets labeled trend betting, and it entails following a specific tendency in a wagering session. It is vital to note that those who laud locating designs in inclinations and biases in the randomness of roulette spins have gotten stricken by the Gambler’s Fallacy. That is a false belief that past events can somehow dictate future outcomes. The truth is all casino games are entirely chance-based, and no one can predict with any degree of regularity what result is more likely to come down the pipe next.
That said, trend betting has maintained establishment in veteran circles, and dozens of books about roulette secret strategies that feature these tactics have gotten written. The most famous titles from this genre are the work of American author Frank Scoblete, who the Washington Post called an authority on casino games. Below, we go into his theories on roulette trend wagering and other betting systems one can use on Monte Carlo’s favorite gaming product.
Who Is Frank Scoblete?
Before diving into examining his approaches to roulette, it is appropriate to first quickly explain who Frank Scoblete is and why he is an authority on wheel gambling. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Scoblete rose to prominence as a writer for a Long Island magazine before getting his radio show Frank Scoblete Live on the airwaves.
In the mid-1970s, Frank experimented with theater acting before moving to direct. In the 1980s, while researching for a gambler role, Scoblete visited Atlantic City with his future wife Alene Paone and fell in love with casinos, spending much of his time in these venues until the early-1990s.
Over the past three decades, Scoblete has published around twenty books on craps, blackjack, slots, and roulette. He has also written hundreds of columns on these games for various outlets, including the Chicago City Times.
Scobe’s Trend Betting Roulette Tactics
Trend betting is likely the preferred strategy for casino gamblers who like to go against or with various happenings on roulette tables. They believe that by following through with such patterns, they may reduce exposure to the casino’s house edge. Conversely, this could lead to increasing session enjoyment, even though no long-term profits may accompany this. The hope is that by implementing this approach, players can lose less and not flip the advantage in their favor, as that is not an option.
In simple terms, trend betting entails watching for a recent streak of events and then betting on the pattern continuing or turning around. For example, if the little white ball falls on red seven times in a row, betting on this happening again means that a gambler is going with the current trend, and wagering on black signifies his belief that it will stop. Again, no one can get an edge by trend wagering on casino games because they all randomly produce outcomes.
Now that that is out of the way. Frank Scoblete propagates making even-money bets, and he recommends that after two of these positions hit in a row, to bet on that happening a third time. So, if the ball falls in a black pocket twice, wager that it will do so in a third instance. The counter-trend approach is the opposite tactic of the one described. If the ball falls in a red pocket consecutively, bet black. Scoblete suggests that if you fail to profit on that wager, sitting out the next one is the way to go. And if the ball falls on red, the next move should be for a player to try his luck betting on black again.
Scoblete claims that by implementing his trend betting system, a gambler will wager less, their losing expectation will get diminished accordingly, and they will receive loads of anticipatory pleasure. So, it is not all about making money with these two systems. They also boost the level of enjoyment at roulette. To further enhance one’s gambling experience at these tables, Scoblete also advocates making imaginary bets and seeing how well gamblers do on these because they will face the same house edge as real money ones. Then, if they do well in a series of fictitious ones, follow the in-mind positive trend on the roulette board via real money wagers.
Mainstay Roulette Betting Systems
The Martingale has long been the gold standard regarding roulette gambling. That is so since gamblers have few limitations outside of a minimum and maximum bet at roulette games, unlike at slots, where players can only make six to ten-sized wagers, restricting the potential for progressive (positive and negative) system implementation. The Martingale instructs gamblers to double up their best following losing ones. So, it is a negative progression pattern. When someone wins, they reset and start betting again.
The Paroli is almost equally as established as the Martingale, but it utilizes positive progression. That means that wagers get doubled after wins. And they stay the same following losses. Yet, if a gambler encounters three lucky breaks in a row, his bet should reset to its base amount.
Other noteworthy betting patterns commonly implement in roulette are the D’Alembert strategy, the Labouchere, and the Fibonacci. Nonetheless, explaining them is outside the scope of this article.
