When people play casino games they usually do it with some kind of strategy or method in mind and one of the most common things that people try is a betting system called the Martingale. This is a system that has been around for years and it is most commonly used with games like roulette and blackjack.

The idea is very straight forward, you start out by betting a small amount and then each time you lose, you increase your next bet until you win. If you keep increasing your bets by the correct amount, you will always have a small profit when you eventually win. Let’s have a look at how a progression may look with a game of roulette when you’re betting on red or black. This is how it would look if you start at 1:

1 – 2 – 4 – 8 – 16 – 32 – 64 – 128 – 256 – 512 – 1024 – 2048 – 4096 – 8192

As you can see, the bets start out nice and small but they soon get too big.

The sequence above can be used for all even chance betting, such as red or black with roulette or it can be used with blackjack. The Martingale is not limited to the above sequence though, you can tweak it to suit any form of betting, so long as you always end up with a profit when you win. Before you start placing any bets, it would be wise to make sure that your maths is correct.

What you need to remember about using the Martingale is that losing runs can and do happen so you need to be prepared to lose every now and then. It would be unwise to just continually increase your bets until you have nothing left, instead set yourself a stop loss and stick to it. For example with the above sequence, you could decide to walk away once you get to 64.

Another thing to remember is that both online and land based casinos apply table limits to their games which will stop you from continually increasing your bets. You need to be aware of the table limits for your chosen game before you start. Ultimately the Martingale has its ups and downs like other betting systems. On the one hand, it can help you through small losing runs and it can increase your winning streak. On the other hand, when you do suffer a loss it is a big one so you need to weigh up the pros and cons before you start playing and decide whether or not it’s a system that you would want to use.