What is the best betting system for roulette?
There isn’t one. Every system loses the same share of each chip bet, the house edge. Systems only trade how often you win against how much you can lose, and flat betting loses the least because it bets the least.
Every system played the same simulated sessions on red at a single-zero wheel. They lost between 2.27% and 2.71% of every chip bet, around the house edge of 2.70%.
Run these sessions in the simulatorRoulette odds for every bet
Every system on the same sessions
| System | Went bust | Finished ahead | Average result | Lost per chip bet |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flat betting | 0.0% | 31.6% | −64.56 | 2.58% |
| Martingale | 38.5% | 60.5% | −88.35 | 2.71% |
| Paroli (reverse Martingale) | 0.2% | 35.0% | −108.83 | 2.63% |
| Fibonacci | 35.7% | 61.0% | −115.16 | 2.27% |
| D’Alembert | 44.7% | 55.2% | −164.38 | 2.58% |
| Labouchère | 39.1% | 60.9% | −85.64 | 2.48% |
10,000 sessions of up to 250 bets each, with a 1,000-chip bankroll, a 10-chip base bet and a table maximum of 1,000, stopping once 500 chips ahead. Seed “cgs”: the link above replays exactly these sessions.
Why
A betting system decides how much to bet next from what happened before. The wheel doesn’t remember what happened before, so every bet, big or small, carries the same edge. What differs is the shape: Martingale and Labouchère win small targets often and sometimes lose big; Paroli loses small amounts often and sometimes wins well; flat betting sits in between. Your average loss is the edge times everything you bet, so the systems that bet more lose more on average.