Does the Martingale system work?
No. Martingale wins small amounts most of the time and loses big now and then, and the big losses cost more than all the small wins. You still lose the house edge on every chip you bet.
In 10,000 simulated sessions on red at a single-zero wheel, Martingale reached its +500 target 59.7% of the time and went bust 38.5% of the time. The average session lost 88.35 chips: 2.71% of every chip bet, against a house edge of 2.70%.
Run these sessions in the simulatorRoulette odds for every bet
How the Martingale sessions ended
| Outcome | Sessions |
|---|---|
| Reached +500 and stopped | 59.7% |
| Went bust | 38.5% |
| Still playing after 250 bets | 1.8% |
| Finished ahead | 60.5% |
| Average result (chips) | −88.35 |
| Lost per chip bet | 2.71% |
| House edge on red | 2.70% |
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
Doubling after every loss means the first win recovers everything plus one base bet. That works until a losing streak runs into the table maximum or your bankroll. Streaks long enough to do that are rare, but each one wipes out a long run of small wins. The roulette wheel doesn’t care how much you bet: every chip on red still loses the same share on average, so the system only changes how the loss is spread, not its size.