Does the Labouchère (cancellation) system work?
No. Like Martingale, it reaches a modest target most of the time and goes bust the rest, and the busts cost more than all the wins. The loss per chip bet stays around the house edge.
In the simulated sessions, Labouchère reached the +500 target 60.9% of the time and went bust 39.1%. The average session lost 85.64 chips, 2.48% of every chip bet; the house edge on red is 2.70%.
Run these sessions in the simulatorRoulette odds for every bet
Labouchère next to Martingale, same sessions
| System | Reached the target | Went bust | Hit the table max | Average result | Lost per chip bet |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Labouchère | 60.9% | 39.1% | 0.0% | −85.64 | 2.48% |
| Martingale | 59.7% | 38.5% | 14.7% | −88.35 | 2.71% |
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
Labouchère starts from a line of numbers, here 1-2-3-4: each bet is the first plus the last, a win crosses both off and a loss adds the amount lost to the end. Every completed line wins its total, which feels inevitable because a win removes two numbers and a loss adds only one. But losses add bigger and bigger numbers, so bad runs push the bets up quickly until the bankroll can’t cover them, and that is where the sessions that lose everything come from.