There are a lot of Roulette Strategies that will improve your game. But every now and again I come across a “new” strategy for casino games where someone claims that they can win excessive amounts of money in a short period of time, usually in just a few hours. The rumors spread across the internet gambling message boards with all sorts of nefarious statements. One such Strategy is the Roulette 666 Strategy.
The reason it is called the 666 strategy is because the numbers on a Roulette Wheel (1-36 and 0 & 00 for the American Wheel) add up to be 666 - some people see this as proof that gambling is inherently evil. The general is theme of the 666 strategy is to most of the numbers on the felt. Most people rightfully believe that this strategy cannot work.
The questions I get most often about this particular strategy is why the roulette 666 strategy doesn't work? The answers are:
- The 666 strategy has a negative expectation
- The 666 strategy relies on short term positive variance
- The 666 strategy does not take into account the long term
- Rare events are not that rare and can wipe you out
WHAT IS THE ROULETTE 666 STRATEGY?
Before we get started on why it doesn’t work I’ll define exactly what it is. The concept of the 666 strategy is to cover almost all of the numbers on felt with different size bets, adhering to the faulty thought that one of the numbers will always hit. The most popular variation of the 666 strategy is for the European Wheel variant and is below. The proof can be applied to any of the 3 variants.
The roulette 666 strategy covers all of the numbers on the table except for four. You need at least $66 per spin to use this system, but you could use multiples of $66 instead (like $132 or $198 etc.). If you did that, you’d simply multiply the betting amounts in the example below by the factor you’re using.
The betting protocol works like this:
- You bet $36 on Red.
- You bet another $24 on the following numbers: $4 on each of the following two-number bets: 0/2, 8/11, 10/13, 17/20, 26/29, 28/31.
- You place $2 bets on any 3 single numbers that you choose from the following: 4, 6, 15, 22, 24, 33 and 35.
This will leave only four numbers on the table that you haven’t bet on. What kind of results can you expect to see using this strategy? If one of the four numbers you didn’t bet on comes up, then you lose all of your $66 or the multiple of this that you bet. In all other case, you’ll see a net win of $6 or the multiple of this that you bet.
ROULETTE PAYOUTS
Before we begin to evaluate why the 666 Roulette is not a mathematically sound system, we have to familiarize ourselves with the payout structure for each of the three versions of Roulette.
The most common form of Roulette is the American Wheel version with numbers 1-36 with a 0 and 00 basket slots, for a total of 38 possible outcomes. The house advantage for the American Wheel version for all bets is %5.26.
The second most common version is the European Wheel. The European Wheel has numbers 1-36 and a 0 basket slot for a total of 37 possible outcomes. The house advantage for the European Wheel is %2.7.
The French Roulette is similar to the European Wheel as it also has numbers 1-36 and a 0 basket slot, for a total of 37 possible outcomes. Because of the table layout and betting options the French variation has a house advantage of %1.35. The picture below compares the European/American variant layout and the French variant.
To understand more about the payouts and betting options, go to Chapter 2 of the Ultimate Roulette Strategy Guide
Now that we understand each of the variants of Roulette and the payout structure for each, we are in a position to understand why the roulette 666 strategy fails.
This means that the over time you will lose more than you win. To prove this lets consider 37 spins where the ball lands in each basket just one time. This assumption is fair one as it assumes the law of averages. Because there are 4 numbers that will lose and 33 numbers that will win, we simply multiple 4*(-$66), the $66 is lost each time you lose. We then add 33*$6, the $6 is for each time we win. This gives a net-net loss of $66.
= 4*(-$66) + 33*($6)
= -$264 + $198
=-$66
REASON 2: SHORT TERM VARIANCE
The second reason why the roulette 666 strategy will not work is because it relies on short term variance. This means that player hopes that none of the 4 numbers that cause the player to lose $66 will come up. And in the short term this may happen. But a general rule for when evaluating a new gaming strategy is to avoid it if the strategy involves any type of hoping that something will or will not occur.
REASON 3: LACK OF LONG TERM
This is acctually the continuation of Reason #2. As the number of events gets larger and larger the law of large numbers begins to kick in. This means that those events start becoming dispersed in a way that coincides with their expected values. For example, when you flip a coin 10 times you expect 5 heads and 5 tails. But you would not be surprised if the coin landed 8H/2T or 7H/3T, because the number of events is so small. But if you flipped a coin 10,000 times you would be very surprised if it ended up as 8K Heads and 2K Tails. Similarly with the win loss derivation that we just did. As the number of events gets large the expected values begin to line up with where they should be, succinctly that every number will come up one time over the course of 37 spins.
REASON 4: RARE EVENTS? NOT SO MUCH
The final reason that the 666 strategy is a losing strategy is that what is perceived to be rare events, in this case that one of 4 numbers will come up, is not at all rare. For the 666 strategy the losing rate is approximately %10.8. A little over 1 in 10 times the player is losing $66. 10% is a rate where we don’t expect things to occur but it is in no way a considered rare.
SUMMARY
The Roulette 666 Strategy's approach is negative expectation play. Rarely, will any betting strategy overcome the initial house edge. This is even more so when the events are of random occurrence as they are in Roulette. Be wary of any strategy that you come across on the web, specifically if they use words like interesting. In some cases videos will be posted that shows the system working. Short term variance can apply to almost any strategy, but they must be evaluated out to somewhere around the 100k event mark to be properly vetted. The very least you should take away from this article is that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t true.
