Chasing Roulette Losses
One of the main problems many people have in a casino roulette game is chasing losses. It is a general psychological characteristic of human being to refuse to stop until some benefit is seen. When it comes to gambling, this benefit is profit. When in a losing streak, it is not very difficult to get caught up in the emotion and raise the stakes to recover all the previous losses from before.
There are actually many famous strategies that encourage this kind of behavior. The most famous is probably the martingale system. This system is very simple in theory and that is why many choose to use it. Let’s assume that a man has 50% of chance of winning in any given event. A coin toss, for example. Now, let’s assume that if he bets one dollar, he wins another dollar if the coin shows heads. If he loses the first, he bets two dollars. If he loses the second, he bets 4 dollars. If he loses the third, he bets 8 dollars and so on. When he wins, he will recover all his loses and will still make one dollar profit. Repeating the same system for some time, his profits will increase indefinitely. The Martingale System is very commonly used in roulette games because the probability of hitting red or black is very close to 50%, so it is easy to adapt it.
The Martingale System seems very simple and effective at a first glance. However, it encourages the gambling habit of chasing losses. When a losing streak happens, the amount needed to cover all previous losses increase very fast. For example, if the gambler loses 5 times in a row, the next bet must be 32 times the first one. If he loses 7 times, it will be 128 times. Of course, it may seem difficult to lose five or seven times in row, but if this method is used many times, it will eventually happen. That is why an effective gambling system needs a statistical advantage. Any method that encourages raising stakes after a loss will eventually lead to failure. Anyone who wants to succeed at roulette betting must avoid chasing losses at all costs. There basically two ways to avoid this kind of behavior. Adopting the recreational gambling mindset or adopting the professional trader mindset.
A recreational gambler will only enter a game for fun. He sees everything with a diversion mentality. He will separate an amount of money and use it to gamble. If he loses all that money, he can accept that, because he is only doing it for fun and consider gambling as any other type of entertainment. As he accepts his losses, he will not try to raise the stakes to recover the money.
A professional trader, on the other hand, treats his bets as an investiment, as forex and stock traders do. He stablishes a maximum percentage of his betting bank that he can risk in any given bet. This amout usually ranges between 1%, for the most conservative, and 10% for the most aggressive. For example, if his total amount dedicated to betting is $ 10,000, he will only risk between $100 and $1,000 depending on his style. If he loses $1,000 in a bet, he will only have $9,000 and will only risk a maximum of $900 in the next bet. This is the opposite of chasing a loss, because instead of raising the stake, he is lowering it to avoid a bigger damage. The only way to raise a stake is by raising his overall betting bank, because he will always only risk a small fraction of his money. By gambling with this mentality, a large part of the money will never be at risk.
It is also important to have a limit for the day. For example, if the gambler has a $10,000 bank and chooses 10% as a daily limit, he will stop for the day when his losses reach $1000. A professional is okay with such a loss, because he knows that he can win another day and that he will be profitable overall.
It doesn’t matter how good the strategy being used is, nobody can succeed in the long run by trying to chase losses. It may even work for some time, but eventually all the betting bank will be blown. The most important is to have patience and discipline that, with a good strategy, the profit will come.
Practically every player who is new to Roulette will come up with their very own betting system. 