The Martingale System and Simulators

Everybody wants to win when they are wagering or having a bet.

It is the promise of 'potential' profit that goads many of us who, in general, are rational and intelligent about our financial well being into to making unwise and foolhardy investments in the name of punting on the odds.



Then there are the 'Thinkers' among us (the author included) who imagine there is another process or system that will guarantee a winning outcome while gambling.

Probably the best known and most touted for sale in "Race Track Software" is the Martingale System.

On the surface and by logical reasoning, it has an appeal as it seems to offer guaranteed winnings in any gambling venture including Roulette, Horse and Greyhound racing, Two up .... the list goes on and on.

Looks can be deceptive.

The simple premise of the Martingale System is as follows....

1. Place a wager (arbitrarily) on the favorite runner of the race or pick (arbitrarily again) Red or Black or Odd or Even on a Roulette table or Heads or Tails in a Two Up school.

2. If you win, well and good.  Pack up and run away with your winnings or start again.

3. If you lose then double you bet size and try again, If you win then follow step 2. above.
If you lose again then follow this step (step 3.) again.



Keep following the above steps with the logical reasoning that sooner or later your luck will change and one of your wagers will pay off covering your total outlay and giving you a return on your investment as well!

Very simple, very logical and very very wrong !

At first glance it appears to be a foolproof system but I assure you if it was there would be no such things as Casinos and Racing tracks.

Probably the best way to explain why this is so is by an example with the simple game of Two Up.

Two Up

This is a simple game where a group of people come together to form a 'School' where a player in the
center of the School will toss two coins in the air and members of the School will lay bets with each other on the outcome of the toss.

There are only two recognized outcomes of the toss - Heads where both coins land with their head faces up or Tails where both coins land with the tails side up.

A toss where one coin lands Heads and the other Tails is classed as no result and the coins are tossed again until an outcome is achieved.



This is possibly the fairest of gambling ventures as the odds of winning or losing are 50/50 (even).

Now lets use the Martingale system here and see what the outcome could hypothetically be?

Let us say we place a $10 dollar bet on a Heads result and say we lost.

So we then double our original bet to $20 dollars on Heads on the next toss.  Note here our total outlay is now $30 dollars - $10 dollars from the first bet and $20 dollars from the second.  Now let's say we lose again...

So on the next toss we make a bet double that of our last and wager $40 dollars on Heads making our total investment at this point $70 dollars.

Let us not be too masochistic at this point and say that this time the coins come up Heads and we win our bet.

For our bet of $40 dollars we get back $80 dollars.

Bearing in mind that to get this we invested $70 dollars, our total winning is only $10 Dollars. Not a spectacular return but "Hey - we won right?".

Well, let's take things a little further and say you start with a $10 dollar bet again and fail to win six times in a row.

Dauntingly you go in for your seventh wager and a little math will show that your bet on Heads should be $640 dollars raising your total investment this time around using this system to $1270 dollars.

And you win....

For your bet of $640 dollars you will receive $1280 dollars leaving you with a profit of ................. $10 dollars.

 But "Hey - we won right?".

It does not take to much imagination to see that things can spiral out of control here and that if you have a stroke of bad luck you can blow through your bank quickly.  In fact the only way that you can truly guarantee that you will win $10 dollars is by being in possession of an infinitely large bank to finance you bets.

This example uses the game of Two Up to describe the pitfall of the Martingale System but the general principle here can be applied to Roulette, Horse Racing or simulated Horse Racing in particular.

At the top of this page you will find tools that allow you to simulate employing the Martingale System with Two Up, Roulette and TrackFast (a computer simulated racing venue that you can bet on much similar to Keno in nature) .

These tools try to give you a realistic evaluation of the Martingale System and hopefully will give you an education.

Good Luck !