Beginners Black Jack

Back in 1966, an Englishman named Norman Leigh took a team of twelve individuals on a venture to France and then took the casinos in that country for what was at the time an awful lot of money. I believe the figure to be something like £65,000 if I remember correctly. In fact the casino in question was the Municipal Casino in Nice. This place had held a place in Norman Leigh’s heart ever since his father had lost heavily there some years earlier.

So what has all this to do with online roulette or for that matter casino gambling? Well the fact is that the system that I am going to be discussing in this article is the “Reverse Labouchere” which differs greatly from the progression type systems like the Martingale for example. This system was used by Leigh and his team and spooked the casinos so much that the police became involved and the games were shut down.

While these systems do not create an edge, they do have tremendous use with roulette games and online roulette in particular. This is because of the fact that the online casinos will tend to reward you with additional bonuses that can offset the house edge. So when you use a system like the Reverse Labouchere then you in effect often turn the situation on its head which is what Norman Leigh did.

This system is what’s known as a cancellation system and you effectively start with numbers in a line like 1-2-3-4. The entire line is the number of units that you lose if you get wiped out so in this case it is ten units. The first bet is the first and last number in the sequence so if you were playing in dollars, the first bet would be $5.

If this bet wins then a number 5 (because you bet $5) is added to the line to make 1-2-3-4-5. So the next bet is $6 as the numbers 1 and 5 represent the first and last numbers in the sequence. If the bet loses then the first and last numbers are cancelled. If the next bet loses then those two numbers are cancelled out as well and the net loss is $10.

The winning streaks could go all the way to the table limits but could be cancelled at the discretion of the player. Many people have called Leigh a con man although he certainly had not discovered the Holy Grail of beating roulette. The bankroll required here may be too steep for many people who want to play online roulette but the good thing about this system is that you can essentially start with whatever line you so choose.

So if you didn’t want to face a loss of $10 then you could start with a line of say 1-2-3 or maybe 1-2-2 which would have maximum losses of $6 and $5 respectively.

However with conventional doubling up systems, the table maximum becomes your number one enemy and with it the ever increasing stakes. But in this system you are increasing your stakes towards the table limit with money that has just been won and not out of your original starting bankroll. With regards to online roulette, what this actually means is that you can end up winning a very significant amount of money when you go on a winning run with minimal downside risk. Thsi applies to live roulette as well as online casino games.

This article was written by Carl “The Dean” Sampson