Do roulette systems really work?

Since the early days of roulette people have tried to come up with roulette systems that are meant to bring a windfall to players. To this day there are hundreds of “secret” systems being peddled that claim instant success on the roulette table. Still the question remains – do roulette systems really work?

Roulette is a simple enough game to play. A ball lands on a spinning wheel marked with numbered slots. You win if you bet on the number where the ball lands. This makes roulette very popular and a favorite target for attack by various roulette systems, all promising to let you break the bank. Historically, there are 2 known instances that individuals were able to win at roulette successfully using a system.

The first recorded case is from the 19th century with British engineer Joseph Jagger, who exploited the mechanical bias of roulette wheels of that era to bet on numbers that come out more often than others. Jagger was able to win a fortune but casinos were soon wise to his technique. A biased-wheel system like this is hardly applicable nowadays because casino owners will regularly calibrate and re-arrange roulette tables as a standard counter-measure.
 

The only other known system that worked used the Martingale System as executed by Charles Wells in 1891. The system states that in a winning bet, the player must pocket the bet while on a loss, the next bet should be doubled. It is extremely high-risk and many people who adopt this end up losing more, including Wells who died impoverished.

While this proves that roulette systems can work to some extent, they are not infallible. Read the disclaimers of such systems; none of them will guarantee your win. Roulette systems are after all still subject to a great amount of luck.