In this post I am going to detail different strategies for roulette offers, and focus on a particular successful roulette strategy which I’ve developed myself (I think). Roulette offers are one of the most common that casinos serve up, even if it is not specifically a roulette offer, this game offers a quicker solution that playing endless hands of blackjack and is a great help when a promotion is limited to live casino only (those who have played live blackjack know exactly what I’m talking about!).
Before we start, you will need to understand that other advantage gambling offers can result in you losing money (and sometimes your entire qualifying stake). If you need any more guidance on advantage play please see my explainer page, or maybe have a look at my step-by-step advantage play guide to get a sense of a slots-based AP offer.
Now I’ve covered the house-keeping it’s time to dive in.
Where To Find Roulette Offers?
As always, the place I get all my offers from is Oddsmonkey’s Premium membership platform. Even though the service originally started as primarily a sports matched betting software service, a quick scan of the daily offer calendar shows a large proportion of advantage play offers. I work full time, so it’s great to log in and 5 minutes later have a list of 10+ offers to attempt and maximise the time I have available for that day (usually max 1-2 hours).
They currently have a free trial in which you can complete two offers for around £45 profit. It’s a great way to start and familiarise yourself with matched betting concepts. To sign up to the free trial click here.
Types Of Roulette Offers
Firstly, let’s delve into the different types of roulette offers. Most of them will be along the lines of “Wager X to get Y bonus”. However, recently there has been an increasing trend in the industry of offering “Golden Chips” or something similar as a reward for wagering a certain amount on the game (e.g. “Wager £20 for 10 Golden Chips). This is effectively a re-hash of a traditional slot advantage play offering which rewards you with free spins for wagering a pre-defined amount. Sky even used to offer £10 of risk-free roulette every Friday but this has sadly disappeared!
I approach these two types of offer in a similar way, with a difference in strategy once the initial wagering for the bonus/chips has been completed. Before we dive into the strategies I use it is useful at this point to highlight something that has an effect on the strike rate of my particular strategy.
Different Casino’s Offer Up Different Information
As you can see from the screenshots below, there are a few subtle differences which can affect the profitability of offers using the strategy I have developed, which is purely the amount of information that is available.
Even though most live casino sites are run by Playtech there are subtle differences between bookies/casino’s. Using Sky Live Casino and William Hill Live Casino (who use Evolution Gaming) as examples, I will try and better demonstrate what I mean.
Starting with William Hill the stats screen will show you data from the last 50 spins all the way up to the last 500. It shows which numbers are “Hot” and which numbers are “Cold” as well as showing the wheel of distribution to the same amounts. Moving the slider adjusts the stats accordingly again from 50 to 500 spins. Another crucial aspect is it will give you the exact numbers of the last 50 or so spins (click on the third dot) you can see exactly what numbers have come in and their order (you’ll see why this is important later).
Now heading onto Sky we can sky that you can only get data for the last 100 spins which obviously flattens out the variation in the numbers that it shows in the “Hot” and “Cold” numbers section which makes our job harder for my strategy. You also can’t see the any numbers past the last 10 or so that are displayed on the bottom right hand side of the screen.
You’ll see why this information is important when I come to discuss my strategy, but for now let’s discuss the more tried and tested matched betting roulette strategies.
What Is The Best Roulette Strategy?
There are several schools of thought on this so I will briefly go through the two main roulette strategies for matched betting offers (Martingale strategy etc. don’t apply here) and then show you what I do that seems to have brought me success.
Red/Black or Odd/Even
You will often see this advocated by Oddsmonkey themselves on the strategy section of each roulette offer. This is basically just pick one colour or chose odd/even and then stick with your choice during the wagering process and then carry on doing this method with the bonus. This tends to be successful when you run into a patch where the roulette table is spitting out significantly more of one colour or a set of odd numbers over even. You can build up a healthy surplus and then hope to make it through wagering your bonus.
X9 Strategy
This is a more advanced strategy based on mathematics and the highest likeliest return based on EV (expected value). This means after wagering you place your entire bonus amount on a “corner bet” which pays out x9 your stake. A corner bet is simply a bet that covers 4 numbers at once (hover your mouse over the middle of four numbers until all 4 numbers are selected and then place your bet).
This strategy basically concedes that most times you won’t win but when any of your 4 numbers come in you will win big. The implication is that this will happen enough to cover the losses of bonus each time you lose (although since it was bonus money it was never yours anyway!). However, an important consideration for this method is that not all casinos allow this practice in their terms and conditions. Some will limit stakes to a certain percentage amount, so make sure to read the terms before attempting this.
As I don’t use this method I haven’t enquired as to what happens next if you do indeed win in terms of meeting the wagering requirements. My guess is one uses the same strategy I use for wagering (described below).
My Roulette Strategy
My strategy is slightly different and has two main components. The wagering element is simple, you pick both a colour AND a third of the table. This way you are covering much more than the 48% you would cover by just doing red/black or odd/even. This is maximum amount of the table you are allowed to cover before breaking the terms of most casino’s offers, they usually state you cannot cover equal or more than 65% of the table at any one time.
To better pick a colour and a third successfully, look at the stats, sometimes you will notice that a third is dominating in the percentage terms, you may also find that one colour has been coming up a lot more than the other. For example, in the screenshot below I would chose the colour black (56%) and the final third (40%) and they respect the dominant colour and third over the last 100 spins. Yes, I am fully aware that every spin is independent of each other and past performance is no indicator of future performance, I am simply telling you what works for me.
On £1 stakes (50p Black + 50p Final Third) I will win £1 for any black number (break even), I will win £2.50 for any black number in the final third (£1.50 profit) and win £1.50 for any red in the final third (50p profit). I only lose if a red number comes up in the first 24 numbers.
After you have completed the qualifying wagering and released the bonus funds I then take a different approach. I change to single number bets, and keep with that single number until it either comes in or I bust out of the bonus. For £5-£10 bonuses I tend to use 50p stakes, which pays out £18. I then use that buffer to return to the wagering strategy that I used in qualifying. I tend to end up with even more, but the £18 provides a nice buffer in case you hit a bad run. For a £5 bonus on 50p stakes you will get 10 goes to get the number (or bust out) and then for £10 you get 20 attempts.
How to pick a number you ask? Well whilst I work my way through the wagering I keep an eye on the “Hot” numbers and the numbers that have been coming in as I’ve been wagering. Now a lot of people just pick a number and stick to it, offer after offer, without paying any attention to whether it’s been coming in.
Again using the screenshot below, let’s say you choose 5 Red as your number. As you can see it is classed as a cold number, for argument’s sake it may have only come in once in the last 100 spins which probably doesn’t bode well for it chances. Whereas 36 Red, or the “hottest” number, may have come in 20 times in the last 100. Which one would you rather choose?
I tend to pick a number that is in the “hot” list which I have personally seen come in (often the hottest), or I pick a number that is hot but hasn’t come in for a while and I feel it’s due to come in. It is not always the case that the number I chose is on the “hot” list (especially with operators who give 100 spins data).
Now before you all start bleating on at me about maths and probabilities…I already know. In the example above the odds of the 5 coming in are EXACTLY the same as the 36 coming in. But I’ve sat here at my laptop and played hundreds of hours of roulette over the last 12 months and this technique has seen me massively increase my profits from these offers. Does the hottest number always come in? No of course not. Like I said I keep an eye on the numbers, sometimes after completing qualifying I wait and watch for a good 5-10 mins and see which particular numbers are coming in. Whether a number is on the “hot” list or not isn’t the be all and end all, but they tend to be on there.
It might be a worthwhile endeavour to just sit and watch a live roulette table (I suggest speed roulette, otherwise you’ll lose the will to live!) and you will observe a number or two that comes in 3 or 4 times in the space of 20 – 30 spins. These are the numbers that I am looking for.
Now you may be able to see why operators that give you the hot numbers on the last 100 spins are harder to work with for this method. The number could fulfil a “hottest” position and have not come in over the last 50 spins! They also make guessing the best wagering colour/third harder because it’s over a longer time period and therefore the variance evens out a little.
Golden Chip Offers And Non-Live Roulette
You can do the exact same strategy for the golden chip offers, however you may want to increase you chance of winning (albeit a smaller amount) by using your chips on the same corner bet until you run out or a line bet (x5 pay out). For me personally, it depends on the value of the chip, and how well/badly I did on wagering. I often just stick with the number bets and hope for the best.
Non-live or virtual roulette is much harder as you don’t have a history of gameplay to look at. Coral and Ladbrokes often make you wager on these automated games for their roulette offers and my strategy still remains the same, just pick a colour and a third and hope it goes your way. I do tend to go for a particular corner bet on these offers though as you won’t have any ideas on “hot” or “cold” numbers.
Conclusion and Disclaimer
I hope you have found this post interesting reading even if you disagree with my method. Like I said I am not advocating that everyone goes out and does this religiously, I am simply showing you what I have managed to have some moderate success with after tweaking my strategy over many months of playing roulette. When my number does come in, I tend to make a minimum of £20 and on a good day I can end up with £50-£70 especially if wagering went well, these are often on simple “wager £10 for £5 bonus” offers too. Returning profits well above the EV.
Please don’t try it and come back to me complaining it doesn’t work, I have already stated this is one of several viable methods. I think picking the number for me personally has become a bit of a skill (or luck) I’ve developed. Sometimes I can just tell when a particular number is going to come in (often I’m not staking on it, instead I am watching and waiting) this causes no end of cursing loudly and thumping my desk when it pops up and I wasn’t on it!
Finally, if you liked this article you may find my post on the hybrid bet and spin offers from Coral and Ladbrokes a useful read.