Reverse labouchere

the reason table limits come into play negate any advantage you may get

the reason table limits come into play negate any advantage you may get

That's a common misconception. Table limits don't make any difference.

It doesn't work, and if there were no table limits, it still wouldn't work.

I've never looked at the Reverse Labouchere. However, I don't see why it would be much more successful than the standard Labouchere, which I have simulated. Or, indeed, Martingale, which I've also simulated.  The truth is that these systems simply don't work statistically. You can increase the risk you take, which allows you to lose less often. But on average, you'll hit your maximum allowable bet long before you've won enough singles to make up that maximum. You'll never win in the long term.

The only system I did find that appeared to be successful, was to add one unit each time you lost.  So you bet £1, then £2, then £3, £4, £5 etc.  If the bet wins, but you still haven't recouped your losses from that go, simply keep adding one unit each time until you have got the losses (plus one unit) back.     

So, if you had lost five times in a row (betting £1, £2, £3, £4, £5) you would be looking at 'losses' of £15. Your next bet would be £6. If that won, you'd still be looking at losses of £9. You'd then bet £7 etc. If that won, you would be looking at a loss of just £2, and you could then cut the bet size to £2 or £3 and carry on increasing that by a unit each time in the event of losing.

The system did seem to have the advantage that you had to have a very bad run in order to run the bet up to large numbers. Any decent run in your favour would see the losses being removed quite quickly. You did still lose on a regular basis (using an artificial 'stop'), although the system often made money over the long term (long term being 10,000 spins of the Roulette wheel). This was using the same simulator that I had tested Martingale and Labouchere (and a host of other ideas) with, so I have no reason to doubt the results, although there may have been some quirk in the code somewhere that seemed to make this a winning system when it was no better than all the others..

I have to say, when I tested this system for real, the results weren't great. However, that could have had something to do with the online casinos being a little crooked. I logged each turn of the wheel, and the results I was getting from the online casino were totally out of whack with those I should be expecting over time based on basic probability. The online casinos tend to produce far more long runs against you then you'd expect...

Well yeah Kenilworth. That would make sense.  All I can say is that when I ran the strategy many many times on my Roulette simulator (which showed the other systems to be the useless pieces of work that they are), this particular system did appear to make good money.   I rewrote the simulator and put in the system again, and it showed the same results.   And I was testing this system over hundreds of thousands of spins.

As I say, there's probably some quirk in my programming that seems to be going over my head. However, my 'real-world' simulator did seem to flag it up as a winning system.

Well the losing runs were capped. And for every amount lost at the time of the cap coming into place, the system had typically made more than that in the run up to the cap, hence the profitability long-term.

I have a fairly basic knowledge of profitability - I can take winning percentages and relate them to Betfair prices etc. - but, unlike you, I'm certainly not strong enough to put up the mathematical reasoning behind the system above. However, I do know that my code appeared to give profitable results for this system again and again, when it gave the expected losing results for many other systems.

Well there was definitely a sweet spot. I seem to remember it got more profitable as you got closer to the cap and then marginally less profitable again as you got away.   Low caps didn't work, as early on the staking wasn't too dissimilar to a normal Martingale system.

I'm quite sure the probabilities experts will tell me why my cap is a load of nonsense. I just thought it was interesting that this system appeared to work when all of the others crumbled early on.

spins	No	Red bet	run tot	P/L	Blk bet	run tot	P/L
9990	36	2.00	1.00	2333.00	-8.0	-22.00	2630.00
9991	27	1.00	1.00	2334.00	-9.0	-31.00	2621.00
9992	22	-1.00	-1.00	2333.00	10.0	-21.00	2631.00
9993	23	2.00	1.00	2335.00	-11.0	-32.00	2620.00
9994	12	1.00	1.00	2336.00	-12.0	-44.00	2608.00
9995	21	1.00	1.00	2337.00	-13.0	-57.00	2595.00
9996	34	1.00	1.00	2338.00	-14.0	-71.00	2581.00
9997	24	-1.00	-1.00	2337.00	15.0	-56.00	2596.00
9998	12	2.00	1.00	2339.00	-16.0	-72.00	2580.00
9999	13	-1.00	-1.00	2338.00	17.0	-55.00	2597.00
10000	7	2.00	1.00	2340.00	-18.0	-73.00	2579.00
		Max Bet	Min	Min	Max Bet	Min	Min
		347.00	-5370.50	-4101.50	171.00	-1359.50	-1289.50

You're having a fun night Grok!

6 lines P/L	14822
Min	-2568
Max	14901

So far, so good...