The Labouchere Roulette Strategy, and Its Best Uses
By
Kevin Lentz
Writer at Casinos.US Updated: 05/22/2024
Kevin has been involved in the gambling industry since the ‘80s. From winning tournaments to casino management, he’s ultimately done it all. Throughout the years, he’s written for various iGaming publications on topics such as the legal landscape of online casinos and strategies behind winning. His favorite game is blackjack.
Labouchere Roulette Strategy
Henry Labouchere designed his roulette betting system more than 150 years ago, and it continues to fascinate roulette players today. While one of the more complicated and intense of the many roulette systems, the Labouchere strategy has many fans and at the very least will generate lots of conversation when you bet with it today.
What Is the Labouchere Roulette Betting Strategy?
The Labourche System uses a winning sum of our choosing, divided up into several component sums, for instance, if we wanted to win $10, we might divide it into 2, 3, and 5. We will bet the outside two numbers total, crossing them off if we win, and adding the total bet to the end of our Labouchere line if we lose. Both the Labouchere betting system and its inventor Henry Labouchere were difficult to understand at first, and a bit of explaining will be needed.
- 🎡 The History of the Labouchere Roulette Strategy
- 🎡 Understanding The Labouchere System
- 🎡 Examples OF The Labourche Betting System
- 🎡 Conclusion
History of The Labouchere Roulette Strategy
Even as roulette betting strategies go, the Labouchere system has to be one of the oddest, which only fits as Henry Labouchere, its inventor, was a very odd man. Born into a wealthy British banking family in 1831, he chose to spend his time attending Trinity College at the nearby New Market racetrack instead.
Caught up in a cheating scandal on his college finals, he disembarked to South America without his diploma to make a name for himself, but instead spent some with a circus in Mexico and living with a Native American Indian tribe in Minnesota.
He managed to find his way home and spent the next ten years in the British Foreign Service and then as a member of parliament, both of which he apparently was horrible at. He would go on to be a theater producer, a journalist, a newspaper owner, and back to a politician before spending his later years as a reputed stock swindler and newspaper magnate.
Amazingly, we’ve skipped over some of the gorier details, but if you think the man sounds a bit wild, let’s take a look at his infamous roulette strategy.
Understanding the Labouchere System
The Labouchere roulette strategy could probably have only been devised by a politician in that nothing about it is straightforward. First, we need to determine how much we wish to win. Then we take this number and divide it up into anywhere from 4 to 7 numbers, which, when totaled, sum to our desired win amount. We then write these numbers down, in any order, on a piece of paper.
The Labouchere system roulette bets are placed only on the outside numbers that pay even money. A single zero European wheel is preferred as that gives the house an edge of only 2.7% instead of the 5.26% of the Double Zero American Wheel. If we can find the French rules of La Partage or En Prison, this is even better as they keep only half of our bet when zero rolls, giving us a house edge of only 1.35%.
Now, we take the rightmost and leftmost numbers and add them, which is the total of our bet. We place that on whichever outside bet catches our fancy: Red/Black, Odd/Even, or 1-18/19-36.
If we win, we dutifully cross off the two outside numbers and then use the following number to the far right and the next one to the far left to add together and get our next bet. Should we lose, we tack on the number of the last bet to the right of our numbers and start over from scratch by betting the far-left number and the new, far-right one.
Once we have scratched off all the numbers, we should win the desired amount we chose for our seed number. If we go through our entire bankroll before we get all the numbers crossed off, we are done until the next time. Always have a stop number, and never bet more than that. Once you are done, you are done.
As you can see, the Labouchere betting system is not the full-bore negative progression of the Martingale system but slowly negatively progresses into losing sequences. Many people will find this more appealing, but the Labouchere roulette bets can be complicated to keep track of, and completing a winning streak can take a maddeningly long time so it won’t be for everyone. You can play for free if you wish to experiment with it here are some of the best roulette sites that don’t require real money.
If you are in states that allow online casinos, you can find very low minimum roulette to give you a better idea of how the Labouchere strategy works with real money.
Examples of the Labouchere Betting System
Let’s take a quick example of how the Labouchere roulette strategy works in practice. Let’s say we wish to win $45. We need to break that up into a few segments, and we would like to use a slightly larger number of segments to keep our bets lower.
If you use fewer numbers on the Labouchere betting system line, you will need to bet more at the beginning, but you will have a slightly better chance of hitting your numbers and completing your numbers.
So, let’s start with 5, 10, 15, 10, 5. This row of numbers adds to our desired win of $45. The Labouchere system calls for betting the furthermost right and left number. In this case, that’s five and five for a total bet of $10 on your chosen outside bet.
If we win the bet, our new line will look like this: five, ten, fifteen, ten, five. We bet the next number furthest to the left and right, so our next bet is ten and ten for a total of twenty. If we win again, our bet looks like this: five, ten, fifteen, ten, five. So, we only have fifteen left, so our next bet is $15. If we win that, we will have completed our line, and we will have $45 in winnings, and we can relax at the bar.
Again, this is probably best practiced and refined at home until you can do it under the chaotic conditions in a land-based casino.
But now let’s look at how the Labouchere roulette strategy looks when we have some losers as well as winners. If we miss that first $10 bet, it looks like this: 5, 10, 15, 10, 5, 10. So now our next bet is the $5 on the far left and the $10 on the far right, for a total of $15.
If we lose that bet, we add the last bet to our line and have 5, 10, 15, 10, 5, 10, 15. So now the outside numbers are 5 and 15. Our bet is $20. If we win that one, the outside numbers will be scratched off, leaving our line looking like this. 5, 10, 15, 10, 5, 10, 15.
Our two outside numbers are now 10 and 10, and we bet $20. Another loser here, and we add the $20 to the line for 5, 10, 15, 10, 5, 10, 15, 20. This leaves the 10 and 20 as the outside numbers, and the bet is $30. In any case, we believe you get the idea.
This roulette strategy is a bit of work, and over the course of a long Labouchere line, you may need to do a bit more thinkingand a bit less drinking. It is definitely not the system for someone who has come for a bit of fun with his friends or wants to chat up the dealer.
Conclusion
Both Henry Labouchere and the roulette system he invented are complicated and difficult to understand. However, the Labouchere strategy has had many fans and proponents over the past 150 years, so it never hurts to play around with it, test it, and see if it is something you wish to add to your roulette arsenal.
Remember, it is designed for even money bets, with the lowest house advantages you can find. While it might work on the pass line on craps, this would be a problematic strategy for a game like blackjack with its doubling and splitting and roulette works best.
