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Labouchere Roulette Strategy

Last updated: 05.04.2024 by Andrew Shepard

The Labouchere System took its name from the known British politician and journalist Henry Labouchere. The Labouchere system is very popular until today and is also known as the cancellation strategy, the split Martingale and the American progression. The Labouchere system is a negative progression strategy where the player needs to increase the bet amount after a loss.

Before we start unfolding the Labouchere system, we have to say that it is a bit more complicated than other well-known roulette strategies. Let’s see how this roulette system works and find out how effective it is.

Putting Labouchere System in Motion

Labouchere system difference between other roulette systems comes from how it attempts to recover losses. Labouchere is actually a cycle system where the player needs to reach a certain profit margin to restart the cycle. The first thing you need to decide is the amount of money you want to win in every cycle. After that, you have to write a series of numbers that, if you add them together, they will give you the target amount.

Let’s say, for example, that you want to win £6 in every session. For this kind of profit, the number progression should be like this “1, 2, and 3”. Now, for every bet you will make in the roulette, you have to sum the first and last number on the list. In our example, for instance, the first wager should be £4 (3+1).

If we assume that you win the first round, you have to cut out the numbers that you already used. On the other hand, if you lose the best, you have to add the bet amount to the list also. For our scenario, your bet was £4 so the number four will be added on the number list. The cycle will be finished if we manage to cross off all the numbers on the list. Let’s now see the basics of this strategy.

  • You can only bet money on even-money outside bets (Red/Black, Even/Odd, and High/Low)
  • Set your cycle goal before you start playing
  • Create the list with the progressive numbers
  • Your first wager should be the adds up of your first and last number
  • If you win the bet you cross out the numbers on the list
  • If you lose the bet you add the losing bet amount to the list
  • You have to keep playing until every one of the numbers on the list will be crossed out. Then you will have won your cycle
Labouchere Strategy

Of course, many of you will now wonder how Labouchere roulette systems perform in action. Well, let’s see the system over 5 virtual rounds. For the needs of this test, we will put our cycle goal to £10, and our progression numbers will be 1, 2, 3, and 4. In addition, you should know that we will also bet on only Red/Black.

  • Round 1

    We add up our first and last number of our list, which are 1 and 4, and we bet the sum of them, meaning £5. We lost the spin.

  • Round 2

    As we lost the previous bet, we now have to add the number 5 in our list. This means that our wager for the spin number 2 will be £6 (first and last number). We win spin 2.

  • Round 3

    We have crossed out the numbers 1 and 5, so we left with 2, 3, and 4. As the add-up of 2 and 4 equals to 6, this will be our next bet. Unfortunately, we lost the bet.

  • Round 4

    Now we added the number 6 to our list, and we now have a progression number list of 2, 3, 4, 6. This means that our next wager should be £8 (2+6). This time we won!

  • Round 5

    We are now left only with 2 numbers, 3 and 4. So our last bet will be £7.

How Labouchere Strategy Performs

If you are a loyal reader of our blog posts, you know that this is the time to test the Labouchere system on multiple spins. In this test, we will use the following factors:

  • We will have 4 different players on European roulette version
  • The starting bankroll for each player will be £1000
  • Our test will be for 500 total rounds
  • Our first 2 players will set the cycle goal at £10 and they will have a progression number list of 1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 1, 1.
  • The last 2 players will have a goal of £15 with a progression list of 1, 3, 4, 4, 3
  • If you want to know the probabilities of winning and losing for each couple of players, we have 48,6% and 51,4% respectively.

Let’s see the results of the player number 1:

To test the Labouchere system

As you can see, player number 1 didn’t have any major losses during his entire 500 rounds session. The max bet he wagered was £46, and in the whole session, he managed to start 46 cycles. His total profit after 500 rounds was £474. Let’s see the results of number 2 player:

To test the Labouchere system 2

Number 2 graph is more interesting than the previous one. Player 2 managed to have 36 cycles with the biggest bet of £199. However, as number 1, player 2 managed to end his session with a profit. It’s player’s 3 time:

To test the Labouchere system 3

Here, we have a very similar graph with the first one. As you remember, we set the cycle goal on player 3 and 4 at £15, and this made the bankroll grow faster. Player number 3 played 56 cycles, and his biggest wager was £41. Let’s see our last player:

To test the Labouchere system 3

Player 4 is very similar to number 2 but with a difference in total profit. Even though he managed to stay on profit in the whole 500 rounds test, he had a bad streak in the 400th round, where we reached a betting amount of £160. However, he recovered this losing streak and ended up with a noticeable total profit.

As we have seen the results of all four players, let’s talk a bit more about the disadvantages of the Labouchere system.

Disadvantages of Labouchere System

The most noticeable drawback in the Labouchere system comes in the players’ 3 and 4 results. Both of them stuck in cycles with more than 30 spins, but their drawdown peaks were very different. On player number 3 peaks we observed these rows:

  • 4,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,13,17,21
  • 4,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,13,17,21,25
  • 4,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,13,17,21,25,29
  • 4,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,13,17,21,25,29,33
  • 4,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,13,17,21,25,29,33,37

But on the player number 4 we see these following rows:

  • 16,24,36,48,64
  • 16,24,36,48,64,80
  • 16,24,36,48,64,80,96
  • 16,24,36,48,64,80,96,112
  • 16,24,36,48,64,80,96,112,128

As you can see, player number 4 reached very big numbers on their list. Of course, Labouchere roulette strategy doesn’t have only the length of cycle and number list as its drawbacks.

On the other hand, I can’t say that this strategy contains high risks. Of course, there are some times that you may face losing streaks, but even then, the maximum bet we saw was £199. For sure, the total bankroll will hit that major damage sometimes, but if you start your roulette session with a strong bankroll, you will easily turn the losses around.

Another important thing when it comes to Labouchere roulette strategy is the number list. You have to write down each row by yourself and cross out the winning numbers to keep your mind focused. This situation can be problematic in fast roulette tables.

Wrap-Up

The key to success in the roulette game is different for some players. However, the majority of professional players agree on the fact that you should always have to set attainable and consistent goals.

If we see all the results of our four different players, we can say that the Labouchere system performs really well. This can be easily explained as all players manage to end up with a profit. Of course, we should also mention that there were a few situations where a losing streak put the bankroll at risk.

If you decide to test the Labouchere roulette system on your own, our recommendation is to start with a bankroll of over £1000. We know that the Labouchere system’s algorithm isn’t the most fun roulette strategy out there, but its short-run goal helps players to have many possibilities to end up with profit.

Last but not least, you can experiment a lot with the Labouchere system, and you can, of course, set your own cycle goals. However, you have to remember that even if you want big profits, the short-run strategy of small profits is always safer.

Your new strategy is waiting to be tested - play roulette for real!

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