Ever since the little metal ball started spinning around the numbered roulette wheel, people have been trying to come up with a system to beat chance and make some easy money. The classic example is the Martingale system, which was developed in a effort to ensure that a flip of the coin could be made profitable.
The Martingale system states, if you have a fifty percent chance of winning, all you have to do is double your bet at each loss until you win. Eventually you will win back double your original bet. The practical flaws of this system are readily apparent. A player might not have unlimited funds to continue doubling his bet, if the string of losses stretches long enough. And casinos do not consciously leave the odds even on their games. They stack them in their own favor.
But from the humble simplicity of the Martingale system, tactics and strategies for winning at Roulette have developed. These range from the more or less licit, such as monitoring the functioning of a roulette wheel in actual practice where it does not necessarily conform to the ideal notions of mathematical probability, but can have an idiosyncratic personality of its own that affects...