Is There a Case Where the Martingale Could Work?

Last week we talked a little about how the so-called "martingale" system of betting could be an easy road to ruin, and therefore is not the thing that is recommended by most of the experts. Of course, there are certain extraneous factors that could change the atmosphere a little, and therefore it would behoove us to tell you about the circumstances under which it might well be a winning strategy after all.

We know a blackjack author who highly recommends this system to his players, incorporated with a proper Basic Strategy, of course, and in any normal situation he could be laughed out of the room. But that would be in the physical casino atmosphere, where there is a minimum bet of about $5 and a maximum of about $500 and, as a result, not too many losing wagers before you get to the house limit. Remember, once you go on a bad enough streak to where the house limit is exceeded and you STILL lose, then your system is rendered useless.

However, if you are able to encounter a situation where you have a big enough spread between the minimum and maximum bets, or are playing without a maximum bet at all, you can succeed with the system. For instance, if the minimum wager is $1 and the maximum is $300, then you can bet $1, then $2, then $4, then $8, $16 and all the way up the chain, continuing to lose, you can actually lose eight bets in a row and if you win on the ninth, you are going to wind up profiting. If you don't have any limit at all, you would never lose, as long as you had a big enough bankroll to sustain it. And you would most likely have enough.

Frankly, if you are playing a game of online blackjack and absolutely insist on playing with a betting progression, this is as good a scheme as any to use. That's because any other way of changing your bets, which would be based on determining the composition of the remaining decks, wouldn't really be possible with the random number generator.

Naturally, this is not necessarily our preferred way to go, but we thought we would make you informed of the possibilities. You can do the system, but you would have to find the perfect (or at least ideal) circumstances in which to do it. So look around for that, and good luck with it!