Gambling strategies and systems have been in existence as long as gambling has. From the very firs introduction of playing games of chance for monetary stakes, people have believed it is possible to make a profit by using a set strategy and never faltering from the rules of this strategy. One system that seems to constantly follow any form of gambling is the Martingale system or variants of the Martingale system. Traditionally speaking, the Martingale system can only be used to gamble on outcomes that are as likely to happen as not, or evens chances. Because the house advantage in blackjack is small when compared to other games and because there are essentially only two outcomes (you either win or you lose a hand), the Martingale system can be directly applied to Blackjack.
The Theory Is A Good Theory
The principle of the Martingale system is a sound principle. You start with a single unit stake and at each loss you double the value of your stake. When you eventually find a winner, or draw a winning hand in the case of blackjack, your sequence is considered to be over and you start again from a single unit stake. This means that every time you have a winning hand you will pay for your previous losses and make a small single unit profit. Presuming you always walks away after finding a winner you are, in theory, guaranteed to make a profit.
Unlimited Bank Roll
Unfortunately, theory is the only place where the Martingale system is going to work. In practice there are many things that prevent the Martingale system from being profitable. The first problem is the size of bank you require in order to cover lengthy losing streaks. Even an even chance as is offered in blackjack means that you will potentially have to face up to ten losses in a row. Starting with a $10 stake in order to win $10 at a time means that on your 5th loss you would have staked, and lost, $310. Ten losses mean you would lose over $10,000 so you would need a very large bankroll to cover these streaks.
Table Limits
Even if you do have an unlimited bank balance then you will still not be able to make a profit in a casino using the Martingale system. This is because of the table limits that have been set on Blackjack and other tables. These were introduced not to prevent people from using systems like the Martingale but to stop the sequence before a profit is made. This means the casino can make a lot of money and only ever need fear losing one single stake. Eventually you will hit a losing streak and you will either run out of money or the table limit will cause you to lose a lot more money than you stand to win. You should avoid the Martingale system at all costs.
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