How Does the Charlotte’s Betting System Work
As with most strategies that involve straight-up bets, there’s a dose of gambler’s fallacy in Charlotte’s system, too. Namely, in the beginning, you should choose a number that you will bet on all the time - your favorite number - or you can choose to bet on the number that was selected in the previous spin. As you know, the ball doesn’t have memory or any magical powers, so you can choose any number you want. What’s important is the bet size.
We should also mention that the whole strategy involves 506 units, so you should prepare a hefty bankroll and select a unit size within your budget. The number of spins is 81, and you are expected to win within those spins. The strategy doesn’t say what happens if you don’t win by the 81st spin. These are the unit sizes and the number of spins.
And that’s it. You are expected to win by the time you’ve wagered 200 units, and the strategy promises to win around 35 units per hour. Once you win, you finish the strategy and you can start again or walk away. As we mentioned, there’s no explanation for what happens if you don’t win in the 81 spins.
Putting the Charlotte’s Betting System to the Test
We decided to test the strategy in practice, simulating conditions similar to those players face when they play real money roulette online. To do so, we ran a simulation with 4 hypothetical players, each starting with $1,000. We used a unit size of $1, and as the strategy suggests, we started with 2 units for the first bet and followed the betting system.
As you can see in our graph, all players failed to win within the first 25 spins. Player 2 won by spin 27, so they started the strategy again with a starting wager of 2 units. The other players continued before they eventually won and started all over again.
At one point, Player 2 had a bankroll of $1,357, and even though they fell below the $1,000 threshold at one point, they managed to come back and finish the 500 spins in profit.
Player 4 never won, so they spent all their bankroll by spin 110. Player 3 had the largest fluctuations, losing more than 100 times in a row at times before coming back, and they finished the session with a net loss.
Player 1 had a good run and was leading at times, but a losing streak occurred around the 190th spin, and they zeroed out by spin 305.
Pitfalls of the Charlotte’s Betting System
As you can see from our simulation, the system is not a foolproof strategy that guarantees winnings. One of the four players ended the session with a net positive, but two players zeroed out rather quickly, while the fourth player ended with a net loss.
There’s an inherent risk of losing large amounts of money, and the primary downside of the strategy is that it doesn’t say what to do if you don’t win by the 81st spin. You can start again, but that would mean that you’re starting with a net negative. Also, the strategy requires a large bankroll.
What’s more, the strategy involves the gambler’s fallacy that you’re betting on your favorite number when, in reality, the results of every spin are independent.
Conclusions
Charlotte’s system is a strategy that revolves around straight-up bets, and it’s all about changing the bet size. However, even though you might get lucky and end in net positive with the strategy in the short term, we have to conclude that the strategy can’t beat the inevitability of the house edge, which means that statistically, it won’t work in the long run.
