Martingale System

Content curated from Clear Data Sports

We’ve talked about several sports betting strategies, including several that preach consistency in your betting. For example, dollars wagered and percentage of your bankroll should stay the same regardless of the bet or previous result.

Moving out of strategies and into actual betting systems, our first system - The Martingale System - turns that strategy on its head.

What Is The Martingale System?

The Martingale System comes from 18th century France and is designed exclusively for bets with only two winning options. You may have even heard about it or used it on roulette.

The idea behind the system is quite simple. You place a bet, and if it loses, you place another bet for double the amount of your original bet. And you continue to double the bet until you finally win. So that will recover all that you’ve lost and win a little bit of profit.

Let’s do some math so you can see how this works. We aren’t going to use juice in this example to keep it simple. But when implementing the system in the real world, be sure to increase your bet enough to cover the juice you’re being charged.

Let’s say you have $1,000. Let’s split that into 10 bets of $100 each.

You place $100 on the Lakers, but they lose. So your next NBA bet needs to be $200. Let’s say you lose that too. The Martingale System calls for your next bet to be $400.

You are now $700 in, but if this $400 bet hits, you will win back all your previous bets, and you’re up $100.

The Downside of The Martingale System

As you may have already figured out from the above example, there is one pronounced flaw with using The Martingale System. What if we hadn’t won that $400 bet? The system would call for an $800 bet to be placed, but our initial $1000 stake is down to $300.

Indeed, without an unlimited bankroll, strict adherence to The Martingale System can wipe you out before you ever get to a winning streak.

Breaking your units into much smaller bets than $100 is one way to counter this. But even there, you might hit a losing streak that limits the system’s effectiveness.

The Reverse Martingale System

There is another betting trend that grew from this original system that you might know. That is the Reverse Martingale System, also known as The Anti-Martingale.

Instead of doubling your bet when you lose, the Reverse Martingale says that you should keep doubling your bet after each win and then bank some of that money after a selected number of wins.

Let’s say you win three bets in a row, at $100, $200, and $400. You would put away your $700 in profit and then start again.

Of course, the problem here is that you can’t guarantee that you’ll hit your pre-selected winning streak, and you may see all of your winnings get wiped out by making one doubled bet too many.