The origins of the D’Alembert system can be traced back to the 18th century, when the French mathematician Jean le Rond D’Alembert began his work on a statement of the fundamental laws of motion. The mathematician came to the conclusion that the external forces acting on a body and the inertial forces are a system which exists in equilibrium. This conclusion laid the foundations of Newton’s Second Law and became known as the D’Alembert Principle.
The Concept & How It Works
The D’Alembert system is really simple, especially in contrast with strategies like Labouchere, for example. The core idea is pretty similar to the classic Martingale system, but with one important difference – the bet progression in the D’Alembert method is much flatter than the aggressive doubling down of Martingale. This results in one of the safest and easiest to execute roulette strategies.
The system is designed to work for bets that have a chance of winning close to 50% – the so-called ‘even’ bets. Those include Red/Black, Even/Odd, and 1-18/19-36. The logic is that those bets will eventually even out – a long streak of red will surely be followed by a long streak of black.
You need to determine a ‘unit’ that will be the backbone of your D’Alembert strategy. It can be a chip or a select amount of money – it’s up to you. It can be as small or as big as you wish, but keep in mind that you might end up wagering several of them at a time, so you must make sure that the unit value no more than 1% of your total funds. Experts claim that the safest amount is either 0.50% or 0.33%.
The strategy consists of you gradually increasing your bet when losing games and gradually decreasing it when winning. You start with one unit and add or remove a single unit when necessary. The table will show you how a typical game might go when you are using the D’Alembert system.
Pros / Cons of the D’Alembert System
As far as safe betting strategies go, the D’Alembert system definitely takes the cake. You can utilise it with a relatively small bankroll, and the nature of the progression pretty much keeps you safe from hitting the dreaded table limits – which can be a common occurrence when using many other roulette strategies. Of course, a terrible losing run is never out of the question – but overall, it’s pretty hard to reach absurdly high stakes while using this system.
In addition, the system is really easy to learn and master. You don’t need to write anything down, just keep the size of the bet in your head and adjust it according to how well you are doing.
Since the D’Alembert system is low-risk, you cannot expect high gains from it. You bet small amounts, so you will win small amounts. You will most likely aim to get an equal number of wins and losses, but this is unlikely to happen over the course of a longer game – after all, the house always ends up winning.
Also, if the odds are not in your favor and you hit that horrendous losing streak, you will probably have a hard time recovering from it. The only chance is an equally good winning streak, and those tend to be pretty rare.
It would be best to demonstrate how the D’Alembert works in practice by providing an example. Let’s assume your bankroll is $250 and your betting unit is $5 or 2% of the overall sum you intend to join the roulette table with. You bet $5 on Red and lose. You increase your next wager with one betting unit, so you bet $10 on Red and lose again. At this point, you have lost $15.
You increase your next wager on Red to $15 and win this time, collecting $15 in net profit. After this success, you are supposed to reduce the next wager with one betting unit to $10. You bet on Black and win again, generating a net profit of another $10. It becomes clear you have won $25 with your last two bets and have lost only $15 with your two losing wagers – your net profit for this betting session is $10.
As you can see, the D’Alembert system works efficiently as long as the number of winning bets coincides with or exceeds that of losing bets. Of course, there is the option to set a limit at which you will stop increasing the stakes after a loss and reduce the betting unit to its initial size to start from scratch. This modification can help you minimize your losses if you happen to enter a longer losing streak.
Bet Progression
Tinkering with the original bet progression can bring interesting results. For example, instead of removing only one unit from the bet upon winning, we tried resetting the bet to one. This will result in really, really low losses, which will be compensated in a way by the winnings. However, when you put the casino edge in the equation, you will eventually end up at a small loss.
Don’t let the casino advantage discourage you – those numbers add up in the long run. There is the possibility of you going on an awesome winning streak and cashing in your winnings afterwards.
The D’Alembert system is one of the easiest and worry-free ways of playing roulette that we know of. The strategy is plain and simple, and works like a charm – but don’t expect to become a millionaire while using it. The winnings will be small, and you will inevitably be at a loss in the long term. Thank the casino advantage for that.
Still, we highly recommend trying the system out. It’s a good way to get started with roulette strategies before you feel confident enough to take on riskier systems that have the potential to bring you a lot of money.
