Two ladies of a certain age, who had just
arrived from England, and had evidently not
much experience of the game, were having
their first flutter at Roulette. Said one to the
other : " I see you always play on Red." " Of
course," she replied, sinking her voice almost to
a whisper for fear the croupier should hear ;
" don't you know that you get an extra number
on the Red side ? " " No," said the first, " how
do you make that out ? " " Why," said the
other, "number i is Red, and number 36 is
Red, so of course you get an extra number in
your favour on the Red side ! " " How clever
of you to discover it," said number one, and
down went her stakes on the Red. I suppose
she did not want the croupier to hear of her
great discovery, for fear they might alter the
arrangement of the colours and so defeat her
imaginary advantage on the Red side ! I did
not point out to her, that 10 and n were both
Black, and so were 28 and 29, and as the only
two red numbers following one another were 1 8
and 19, this made up for the first and last
numbers both being Red. It would have been
a pity to have dispelled her illusion, especially
as she seemed to be winning.

Probably you have never noticed that whereas
in the First Dozen there are five numbers Red
and Impair, in the Middle Dozen there are only
three, and in the Last Dozen only two. It is
the same with Black and Pair : in the First
Dozen there are five of them, in the middle
three, and in the last only two. With this
knowledge we can frame an amusing little
system.

If you fancy the Red side of the table you
put one piece on Red, one piece on Impair,
one on the First Dozen, and one on either the
Transversale 19 to 24, or 22 to 27. The result
of this will be that the worst that can happen to
you is a loss of four pieces, and this can only
occur when one of two numbers appears.

On the other hand, if one of the Red numbers
of your Transversale appears, you can win six
pieces, and as there are three of them, you may
reasonably hope to win six pieces once in every
twelve spins, whereas you ought not to lose all
four of your pieces more than once in eighteen
spins.

This system can be played with a capital of
twenty pieces, but I think the player should
move from table to table as soon as he is a
winner of ten pieces at any one of them.

If the player prefers Black and Pair, the
stakes on the First Dozen and Transversale
are the same, and the results will be precisely
similar. There will be three numbers on which
he can win six pieces, and only two on which
he can lose as much as four.

Perhaps I ought to point out that mathemati-
cally speaking this system is not to be recom-
mended, on the principle that the more numbers
you cover, the bigger the advantage you allow
the Bank to have over you. If you stake in
the manner described above, their advantage
will be about eight per cent, whereas if you
were content to stick to the even chances it
would only be about one and one-third per
cent.

In spite of this, however, the system is
amusing, and should bring you to very little
harm, unless you have exceptionally bad luck.

Author: V.B.