One of the better and more successful systems of attempting to beat blackjack is in the Labouchere system. While not as well known as more widely used and talked about betting systems such as the Martingale betting system or card counting, as far as it’s effectiveness and ease of use is concerned, it lies somewhere between both of those aforementioned strategies.
Labouchere uses a very simple mathematical principle to work, however when it is first explained, many people can have a little bit of a problem understanding it so I’ll make it sound as simple as I possibly can.
The first thing you need to do is to decide exactly how much money you wish to make in a single betting session. Although you may instantly want to say “$1,000!” or something like that, especially the first time you use it, you should always select a low number so you get to grips with the game.
Let’s say that we’ve decided we wish to win $30. What we do is to generate a string of positive numbers (meaning no negatives like -9 or 0) that add up to the amount we wish to win. These can be absolutely any numbers at all, just as long as they add up to 30 in this case. So your string of numbers may look like this:
4, 1, 1, 2, 2, 7, 3, 2, 1, 4, 1, 2
But remember, it doesn’t have to be exactly these numbers at all, it can be any combination you like.
Now to begin betting, you simply take the two numbers from each end of the number line, add them together and then bet that exact amount on the next hand. So in this case, we would add 4 and 2 to make 6, which means we would then bet $6.
If we win, we take our winnings and cross those two numbers out. We then add the next two outside numbers together and bet again. If we win, we continue as normal.
If we lose on the other hand, we would take the amount that we just bet, add it to the end of the line and then continue on again. So just say we lost on the first hand, we would add the number 6 to the end of the line making our line look like this:
4, 1, 1, 2, 2, 7, 3, 2, 1, 4, 1, 2, 6
You then continue as normal and bet the outside two numbers. Once you’ve reached the end and all your numbers have been crossed off, you would have then made the amount you set out to make. Sounds great right? Well, Labouchere does have its limits as well.
You see, if you happen to have an immense losing streak (which can happen) you may find that you’re betting higher than the table limit will allow. In this case it would mean you had suffered an unrecoverable loss and lost quite a bit of money.
Like the Martingale system, Labouchere has its limits in Blackjack as well so is not the most ideal product out there. There are better blackjack beating systems online and you should be able to find one without too much effort!
