Record Number of Reds or Blacks in a Row

Record Breakers

What is the highest number of reds that have been seen in a row on an individual roulette wheel? We are interested in any of the even money bets, so red/black, even/odd, high/low.

This question is particularly interesting for players of the Martingale Roulette system and goes right to the heart of the Gambler’s Fallacy- that mistaken belief that if you see five reds in a row, the next result is more likely to be a black.

This is a myth, of course- every roulette spin is what’s known in statistics as a mutually exclusive event. There is always an equal chance of red and black coming up on an individual spin- the result is in no way affected by previous results.

Martingale System

Martingale players are also interested in this question because this system involves you doubling your bet after a loss. It’s generally played on even money bets, and the idea is that at some point you will win and claw back all of your previous losses.

Players often look out for long strings of the same result, such as Red, Red, Red, Red, Red. They’ll then bet on black in the hope that the results will flip back to black to restore the long-term equilibrium, something that the D’Alembert system also tries to do.

But if you experience ten reds in a row, that will blow most Martingale players out of the water, as they’ll either throw in the towel or hit the table limits, after which they won’t be able to double their bets and cover their losses. It’s difficult to figure out the best roulette strategy under these circumstances.

Keep it Short
If you keep doubling your bet ten times in a row, you are going to be betting an awful lot of money for a small overall return. It’s just not worth the risk, to be honest. That’s another reason why you should keep your Martingale runs short (say three, maximum five if you start with a small bet).

Repeat after me……
These long strings of the same even money results are rare, but they do happen, so you need to factor this risk in if you are playing the Martingale. There are two main risks to this system- one is that you experience a very long string of the same result. The other is that the ball drops into the zero pocket- that pesky little area that gives the casino its house edge.

You can devise strategies to counter this of course. You could bet with the flow of results rather than against it after you see, say, five in a row (but you might have picked the exact time that this wheel of all roulette wheels decides to behave more “normally”).

French is Best
You could also choose a game that offers La Partage which will at least soften the blow of the ball landing in the zero pocket. La Partage is a rule followed by some casinos where they refund half your even money bet when the zero drops in. Many French roulette games offer this.

The Record For the Number Of Reds in a Row

This will scare you Martingale players! What is the record for the number of reds in a row? Check out this picture from the Rio All Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. This had all the punters thinking that the wheel was rigged- seven reds came up in a row (you will see seven in a row at some point for sure) but these were all the number 19!

Wow
The record for the number of reds in a row was set in the US in 1943 when the colour came up thirty-two times in a row. The probability of this happening on a European Roulette table is (18/37) to the power of 32 which comes to 1 in 10,321,314,387.

It has also been reported that red came up thirty-nine times in a row in the Casino Monte Carlo, Monaco.

You can see how it doesn’t come up much, but it can happen! Luckily, I should think if anyone was playing the Martingale on that table, they hit the table limits well before the 32nd spin.

That’s a Slim Chance, But it Happened
This was probably seen on an American roulette table which makes it even more incredible, because in this case the probability of it happening was (18/38) to the power of 32 which comes to 1 in 24,230,084,485, almost 2.5 times less likely because the American wheel has two zeros.

Here’s the thing though- on the 32nd spin, the probability of the next spin coming up red or black was the same- 47.3%. Talking about individual spins and thirty-two spins is a whole different ball game, and in roulette, you can only bet on one spin of the wheel.

If you search on Yahoo, you’ll see that many people claim to have seen over ten in a row on the roulette table. One guy claims to have seen over fifteen at least five times (I guess we don’t know how much roulette he plays to gauge the percentage of his visits that this represents).

Even so, it does happen. Five in a row, six in a row, seven in a row, eight in a row and so on is going to happen more frequently. Fourteen in a row seems to be the big one that people are talking about in their personal experiences.

What About Black?

The weird thing I find about these stories is that everyone always talks about red. I mean, what about the record number of blacks in a row? Or the record number of Evens in a row? Or Odds? Or high numbers? Or low numbers?

There is a famous session where a roulette ball on a specific wheel landed on black twenty-six times in a row in a Monte Carlo Casino in the summer of 1913- August 18 to be precise. This even spawned the name “Monte Carlo Fallacy”. Players at the table lost millions of francs betting against the black.

But generally, all the talk is about red, right?

Why People See Red and Not Black

I think we are talking human psychology here. Red is an emotive colour, and it’s the one that people talk about the most. Black also gets noticed to a lesser extent, but the others? There has probably been a case of twenty high numbers or odd numbers occurring in a row in a casino, but no one probably noticed.

So, this brings up an interesting point for us, one that we touch on in our Even Money Switcher system.

If you are tracking the even money results, you don’t just need to bet on red/black. You can look for patterns on the other bets as well. Twenty-three reds in a row have been documented, but I have never heard of twenty-three high-odd-red numbers in a row.

Maybe it happened and no one noticed!

Summary

It’s unlikely that you will see over twenty reds or blacks in a row on a roulette table but it can happen! If you are playing the Martingale, keep your runs short (pull out after three losses in a row, for example) and start with a small initial bet to minimise your risk.

The longer you spend at the table, the more likely you are to experience one of these long same-colour runs.