Martingale Betting System

I remembered teaching a friend about the Martingale System over a casual chat sometimes back before he went Genting. I only thought about it and never tried it.

I told him that a roulette will produce odd numbers, even numbers or Zero (18-18-1)
It can also produce Red numbers, Black numbers or Green number (18-18-1)

The probability of odd, even, black or red is almost 50% if we disregard the green zero.
However the probabiliy of straight odd, even, black or red get lower as they appears more times in a row.

Probability of 1 odd/even is 50%, Probability of 2 straight odd/even is 50% x 50% = 25% and 3 straights are 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 = 12.5%, and so on.

I told him that he shall not place any bet until there are 3 straights odds/evens or blacks/reds. i.e, he shall only place from the 4th bet onwards which means at the point when probability is supposedly 6.25%. He shall bet strictly only when any of the above conditions is fulfilled.

He shall start with the lowest bet which is $10 on the 4th set. If the outcome is same again, he shall put in $10 x 2 = $20 in the 5th bet. If he wins the 5th bet, he will win $20. This $20 will cover the initial $10 that he lost. If the 5th bet turns against again, he shall put in $20 x 2 = $40 in the 6th bet and subsequently $80 in 7th bet, $160 in 8th bet, $320 in 9th bet, $640 in 10th bet, etc till the limit set by the table.

The probability of 5th straight is actually only 3.125%, 6th straight is 1.5625%, 7th is 0.78125%, etc

My friend called me when he was in the casino. He thanked me for teaching him this method, he told me that he had won nearly $200 from the system and his highest bet was $160. I told him that if he win, he beter leave the place.

Too bad that my friend continued and his losing streaks came unexpectedly with 6 times odds, 1 times zero and 3 times odds again until he have to put in $1,280 in the 11th bet. He gave up as he had lost all his chips and not williing to use his credit card(Glad he did that) for this 11th bet which turns out to be odd as well. He had lost $650+$640 = $1,290 on that table and spent nearly 4 hours there. If he put in that $1,280, he will have lost $2,550 in hope of winning only $10.

You can consider this as a freak or normal incident. The probability of 12 straight is actually 0.5^12 which is 0.0244%. Its equivalent of getting 1 number correct out of 4,096 numbers. However, if you look from the angle of the next odd or even, the probability is actually still 50% regardless the numbers of times it appears prior that. I'm not going to elaborate on how ineffective this system is but you may google the word if you are keen to know more. There is also a system called "Anti-Martingale" fyi.