The Labouchere System

The Labouchere System is also known as the Cancellation System because of the way it’s played. There are a lot of variations to this system, but put in it’s simplest form, the player starts off by noting a set of numbers before they start playing. For an example, let’s choose 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. This series can be long or short and doesn’t need to be sequential. Choosing particular series of numbers all depends on the game you are playing and the odds of the bet that you’ll be placing.

Each number that the player has noted represents the amount of units to bet. To use the Labouchere System you add the first and last numbers, and bet this amount of units. In our example, this would be 1 + 6 = 7 units.

If you make the bet and win, you cross these numbers off the series and use the next numbers to bet. In our example, the next numbers would be 2 and 5. After all of the numbers have been crossed off you’ve finished the system, and you are free to start again.

If you make a bet and loose, then you take the number that you used to be and add that to the end of the series that you have. Our example series would now look like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. This means that your next bet would be 1 +7 = 8 units.

This series is followed through until you have run out of numbers. If you won the first bet, but lost the second bet, our example numbers would be 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7.

Working this out to completion, you’ll find that when you complete the system you will always end up with a profit. The main problem with this system is that if you have a loosing streak, it doesn’t take long for the numbers to add up to large amounts and this could be required to start placing some pretty large bets.