Testing Roulette Systems – Oscar’s Grind System

What is the Oscar’s Grind system?

The Oscar’s Grind system consists of betting on colors. The difference of this system (compared to other systems of gambling) is that the bet sizes are not increased after a loss, but only after a win. To start playing, bet 1 unit. If you lose, keep the bet the same until you win. When you win, increase the size of the bet by 1, unless that would give a profit of more than 1.
In addition, there is one final detail – If you get close to a profit, don’t bet the total bet size.

Bet only as much as you need to have a profit of 1 unit (for example – if your account balance is 100 units and your last maximum profit was 105, in accordance with the system you should bet 10 units, but you should only bet 6 units to allow for a profit of 1 unit).

What do the statistics say?

This is a really difficult issue to calculate, so we have attempted to estimate it. Logic tells us that it can work successfully as the wins should alternate approximately equally with the losses, and losing streaks should alternate with winning streaks.

Perhaps the situation is not that simple…

In a long-term testing of a series with 25 000 spins, there were two progressions that occurred roughly 50 % of the time. In half of the cases, the system completely failed and its value fell well below zero; in the second half of the cases, the system managed to result in a profit.

Due to the fact that the winning streaks brought about a profit of about 2 000 units per 25 000 spins, and the slumps (in losing series), reached the values of 100, 1000, 1 000 000 units below zero, all the positive trends were trumped with negative trends, making the system unusable.

Never mind. We wanted to avoid the big slumps, so we tried to apply some limitations, such as a maximum bet size – this meant that if we reached the maximum bet size, we reset the game back to 1 unit.  Progressions of the limitations with maximum bet sizes for 10, 50 and 100 units are shown in the following graphs:

In all three graphs, the progression shows a similar curve (all three look similar), so this was again unsuccessful.

We then tried to add a linear progression after each losing streak, by increasing the bet size by 1 unit. Progressions of the limitations with maximum bet sizes for 10, 50 and 100 units are shown in the following graphs:

This resulted in no benefit, as only losses were increased by this method. There were some sequences of growth, but the big slumps always occurred at 50 000 spins and took our all profit. The downward trends when using a gentle progression and astronomical slumps when using a more aggressive progression (Martingale progression) make this betting system unusable.