A few years back, I saw an item on ebay on £5 - "Make £200 a day on online roulette or double your money back"
I thought "well fair enough" and bought it.

Downloaded the guide and set to work. It involved signing up to 888.com, depositing £200, getting the free bonus £200, withdrawing the original $200 and ending up with £200 bet with at no cost to myself. I think that alone would be worth the £5 - just place half on red, half on black and you'd get back the £200 but counted as winnnings.

But there was more. It was basically the Martingale system, but not based on red and black; instead based on three number ranges (1-12, 13-24 or 25-36). It was also cleverly (but pointlessly) punctuated with rules such as "wait for 8 goes where a range does not appear". Now the main problem with Martinglage is that sooner or later you run out of money, as apart from anything else there is a maximum bet limit. This didn't get round that, but instead of doubling the bet, it was increased by just enough to make a profit if you won. Because it didn't double, it did increase the amount of bet increments before you got to that limit.

I know what you're thinking - "Martingale, what a load of crap". Well, true, it's not sustainable, but until you lose it works and it's better than just randomly placing bets all over the place. Don't get me wrong, when it goes against you it cripples you, but since the only thing I had to lose was free money, well...

First day I tried it - £90 profit. Second day, £120. I was ecstatic; I had finally found a system for making money that worked. I could have probably made more per day, but I was so astounded that I was almost shaking and I think I would have given myself a heart attack.

Because I'm not greedy*, I stuck to the system rigidly and withdrew every penny of profit as soon as I made it, always leaving the £200 as a working balance. Because it was working, I introduced my friends. Apparantly they can't read; why follow the system, eh? Why not bet twice or three times what it says here and get three times the profit? Because you'll lose, that's why. Fortunately none of them lose any real money because of the bonus matching.

Of course, as with all Martingale systems, my luck ran out eventually. But by that time I'd already banked over £600 in less than a week. I was disappointed, and I think I half believed it was a geniune system and not a rehashed Martingale system. eBay feedback of course would be left after the first day of genuine amazment of making a risk free £100, so the fact that at some point you would need slightly more than a few hundred quid to continue using the system wasn't revealed there.

I then became annoyed at the eBay seller for selling a system that "stopped working" after a week. Before contacting him, I decided to check the guide again. It was then that I noticed the URLs to the casino site looked a bit strange, with something like ?aff_id=1273981 stuck after each URL. A bit of googling revealed that 888.com offered an affiliate scheme where they would pay affiliated £150 for every new user who signed up and bet at least a certain amount of money. This bloke was selling about five of these guides a day, judging from the feedback. The fact they had left feedback indicated that had bet money and he had made £150 from them. That was getting on for a grand a day! What a racket this guy had. I doubt he'd ever actually tried the system.

My feelings of anger turned to adminiration and jealousy. If he could do a racket like this, so could I. I would set up a website "reviewing" casino "strategies" and make money from linking people to the casinos. My laziness got in the way though and I still haven't got round to it. Four years later.

Best £5 I ever spent though.

*I am actually greedy
(Cuthbert Annihilator, Sat 9 May 2009, 0:12, 2 replies)

yes, martingale will get you every time...
the wife and I made $5000 just going around to the various casinos and playing blackjack...
( Foxglove -- it all ends in tears anyway..., Sat 9 May 2009, 4:03, closed)

Sounds like an interesting idea
I don't want to lose my shirt though.
( idonthaveafunnynickname Drink-Aware? Sure. I'm aware I want another drink., Sat 9 May 2009, 17:54, closed)