This shows a run of 29 coups, of which the player wins 20 and loses 9.
He is 918 units to the good, and his next stake would be 348![[115]]
Assuming a player had been working a Labouchere on this run in the usual manner, on Black with a capital of 500 units, he would have had to retire after the 27th coup through lack of capital; and assuming him to have been playing with a 20-franc unit, he would have had to retire from Roulette on the 28th coup, and from Trente et Quarante after a few more coups if the bad sequence continued, no matter how large his capital had been.
It has been stated that the Bank beats the system player only on account of its limit. This is not quite true; it has also one more great advantage over the player, and this is the fact of its being a machine, while the punter is human; and although a player will stake his all to retrieve his previous losses, he will not—nature will not allow him to—risk his winnings to win still more.
This is a psychological fact that cannot be explained. It must be to the knowledge of most people who have visited Monte Carlo, that a player will stake as much as 500 francs to retrieve a loss of a single 5-franc piece. Yet the same player, having turned a 5-franc piece into as little as 50 francs, will refuse to adventure another stake, and retire from the gaming-table. When the player is having his bad run, the Bank cannot help playing their winnings to the maximum stake—they must do so; but the player on his good run is not compelled to play up his winnings, and really cannot be expected to do so. Theoretically
he should, and I firmly believe there is a lot of money awaiting the player who has the patience to wait for such a run—which must come to him, equally as it must and does, we know, come to the Bank—and then play on and on until he is prohibited by the Bank from staking any higher. To play a system upside-down, or in reverse order, requires great patience and equanimity, until the favourable run occurs, when indomitable pluck and perseverance are the necessary qualifications.
The writer feels bound to take the reader into his confidence so far as to acknowledge that he himself has never had such pluck, but has always retired on winning between 200 and 300 units. But he has always watched the future run of the table, and on no less than five occasions would have reached the maximum stake and won over 1000 units. He has, however, always had the patience, and lost his petit coup time after time with perfect equanimity, and only wishes he had had the other qualifications as well.
Referring for one moment to the assumed fact No. 2 on which this method is based—that a player more often than not is in deep water before bringing off his grand coup; which he must be, owing to the losses being so disproportionate in magnitude to the gains—it might be a good plan to discover what the average highest loss of a system player is before the system shows a profit, and then to play the same system in reverse or upside-down order, making this figure the grand coup. Playing in this manner, a visitor will have a cheap and enjoyable visit to Monte Carlo, and may be assured of one of the most exciting little periods of his career when this favourable run of luck does come his way.