Roulette Books

Written by: Jeremy Olson, OUSC Online Casino and Games Expert
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Roulette books are a great way to learn about this classic casino game. From history information to betting strategies to improve your odds, there is always something new to learn.

Whether you’re a new casino player or a veteran, the following list of the best roulette books is sure to provide helpful information on the game and some secrets from roulette player experts.

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Best Roulette Books to Help Your Game

Below, you’ll find a list of widely-read roulette books that offer advice on roulette betting systems, probabilities, and more. Our team gives an honest review of each roulette book along with biographical information about the author.

How to Win at Roulette: The Outstanding Book of Roulette Systems

how to win at roulette

Readers argue it is one of the best roulette systems books ever written.
In this roulette strategy book, Squire introduces casual players to a series of progressive betting systems designed to minimize losses and maximize gains.

Included in Squire’s arsenal of progressive wagering systems are the D’Alembert, Labouchere, Paroli, and of course, the Martingale. Along with these now common ways to manage bets, Squire also discusses the differences between American and European roulette tables, along with numerous examples intended to demonstrate the current system or lesson.

A no-nonsense manual on managing your wagers given a variety of situations and scenarios, advice for both beginners and experienced players is included. Despite the book’s age, Squire’s “How to Win at Roulette” still holds up quite well today.

By Norman Squire (1968)

As one of the world’s foremost authorities on the advanced theoretical study of the card game bridge, Norman Squire devoted his professional life to playing bridge at its highest level. Hidden among Squire’s many strategy books on bridge, which includes more than a dozen titles published over 25 years, is his treatise on proper roulette play.

Beating the Wheel: The System That Has Won Over Six Million Dollars from Las Vegas to Monte Carlo

beating the wheel

This roulette book is concerned with assessing the vulnerabilities of every roulette wheel in the house before acting accordingly and taking advantage.
With a systematic approach and crisp prose, Barnhart explains the intricacies of biased wheel play in direct terms, and the following passage is symbolic of his approach to the game:

“The main purpose of my initial ten chapters is to teach the (biased wheel) system through a variety of examples: how long these players spent clocking their wheels, whether they bet on one number or several separated from one another on the wheel or grouped in a section, whether they adopted a proportional staking system or stuck to flat bets, and – of great importance – how they thwarted secret casino countermeasures.”

The players in question are Barnhart’s so-called Honor Roll, a list of the most successful biased wheel roulette specialists of all-time, regular winners of six-figure sums in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and Monte Carlo. As a historian by trade, Barnhart is a natural storyteller, and Beating the Wheel represents a detailed history of the game’s beginnings.

Featuring intriguing, informative tales like Vladimir Grance’s exploits as Europe’s most notorious roulette wheel “fixer” and teams like The Italian Syndicate and The Jones Boys, Barnhart’s book is a stellar work of historical nonfiction.

By Russell T. Barnhart (1992)

Born in 1923, Russell T. Barnhart discovered the art of illusion at the age of nine, a hobby that would become an integral aspect of his life. A prolific creator and theorist, Barnhart is credited by the Conjuring Archive website with inventing 32 card tricks between 1945 and 2000.

In addition to magic, Barnhart also studied game theory and casino gambling history earnestly, writing several books during his prime. He published Beating the Wheel: The System That Has Won Over Six Million Dollars from Las Vegas to Monte Carlo in 1992, and at 217 pages, the book doesn’t miss a beat throughout. Barnhart immediately informs the reader that his book will be based on firm logic rather than fallacy.

John Patrick’s Roulette: A Pro’s Guide to Managing Your Money and Beating the Wheel

john patricks roulette

The heart of Patrick’s roulette advice book is based on a deceptively simple approach to bankroll management. By advising players that they must always remain satisfied with a 10 percent profit on their buy-in and prepared to walk away from the game once this threshold has been met, Parker’s strategy is designed to ensure small winning sessions accumulate over time.

Although he occasionally lapses into the territory of luck – such as stating that players should bet bigger when the wheel is “spinning in their favor” – Patrick builds a convincing case that the roulette’s house edge can be overcome by fiscal discipline. He warns players to take note of house rules for each casino they enter, as ignorance can bleed your bankroll slowly.

Patrick’s money management advice is useful for patient players willing to stick to the game plan. You should be able to grind out small profits while avoiding disastrous losing sessions.

By John Patrick (1996)

A staunch member of gambling’s old school, John Patrick has been active in the industry since the 1960s. At that time, Patrick was just another penniless player on the Mississippi riverboat casinos. To work his way back from financial oblivion, Patrick worked as a “prop” player for various casinos, playing for $10 per day to keep the games running and attract tourists to the tables.

Supplementing his prop player income by washing dishes, Patrick patiently rebuilt his bankroll by exercising strict money management. During the 1980s, he authored several books on gambling games under his “So You Wanna Be a Gambler?” series, including titles covering “Blackjack” (1983), “Slots-Roulette” (1983), and “Baccarat” (1985).

Spin Roulette Gold: Secrets of Beating the Wheel

spin roulette gold

At 229 pages in length, this roulette book contains a healthy mix of basic game instructions, such as the rules, table layout, and available bets, along with a brief primer on biased wheels and the typical nonsense about “can’t miss systems” for beating the game.

Among the more dubious systems described by Scoblete are the “Double Dynamite” (which incorporates elements of sector slicing and BIG number systems), the “Golden Number” (which advices betting big on numbers that have hit at an inordinate rate), and “Chameleon” (which requires mimicking the betting of ‘lucky’ players who are winning more often).

Of course, none of these systems can create a winning roulette player over the long run, something which Scoblete readily admits in his online columns. Writing in an article titled “Two Roulette Systems That Work,” which appeared in 2009, Scoblete confesses:
“If we mean that you will win in the long run with the systems I am advocating, then the title of this column is misleading … you have no chance to beat roulette in the long run because the game is random and the casinos have the edge on every bet placed.”

Overall, Scoblete’s book about the basic structure of roulette is useful as he approaches the task of penning gambling prose in a casual, conversational tone. For beginners looking to learn the basics of the game, the first few chapters of this roulette strategy book offer a reasonable entry point, but be sure to stop reading as soon as the word “system” is mentioned.

By Frank Scoblete (1997)

Frank Scoblete worked as an entertainer and touring theater actor until 1985, when he visited Atlantic City, New Jersey, to research his role in a new play titled, “The Only Game in Town.” After spending time in the eastern seaboard’s gambling mecca, Scoblete soon became intrigued by the concept of cracking casino games, so he divested his shares in the theater company and embarked on a new career as a self-styled gambling expert.

Playing and working alongside his former co-star and future wife Alene Paone, Scoblete wrote articles for WIN Magazine in the late 1980s before founding a publishing house in 1991. A slew of additional gambling strategy books followed at a pace of about one per year, with Spin Roulette Gold: Secrets of Beating the Wheel representing Scoblete’s first foray into roulette.

Secrets of Winning Roulette

secrets of winning roulette

With Secrets of Winning Roulette, Jensen compiles a wealth of vital information on the game, making this roulette book a great entry point for first-time players. Overviews of wheel design and construction, table layout, and available wagers are coupled with thorough explainers on probability, odds, randomization, and house advantage. All of this foundational information is well-researched and presented in relatable terms over an easily digestible 256 pages, making Secrets of Winning Roulette a helpful roulette book for beginners.

Of course, like most roulette writers, Jensen can’t help but indulge in the discussion of the infamous system that sells copies but does little to help readers improve their profit margins. Along with general reviews on biased wheel play and ball tracking concepts, which are technically possible to employ but seldom used today, Jensen exposes readers to basic betting systems like the Martingale, the D’Alembert, the Labouchere, and several variations.

Jensen even touches on various cheating techniques, such as past posting, bouncing pads, wiggly frets, manual ball tripping, magnetic tripping, and wearable computer/radio setups. Overall, Secrets of Winning Roulette is best considered as two separate books. In the first ten chapters, you’ll find essential roulette knowledge, but the final seven chapters contain nothing but debunked betting systems and surefire ways to get yourself banned from most major casinos.

By Marten Jensen (1998)

Marten Jensen, the so-called “Doctor of Gambling,” has written several gambling strategy books over the years, all for Cardoza Publishing. Jensen’s work has covered slot machines, video poker, blackjack, and of course, roulette.

Roulette Odds and Profits: The Mathematics of Complex Bets

roulette odds and profits

In the Introduction section of his 212-page book, Barboianu makes his intentions clear from the onset, stating unequivocally that:

“There is no optimal long-term strategy for playing roulette … Any betting system will fail in the long run. This is not a roulette strategy book because such a strategy does not exist: only betting ‘systems’ exist. Rather, it is a collection of odds and figures attached to a large range of complex bets, revealed in their entire mathematical structure. This book provides just mathematical facts and not so-called winning strategies.”

True to his word, Barboianu then runs through an admittedly complex set of algebraic formulas and other advanced computations to analyze a variety of common roulette bets. Among the betting strategies studied on a statistical level:

– Betting on a color and numbers of the opposite color
– Betting on the third column and the color black
– Betting on a color and on splits of the opposite color
– Repeated bets

While the prose can be quite dense for the layman, readers with strong math skills will greatly appreciate Barboianu’s commitment to running through advanced calculations in their entirety.

By Catalin Barboianu (2007)

One of the only “honest” roulette writers in the field, Romanian-born Catalin Barboianu earned his Master’s in Mathematical Statistics, Probability, and Applied Mathematics in 1992 from the University of Bucharest.

Since 2003, Barboianu has worked as an independent researcher specializing in mathematical analysis of casino games and games of chance. In addition to numerous scholarly articles on the subject, Barboianu is also the author of at least ten books on game theory.

Below you’ll find popular roulette books in the gambling community that offer questionable advice on how to win at roulette. Take a look and judge for yourself!

Gamble to Win Roulette

gamble to win roulette

The basis of Ellison’s roulette strategy book can be summed up in an excerpt from an article titled “The Big Lie,” which contains the following analysis:

“It comes down to this: In a controlled environment that invokes a statistical certainty, there has to be a cause and an effect. The effect is that the numbers conform to their statistical expectation. The ‘other guys’ will tell you that there is no cause: the effect results from a willy-nilly random chance that conforms through unabated coincidence! And the entire world has been buying this illogical horsepuckey for a hundred years!”

In this 256-page book, Ellison describes his system, known as the “3Q/A Reverse Method.” Players are advised to group the available numbers into “A” and “B,” with A comprising the 1-6 six line and the 31-36 six line, while B consists of the 10, 11, 13, 14 quad, the 17, 18, 20, 21 quad, and the 25, 26, 28, 29 quad.

From there, Ellison’s strategy is to monitor the table tower listing the previous spin results and record the last five numbers. Whenever the A or B group occurs more often in those five numbers, Ellison says to bet the opposite group heavily. Of course, this approach to playing roulette, while wrapped in technical jargon and a complex assortment of numbers, is nothing but nonsense.

Even casual players know that every spin of the roulette wheel represents an independent occurrence, but Ellison swears by “reversing” the “trend” exhibited by the last five numbers. Readers are advised to avoid Gamble to Win Roulette at all costs – both based on the content and the now-notorious reputation of its author.

By R.D. Ellison (2002)

One of the roulette world’s true curiosities, Richard “R.D.” Ellison, was branded as a genius at an early age. Working as a self-proclaimed casino game expert, Ellison developed his unique theories regarding the results of roulette spins. Even though mathematicians widely derided his ideas, Ellison routinely debated their differing interpretations of probability with Ivy League professors.

In 2005, at 56, Ellison was arrested and charged with unlawfully detaining his elderly mother and stepfather. Ellison confessed to holding them against their will for hours while subjecting them to erratic behavior, threats, and verbal abuse. He was charged with aggravated burglary, kidnapping, and felonious assault. Four years before his arrest, Ellison wrote an article titled “Evil Aliens in the Gaming Area,” in which he offered readers advice on how to handle themselves should “a large gathering of hostile aliens bust in and start zapping the players with laser beams coming out of their eyes.”

Get the Edge at Roulette: How to Predict Where the Ball Will Land!

get the edge at roulette

The underlying concept of this roulette book concerns Pawlicki’s theory that dealers can control the eventual landing spot of the ball simply through their spinning motion.

According to Pawlicki, who worked as a roulette dealer, the imperceptible movements and muscle memory inherent to each dealer results in a “dealer signature,” or a pattern in which the ball lands on particular areas of the wheel more often than randomization would suggest.

Taking advantage of this dealer signature forms the foundation of Pawlicki’s roulette strategy advice. In the course of 229 pages, Pawlicki also explores concepts like biased wheel play and ball tracking. Still, it’s clear that the author firmly believes in the power of dealer signature following his personal experiences as both a dealer and a professional player.

By Christopher Pawlicki (2001)

Christopher Pawlicki branched out from an engineering background to become one of the leading experts on beating casino games through physical manipulation. During the 1990s, he collaborated with dice control innovator Jerry Patterson, forming the PARR Dice Control Course and the “Perfect Pitch Delivery.”

Working closely with Frank Scoblete and going by the nickname “Sharpshooter,” Pawlicki has published dozens of articles on the former’s Casino City Times website. While most cover his preferred game of craps, he also writes frequently about roulette strategy.

Roulette: Playing to Win

roulette playing to win

In his only contribution as a published author, Brett Morton compiles a curious mix of basic bankroll management advice with outlandish, unsubstantiated claims of guaranteed success. According to Morton, his system is more of a “style” based on the disciplined deployment of funds, even money betting, and the willingness to walk away with small profits.

In Morton’s words, “the aim is to lose less when you go down than you win when you go up,” and if you believe his testimony, the style allows him to win four out of every five sessions.

Morton begins by detailing his grueling challenge to turn 100 “chips” into 4,000 while playing roulette. Once he accomplished this unlikely feat, he successfully replicated the win again and again, convincing himself that a true path to consistent profitability in roulette had been discovered. Of course, Morton admits that he had 1,000 chips (a term he uses throughout the book rather than a specific dollar amount) in his “fighting fund” (his colloquial term for bankroll).

Morton doesn’t reveal how many times his 100-chip stake was exhausted during his claimed run to 4,000, nor how he managed his subsequent rebuys, and the entire section relating to this story is dubious at best.

Before delving into his system, along with the requisite primers on progressive betting patterns, Fibonacci numbers, and “footprints,” Morton takes the time to insult baccarat players summarily. By dismissing baccarat as a game fit only for fools – although it offers a house edge of just 1.06% on “banker” bets and 1.24% on “player” bets – Morton exposes his ignorance of the basic mathematics of casino gambling.

On the other hand, it is quite funny to read that “even the most brain-dead alcohol-ridden punter has only to make one simple choice. There is no skill required, and he cannot influence the cards.” Especially from a man who goes on to gladly trumpet the virtues of watching the tower and recording the last numbers, hoping to spot patterns that will influence where a roulette ball will land.

Morton also advises tipping “old hand” dealers upon arriving at the table, getting on their good side, and hoping they’ll start landing the ball near your numbers. Unfortunately, even with a few decently written passages on money management and bankroll control which should improve the game for beginners, the bad information presented by Morton outweighs any potential benefits his roulette book might offer.

By Brett Morton (2004)

Roulette Rockstar

roulette rockstar

Written by an anonymous author, the Kindle e-book Roulette Rockstar proudly bills itself as the “best-selling roulette book on Kindle for the last three years.” Overall, Roulette Rockstar is the 351,561st ranked seller on Kindle as of the writing of this review.

Clocking in at a slim 66 pages in print form, the book is presented under the following premise:
“The riveting story of an unemployed man down on his luck and drowning in debt. He makes a last-ditch effort to raise cash by going to the Casino and fails miserably. Fate steps in when an old man sits next to him and reveals a simple Roulette Strategy that makes him thousands a day!
This book is based on three-bet placement strategies, each seemingly more foolish than the next. The first strategy involves a supposed 47 percent chance of winning one-third of your total bet, along with a 32 percent shot of breaking even. The second and third approaches are nothing more than blanketing the table with a laundry list of bets, usually returning a small fraction of the total wager, while giving you a chance to hit numbers for big wins.

In each case, the so-called strategy is to bet a large number of chips on several different bets, knowing that while you’ll usually “win,” those wins will be smaller than the total bet. You’ll lose money, of course, but using this technique packs the promise of the occasional “breakeven” big win, and when you’re lucky enough to enjoy a winning streak, the profits should mitigate the steady losses.

Once again, roulette “experts” have taken the time to write and publish a strategy book, knowing full well that the systems they’re advocating will never create consistent winners. Avoid purchasing Roulette Rockstar and let the title slip even further down the list of Kindle’s roulette library.

By Anonymous Author (2012)

Jeremy Olson

Jeremy Olson OUSC Online Casino and Games Expert

Jeremy Olson started in the gambling world by taking beatings in blackjack and poker. That was almost 20 years ago. Ever since then, he became obsessed with becoming a better gambler. That pursuit led him to write. He mainly focuses on his stronger areas of expertise, table games strategy, online casino reviews, and online casino bonuses.

Learn More About Jeremy