If you were thinking that the James Bond roulette strategy was simply a case of betting on the double 0 and the 7, then you would be wrong. Hilarious. But wrong.
In fact, it should only be played on a European roulette wheel so the double 0 wouldn’t be there at all.
It actually consists of only 3 bets which never change, but still covers a good 68% of the board, and with a progressive staking plan in place to boot.
This makes it an incredibly simple system to follow, but one that will probably bankrupt you if you get more than 3 or 4 losses in a row.
It’s a fun strategy to try if you have deep pockets though and are happy to accept the risks, but just like all other roulette systems, it won’t work in the long run.
It turns out that roulette is one international bad guy that even 007, James Bond himself, could not defeat.
How the James Bond Roulette Strategy Works
To employ the James Bond strategy (sometimes called the 007 strategy), you will first need to break your bankroll into units.
For instance, if you have £100 to spend, you might decide that each £1 is 1 unit, whereas if you had £500 you might decide that each £5 would be 1 unit. It’s totally up to you how you decide to do it and it doesn’t impact the system.
You will need to bet 20 units per spin, broken up as follows:
- Straight up bet on 0 – 1 unit
- Line bet on 13-18 – 5 units
- High bet on 19-36 – 14 units
As you can see from the image above, this means you only leave the numbers 1-12 uncovered, which is 32.4% of the board. So you have roughly a 1 in 3 chance of winning nothing, and roughly a 2 in 3 chance of winning something.
We will come onto how the payouts for each bet type affect things shortly.
So the betting itself is easy as pie, but you also have to remember that this is a progressive system, so your bets increase after a loss.
Just like the martingale system, you must double your bets after a loss in order to recoup that loss, so you need a healthy bank to withstand a losing streak since you are betting 20 units to begin with – losing just 3 times in a row will require a bet of 160 units on the 4th spin.
Payouts: The Problem with the 007 Strategy
This is one of the rare roulette systems that doesn’t stick to even money bets, so you are dealing with different payout amounts depending on which number the ball lands on.
Since you are also betting different amounts on each bet type, this alters payouts further.
| Bet | Payout | Units Bet | Total Units Won |
|---|---|---|---|
| Straight Up (0) | 35:1 | 1 | 35 |
| Line (13-18) | 5:1 | 5 | 25 |
| High (19-36) | 1:1 | 14 | 14 |
This might look ok at first, but when you consider you have 12 numbers that win you nothing and lose you 20 units, things start to fall apart.
Roulette is a balanced game so over time probability will even things out and destroy any system, and here, some fairly basic maths can demonstrate that.
| Winning Number | Winnings – Losses | Chance in 37 |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 16 Units | 1 in 37 |
| 1-12 | -20 Units | 12 in 37 |
| 13-18 | 10 Units | 6 in 37 |
| 19-36 | 8 Units | 18 in 37 |
Remember, even when we win we lose any money bet on the other numbers, so it’s not as straight forward as a 35 unit profit if the ball lands on zero, because we have 19 units bet elsewhere on the board which have lost, so we must deduct those 19 units from the winnings to find our eventual profit. The winnings – losses column above, therefore shows the final profit total after units from losing bets have been deducted.
With this in mind, we can see that across the board there are:
- 1 chance to win 16 units (16 units total)
- 6 chances to win 10 units (60 units total)
- 18 chances to win 8 units (144 units total)
Added together, that’s 220 units.
Crucially though, there are also:
- 12 chances to lose 20 units (240 units total)
So the system gives the chance to win 220 units but the chance to lose 240 units; a 20 unit deficit.
Obviously the ball is extremely unlikely to land on every single number across 37 spins, but it shows that you are operating at a disadvantage from the start.
The other issue is that even when you win, you are only netting 8 or 10 units around 65% of the time, so you need 2.2 wins for every loss just to break even.
This doesn’t account for the odd time the ball might land on zero, but there is only a 2.7% chance of that happening on any given spin, and even when it does, it won’t cover the total lost on a losing bet.
Questions About the James Bond Strategy
What Movies Did James Bond Play Roulette In?
He didn’t.
Despite the fact that he has a system named after him the famous spy has never been seen at the roulette wheel in a film.
In the books though, roulette crops up a lot – indeed, in his very first book, Casino Royal, roulette is introduced as Bond’s game of choice.
Why is it Called the James Bond Strategy?
You might think it is because this is the system that James Bond used, but in fact, this has never been confirmed.
Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, did describe him as using a progression strategy but never actually specified the bets that were placed.
So there doesn’t seem to be a good explanation of why this particular strategy ended up with the James Bond moniker; the reason is as mysterious as the man himself.