At first glance, the term Martingale online bingo appears nonsensical. Online bingo, as everyone who understands bingo knows, is simply the online version of the popular lottery game.
The Martingale, on the other hand, is a simple roulette betting system, based on doubling an even-money bet after every loss. Martingale online bingo would have to apply the Martingale system to online bingo. Is this a good idea, even in theory?
Consider Basic Bingo Betting
Bingo is not an even-money bet, of course. Even the smaller prizes are usually better than even money on the relatively low cost of a bingo ticket, and top jackpots can be huge.
This factor alone is an encouraging plus in favour of Martingale online bingo. Since bingo tickets are so cheap compared to the prizes they can deliver, if a player buys one ticket and sees all the prizes in that round scooped by other players, buying two tickets the next round and if necessary, four after that, still seems quite affordable.
The Same Martingale Stumbling Block as Always
Martingale online bingo might seem like a fool-proof strategy, because the prizes in bingo are so much more impressive than the even-money options in roulette, so an eventual win brings in a much better return. After all, no matter how big the bet grows when applying the Martingale to roulette, the player can only ever win a profit equal to the initial, tiny stake.
However, Martingale online bingo players can easily fall prey to the gambler’s fallacy, which is the undoing of the Martingale roulette system. The fact that black has come up seven, eight or more times in a row makes it no more likely that red will come up next; those odds never change. It is not unusual, impossible or even unlikely for a player to lose eight or more 50/50 bets in a row. To survive a run of bad luck like that, a Martingale roulette player needs an enormous stake and a casino that allows no-limit bets; all to win just a tiny amount if they succeed.
Likewise, it is well within the laws of probability for a player to lose a bingo game with one ticket, then two tickets, then four tickets, then eight tickets, and so on. With the number of tickets being bought by all players, which can be huge in online bingo money, and depending on the number of balls in the draw pool, a Martingale online bingo player could easily lose seven or eight times in succession. When a player is buying 128 or 256 bingo tickets per round to score a win, only the top prizes will allow them to make a profit.
A Better System than Martingale Online Bingo
As attractive as Martingale online bingo sounds at first hearing, a sober appreciation of the odds reveals that it probably isn’t a good idea. However, the excellent prize-to-ticket-price ratio of online bingo suggests a strategy that would be more effective, while still affordable within a budget.
This strategy is for the player to simply buy a set number of tickets on every bingo game. No matter how many others are playing, buying two tickets doubles a player’s chances of a win; ten tickets multiplies those chances by 10. Players who work out how much they can afford, then stick to buying a set number of tickets over twenty or thirty rounds of online bingo, and never escalating that number, stand a better chance of scoring a win than Martingale online bingo players who double themselves out of the game.