As I mentioned, I recently played in a roulette tournament. I've got nothing to compare it with, but I think the rules may be quite unique - Six players per table Six Spins You are given a set number of chips to bet in each round: 20 in the first two rounds, 30 in the next two, and 40 in the last two. 180 chips in all. You must bet all the chips you are given in each round. (If you hold any back, they do not count towards your score. Use them or lose them, so to speak.) Only the table winner advances. There is no betting order. It's a free-for-all until the guy says 'no more bets'. I managed to watch a table before I had to play. Everyone just spread out multiple bets, typically of two to four chips, among single numbers and corner bets. So I decided to bet half-red, half-black for as many rounds as possible, treading water (unless zero came up), and hopefully keeping pace with the field, until such time as I either had a lead to defend, or a big deficit to make up. This seemed like an even better plan, when I later discovered that the house rule is that half an even-money bet gets returned if zero comes up. On the first table, I went into the last round in second place and made my first and only deviation from the red-black approach. It was all a bit too frantic to be certain of the best plan, but I decided an even-money win might not be enough, so I made a 2:1 column bet for all 40 chips, choosing the column that seemed to have the least coverge from the leader and others. I won my bet, and one of the leader's bets came in. The end result was that I won by just two chips. I employed similar tactics in the final, but was further behind the leader on the final round (I think I was second again, though). So this time I put it all on a 5:1 bet, which did not come in for me. Any thoughts on ways to refine my tactics for this format? It's occurred to me that I could treat the 50:50 red/black bet as my 'home' bet, and shift a few chips around from that staring point if gaining a few chips could benefit me. E.g., in one round I was down 47, and only had 40 to bet, so there was no way I could take the lead by betting 50:50. I could have shifted 4 chips between my two even piles, in order to gain (or lose) an additional 8. I've also wondered about a slightly more aggressive version of the same strategy, covering two of the three columns with half my stack for each round, until I hopefully make an overall gain, and then possibly reverting to red/black. If I get into the position of having a lead to defend, things could get a bit complicated. I think it would sometimes be impossible (and often impractical) to make the exact same bets as other players. How about if I again start out with red/black as my 'home' position, but then take a look at where the most dangerous bets to me are grouped and shift some chips to the appropriate columns and/or other group bets, in order to try and cover these dangers?
