Roulette: The Fitzroy System Explained
Invented much earlier, the Fitzroy system was popularised by an infamous British roulette team, which made a multi-million-pound strike in Nice during the 1960s.
A week after England won the football World Cup, Norman Leigh took his calculator and his plan to the Casino Municipale in Nice, intent on cleaning up at the roulette tables.
After two weeks, Leigh and his team had been banned from every casino in France, not because they cheated, but because they won, cleanly, and methodically, beating the bank at roulette – using the Fitzroy system!
When playing roulette at an online casino, using the Fitzroy system is pretty simple: bets are increased after a loss and decreased after a win.
The principle is this; once a win comes in, the big losses are cancelled out. But is the Fitzroy system a foolproof strategy?
How the Fitzroy Betting System Works
It was created in the 1800s by two British aristocrats, James St Clair-Erskine, the Earl of Rosslyn, and his brother, Alexander Fitzroy St Clair-Erskine (after whom the system was named).
Convinced they had found a way to win at roulette using the Fitzroy system, the brothers spent much of the following 70 years trying to prove it.
Ultimately, the Fitzroy was beaten when it was put into practice at the Monte Carlo casino.
In effect, the Fitzroy works a little like the d’Alembert progression system.
But in this staking plan one unit is added to your bet after a loss, and one is taken off following a win; kind of a conservative version of the Martingale strategy.
Why Do So Many Roulette Systems Come From the 19th Century?
The 19th century was an important period in roulette’s history, particularly as glamorous European casinos attracted wealthy travellers, mathematicians and gamblers searching for ways to beat the wheel.
This environment produced numerous staking theories and systems. Players experimented with patterns, mathematical sequences and different ways of adjusting their bets after wins and losses.
Many of those systems survive today, even though modern probability theory makes an important limitation clear: changing the size or pattern of wagers cannot remove the house edge built into roulette.
The Fitzroy System in Practice: Making Bets
All bets are made on a European Roulette table, which incorporates a single zero slot. Only ‘even-money’ outside bets such as red/black and odd/even are covered.
Let’s start with a base starting price of £1 for this system. If we lose our bet then we raise it to £2. If we win then we scale down by £1, or start again at £1, whichever is higher.
This entire system is meant to give players a structured approach to control their bankroll and recoup any losses.
Advantages and Disadvantages of the Fitzroy System
It is virtually identical to the d’Alembert system, but the Fitzroy system can be adapted to all other numbers, not just the outside bets.
However, the main advantage of the Fitzroy over the Martingale and similar systems is the flat staking plan; since after each unsuccessful spin, the player raises the stake by only one unit, the bankroll is much easier to manage, and players won’t lose a huge amount of money.
The big problem with the Fitzroy, and indeed with all roulette strategies, is that no matter how clever it might be, it can never change the fact that roulette is a game that is always stacked against the player because of the house edge, which is 2.7% in European roulette.
With small stakes, the Fitzroy won’t lose players much, but it won’t win them much either, but it is a good system for players to try just for the fun aspect of it.
Fitzroy vs Martingale: What’s the Difference?
Fitzroy and Martingale are both based on the idea of adjusting wagers following previous results, but the speed at which the stakes increase is very different.
Under a traditional Martingale system, the player doubles their wager following each loss. Starting with £1, five consecutive unsuccessful bets could create the following progression:
£1 → £2 → £4 → £8 → £16
Using a one-unit progression such as the one described in the Fitzroy system, the same sequence would instead be:
£1 → £2 → £3 → £4 → £5
This makes the progression considerably less aggressive and may allow a bankroll to withstand a longer losing sequence.
The trade-off is that one subsequent win doesn’t automatically recover all the money lost previously. Progress through the system can therefore be slower.
Neither approach changes roulette’s underlying probabilities. Instead, they represent different ways of managing stake sizes throughout a session.
Test the Fitzroy Betting System Today
Of course, all online roulette betting systems have their flaws, but all are entertaining to put to the test in a demo or free play mode. Betting systems such as the Fitzroy can also serve as a practice for players in managing their bankroll in a sensible manner.
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Conclusion
The Fitzroy system is one of many attempts to bring structure to the unpredictable game of roulette.
Its gradual progression is relatively straightforward: increase the stake following a loss and reduce it following a win. Compared with a system such as Martingale, the wager grows at a much slower pace, which is one of the Fitzroy system’s most distinctive characteristics.
However, slower progression doesn’t mean the system can overcome the house edge. Every roulette spin remains independent, and adjusting the size of a wager doesn’t alter the probability of red, black, odd or even appearing.
For modern players, the Fitzroy is therefore best viewed as an interesting piece of roulette strategy history and a structured staking system rather than a formula for beating the wheel.
Anyone curious about how the progression behaves can explore it with low stakes or demo play while keeping in mind the most important rule of any roulette system: set a budget rather than allowing previous losses to determine how much you’re prepared to spend.
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