Physical casinos, in this country at least, are rather few and far between, however, and for those who have a little bit of money and wish to risk it, the virtual world is the perfect place for online betting.

For those who want to make quick money, gambling is obviously an option. There is, of course, high risk involved but also the potential for significant gains, and so the first stop for those wanting to gamble online is often a quick search to find tips on playing the standard casino games.

Here is where a large number of people come unstuck. If you type in ‘tips for roulette’ into a search engine, you don’t have to look very hard before you find a number of websites (most often written curiously identically to each other) telling a particular technique for beating online roulette games. They say, understandably, that the technique they tell is illegal in real casinos and that if you try it you will get thrown out.

The technique is simple, start with a single chip bet on red or black, if you win you get two chips back, if you lose you double your wager on the same colour next time. Again if you lose you double your previous wager. Simple enough, basic probability says that it will eventually come up on that colour, and if you double your wager every time you will ultimately earn one chip more than you originally had every time you win. It’s a slow process but, theoretically, infallible, and you will eventually creep your way up to thousands of pounds.

Unfortunately, it comes down to the fact that if this technique is illegal in real casinos, it’s probably not well looked upon by the virtual ones. As a result, they take steps to defend themselves and accordingly often go on runs where the same colour (curiously not the one you bet upon) comes up thirteen times in a row, which is, a rather improbably outcome. From a moral standpoint, this is kind of interesting, is the casino wrong for regularly cheating on the outcome of the result, or is the user wrong for using a technique that is, to all intents and purposes, not legal?

Ultimately it doesn’t really matter, but as most of these casinos require some sort of financial input before you can start playing and in time honoured fashion they do win in the end, one begins to wonder whether these websites who explain the technique, might actually be made on the part of the casinos with the intention of trying to lure punters who want to cheat the system in order to make money quickly?

If you decide to surrender you can indicate this to the dealer either by verbally telling the dealer you want to surrender or by using a surrender hand signal (place your finger on the layout and move it from right to left). The dealer will remove the player’s cards from the table and 50% of the player’s bet is forfeited.

Whatever the actual truth of all this, the point remains that the cliché ‘the house always wins’ is used enough to make it a cliché because it’s true. If you want to gamble online, probably the best way is by online betting, through reputable companies such as Blue Square, rather than in online casinos. The old innocuous British favourite of internet bingo is a pretty good option too for those wanting to maximise the fun:risk ratio.