The René de Margel system at 30 et 40

In order to demonstrate that 30 et 40 has been analysed by its fans, as much as roulette was, I'm going to illustrate the system invented by the game scholar René de Margel in 1936. Obviously it is not my intention to show it as winning system, but it could represent a starting point from other strategies or studies, that int he last years, concerning this game, have become more and more rares.

THE SYSTEM
Martin Gall wrote a voluminous treatise about roulette and 30 et 40 in 1930, which is similar only to Marigny treatise. But contrary, Martin Gall shows us a great deal of aspects about 30 et 40, and he reaches some conclusions only after having analysed about 10.000 cases. Leaving aside the long mathematical demonstration, he says that, starting from the 10th blow, the hand evolves, usually, almost in every case, around the discard of 4 blows, between Red and Black. Such discard is also the average discard of every hand in 25 blows.

The game scholar Renè de Margel tried to overwork this conclusion. He played at equal mass with high valued pieces, only in the last blow of the hand.

This behaviour obliges the croupier to count cards once they exit the sabot; in this way we can establish, with a suitable approximation, when we are reaching the last blow. Obviously, they stake to reach the discard of 4 between two chances. In this way, before they reach the last blow, such discard should be 3-5 in favour of Red and Black. They lose once the discard decreases from 3 to 2 or increases from 5 up to 6, instead of arranging at level 4.

Coming back to Martin Gall study, René de Margel demonstrates that the system is winning, because hands ending having a discard of 2 or 6 are quite lower than ones ending with discard 4 (6% lower than the 1st case).

For the ones who will be so patient to wait till the last blow of the hand (which could not be played if the discard is 1-7) the author suggests to find such discard even after the observation of 10 blows, but always playing at equal mass.

Our aim is to win a blow per hand, not more.

For unknown reasons, Renè de Margel discourages from applying this method to he roulette too.

Franco Rovatti