"You've got 28 numbers working for you." "The majority of the board is on your side." It is the most common argument in roulette videos: cover more numbers, win more often, and you are safer. It sounds like common sense. We put it to the test with two versions of the same system that differ only in how many numbers they cover.
The test: Tiddly Winks vs Scouse Tiddly Winks
Tiddly Winks bets $17 on 24 numbers: four streets at $2 and three corners at $3. A corner win pays +$10, a street win +$7. Its variation, Scouse Tiddly Winks, adds one corner for one extra dollar: $18 on 28 numbers, with four corners at $2.50. A corner now pays +$4.50 and a street +$6. Same progression in both: every loss adds one unit, a new session high goes back to Level 1, and otherwise two wins in a row take off one unit.
The Scouse version was presented as the safer one — it wins 75.7% of spins instead of 64.9%. Here is what 10,000 players with $1,000 did:
| Tiddly Winks | Scouse Tiddly Winks | |
|---|---|---|
| Numbers covered | 24 | 28 |
| Wins per spin | 64.9% | 75.7% |
| Four losses in a row | 1.5% of the time | 0.35% of the time |
| Reaches +$50 | 90.4% | 83.7% |
| Reaches +$200 | 70.7% | 51.1% |
| Below the ceiling at +$50 | 4.2 pts | 10.9 pts |
The version that wins more often, and has far fewer losing streaks, reaches the goal much less often. At +$200 it is barely better than a coin flip.
Why: every extra number makes the wins smaller
Every bet on the table has the same house edge. So when you cover more numbers, the casino doesn't give you more — it pays you less per win. What really decides how a system behaves is not how often it wins, but how many wins it takes to pay back one loss:
| System | Numbers | A loss costs | Average win | Wins to cover one loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Martingale (red/black) | 18 | 1 unit | 1 unit | 1 |
| Golden Key | 21 | $6 | $4.29 | 1.4 |
| Tiddly Winks | 24 | $17 | $8.50 | 2 |
| Scouse Tiddly Winks | 28 | $18 | $5.14 | 3.5 |
In the Scouse version, one loss wipes out three or four wins. And because its progression only steps down after two wins in a row, the bets keep climbing after every loss while the small wins struggle to bring them back. That is the trap: the losses are rarer, but each one costs more than the system can easily earn back.
It is not only one system
We see the same pattern across the catalog. A popular "go-to" strategy with $15 on a column and four $5 corners covers 28 numbers and doubles after a loss: it wins 74% of spins on a double-zero wheel, yet with a $500 bankroll it lands 11.4 points below the ceiling at +$50. Meanwhile plain Martingale on red or black — only 18 numbers — sits at the ceiling for the same goal, because each win pays back exactly what the last loss cost.
That doesn't make low coverage safe either: Martingale's rare loss takes the whole bankroll. The point is that coverage alone tells you almost nothing. Two systems with 24 numbers each — Tiddly Winks and Four Amigos — end up almost identical (4.2 and 3.9 points below the ceiling), because their wins and losses have the same shape.
What to look at instead
- How many wins pay back one loss. Divide what a loss costs by what a typical win pays. Above 2, the progression has a lot of work to do.
- How the progression comes down. A system that needs two wins in a row to step down climbs faster than it falls.
- The gap to the ceiling. It already includes all of the above. Every system page shows it, and the 100 Club ranks by it.
Our verdict
Covering more numbers makes a system feel safer and look better on video — more green, fewer losing spins. But it makes every win smaller, and in a progression system that usually makes things worse, not better. When someone says "28 numbers working for you", ask how many of those wins it takes to pay for one loss. Or test it yourself on 10,000 players in the System Builder.
Method: 10,000+ simulated players per system, European wheel, $1,000 bankroll for Tiddly Winks, Scouse Tiddly Winks, Golden Key and Four Amigos; the column-and-corners example uses its creator's $500 bankroll on an American wheel.