Both pieces of advice above are completely wrong. Martingale systems are based on a total fallacy, and therefore you should avoid them completely before you start putting faith in a flawed scheme.

Similarly, though it’s extremely common, spreading your bets over many spots on the table is completely wrong-headed. It doesn’t affect your expectation per unit bet, but it does reduce your variance (how much and how often you can expect short term results to differ from average expectation). Since your expectation on every bet is negative, you *don’t* want to reduce your variance. Variance is your friend. If you ever win at all in this game, in the short run, it’s due to variance. So *don’t* spread your bets.

Another argument against spreading bets is that it encourages you to get many chips involved on every bet, which increases your negative expectation per hour. This is true, and it’s a good reason to generally avoid spreading bets, but the advice I’m going to give you also gets many chips in play on the same bet. The only difference is, I’m not going to encourage you to place many bets over a long time, which lets the house slowly whittle away your money through the reduced variance that comes with many trials.

The actual best way to maximize your chances of winning money at roulette is to get all your action in at once, on one spot, and then walk away whatever the result. This is not the most fun way to play, this is not the way to get the most playing minutes or hours for your money, and most regular roulette players would disagree because, well heck, that’s not the way *they* play.

Setting the very specific goal of getting from £60 to £100, your mathematically best strategy would be to follow this program:

THE SOLUTION

A) stick £40 on an even money bet, such as “red.” If this succeeds, take your £100 and leave a winner.

B) If this fails, then stick the remaining £20 on a column bet paying 2 to 1. There’s no 4 to 1 bet or 3 to 1 bet available, so we’re taking the bet that, if you win, will bring you closest to £100 without going over (going over is nice, but also less likely).

If you miss the column bet, then you’ve lost your entire £60 initial stake. Game over. If you win the column bet, then you have £60, and go back to step A.

Following this method, you will reach your goal of £100 before losing your stake 58.37% of the time on a single zero roulette wheel.

WHY MULTIPLE BETS ARE WORSE:

Note that you’re winning 58.37% of the time, and you’re laying 3 to 2 odds, staking £60 to win £40. This means the “house advantage” is approximately 2.717%. This is very close to, but slightly worse than the house advantage on a single bet, which is approximately 2.703%. Why the difference? Because the above approach sometimes requires you to place more than one bet. If you bet multiple times, the house gets its take on every spin of the wheel, and this slowly whittles away your stack, so that the house advantage after an infinite number of spins approaches 100%. (Therefore, the Martingale system, which offers *no advantage to the player* also suffers the disadvantage of requiring many bets and virtually guarantees the house gets everything).

This suggests that, if we ignore the conditions of trying to reach £100 before losing £60, the best possible bet to make with your £60 is to stake it all at once, placing it *anywhere* on the table (except for the “five number bet” on a double zero table). Note also that an inside bet is no worse or better than an outside bet in terms of expectation. It only depends on how much “gamble” you’ve got in you regarding long shots with big payoffs.

For roulette the 3rd answer is most definatly the best.
However if you just wanted to win £40 then i’d go with the £2 min hand blackjack. The odds are more favourable and it will lengthen your time in the casino a lot so more enjoyment hopefully.