do patterns actually exist or is my brain just making stuff up

I think that there are patterns, because the humans/dealers have the same behavior, they can't change it on longer run. I also observed that providers change the speed of the wheel to mitigate that effect.

I tested on 1573 spins on azure roulette, in 3 sessions each by ~500 spins and a strategy that worked quite good was abs(diff between last 2 winning numbers) - 1, as the target number, plus 3 neighbours. Bet until hit one of the number. But the game became boring. My betting strategy was increase by 0.5 unit/number after each loss , the starting bet being bankroll/500.

I started with 500 units of my currency, and ended with 23810.

But you should be prepared on average 8 to 13 losing in a row, the longest was 27, when the ball lands only on one side of the wheel. I suppose each of us observed this.

streaks might look like patterns but that’s just variance doing its job, especially on live dealer streams where even stream interruptions mess with your sense of flow. if you want to exploit anything, try column bets instead, at least there you manage risk better.

i notice the same streaks, but chasing them never did my bankroll any favors. patterns feel real, but roulette is built to crush that gut feeling every time.