Each roulette table moves in sessions, each session is associated with a spin of the wheel and that spin's result. A session ends when the ball lands where it may, and the dealers clear the board of losing bets (and pay winning ones of course) You trade in your checks (which most people think of as regular casino chips, but they're actually called checks) for roulette chips when a new session starts, and the dealer assigns you a number and denomination. All of your chips of the same color are worth the same amount. The inside bets are made up of specific numbers or combinations of numbers within the number layout, or along the border of it. On inside bets, the total of all of your bets must add up to at least the table minimum. Straight-up bet - this is the classic roulette bet. Choose any one of the 38 numbers and put your chips down on that number for the chance to win back at 35 to 1. Split bet - you can place a single bet on two individual numbers if those numbers are beside each other on the table layout. Red or Black - you can choose to bet on the outcome either being a red number, or a black number. Low or High - this bet lets you predict whether you think the next number to come up will be part of the range from 1 to 18, or part of the range from 19 to 36.

Making a bet is easy - you just place your chip(s) on the number(s), color, or sets you want to bet on. For most bets it's fairly obvious - you can't miss the Red diamond for Red bets, and things like Even, 1-18, and 1st 12 are written out in plain English. We've added blue circled letters to the diagram to point out how to make the not-so-obvious bets (the sets of 2-6 numbers) The house edge is the same whether you make one bet per spin or several. When the ball falls into a slot, the dealer will announce the number and the color, and place a marker on the layout where the winning number is. Then he'll scoop up all the losing bets towards the dealer area. Sometimes the dealer will ask you "Inside or Outside? In other games the color of the chip denotes the denomination, but in Roulette the color denotes only which player the chip belongs to. For outside bets, any bet you make has to be the table minimum. Remember that you can bet inside or outside if you like; there's no requirement to bet both on a given spin. On an American wheel, there are 38 spots - numbers 1-36, plus 0 and 00. if you win, the casino doesn't pay you 37 to 1, they pay you less - 35 to 1. If you play Roulette, the most important thing is to find a casino that offers the European wheel (which is called "Single 0" Roulette) European games have an option called en prison which reduces the house edge to 1.35%, but it's generally not available in the U.S., even in casinos that use the European wheel. On even money bets when 0 comes up, instead of losing right away, your bet is "imprisoned" and rides again for the next spin. If you win the second spin, your bet is "released from prison" and you get it back. In effect, this variation has the ability to turn a loss into a tie.