The first thing you should know before you learn anything about the bets you can make, is when and how you can make those bets. 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. If you have a player you likes to put down twenty different bets each time they play, the sessions are going to move a little slower. After the ball has started spinning, the dealer will wave his hands across the table and say 'no more bets'. 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. Fiver number bet - there is only one five number bet available. There are no winning outside bets for 0 or 00 results. When you place an outside bet your bet must meet the table minimum. 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. Dozens - a bet very similar to the columns bet, dozens lets you place a bet on either the first dozen numbers (1-12), the second dozen (13-24), or the third dozen (25-36)

Roulette is the game where you guess where the little marble is going to drop on the spinning wheel. now, let's see how to play roulette. 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. Here are the different bets you can make. You don't have to make just one kind of bet for each spin, you can make several, and you win if the ball lands on any of your numbers. That way if two players bet on the same number (or set of numbers), then the dealer knows who to pay, and arguments can't arise over who bet what. There's no advantage to limiting yourself to 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. It most other games a bet usually wins only even money, but Roulette gives you the chance to win 35 times your bet (a winning bet placed on a single number) All the bets on the layout carry the same house edge, with the exception of 5-number Line Bet (0, 00, 1, 2, 3), which carries a whopping 7.29% edge! Black and Red still have equal chances of hitting. There's an old saying, "The wheel has no memory. Here's another example: Since there are 38 slots on the wheel, we expect any given number to hit 1 out of 38 spins on average. If you play Roulette, the most important thing is to find a casino that offers the European wheel (which is called "Single 0" Roulette) The last time we checked, Single 0 Roulette was available at the Stratosphere and the Monte Carlo on the Vegas Strip. Atlantic City has a special rule which reduces the house edge to 2.7% on even money bets (Red/Black, Odd/Even, 1-18/19-36): If 0 or 00 comes up on on even money bet, you lose only half your bet. In effect, this variation has the ability to turn a loss into a tie.