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. Each roulette table moves in sessions, each session is associated with a spin of the wheel and that spin's result. At this point the dealer will say 'place your bets' and everyone at the table will start throwing chips down like crazy. If you haven't read up on the rest of the site I'll quickly go over the different colors of chips and how they relate to the rest of the roulette rules. Each player plays with their own color chips. The inside bets are made up of specific numbers or combinations of numbers within the number layout, or along the border of it. Corner bet - lets you bet on four adjoining numbers. Placing your chips at the point where four numbers meet will indicate you want a corner bet. There are the different types of outside bets. 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)

You should always calculate your expected loss and how long you can play on a given bankroll before playing any game, but with roulette it's especially important. 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. 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. 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. New players often have to be told this repeatedly the first time they play because they kept forgetting and because they're excited about collecting their winnings. Roulette chips can in fact be any denomination - $1, $5, $25, etc. When you buy in, tell the dealer what denomination you want. 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) In this way, Roulette is more like slots - one single bet can win a lot. Here's a handy way to remember the payouts when you're betting on a set of numbers: Take 36 divided by the quantity of numbers you're betting on, and subtract 1. 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. It's more important to know what the house edge is, than how to calculate it, but here's a quick analysis in case you're interested. Your odds of winning a one-number bet are 37 to 1 (37 ways to lose, 1 way to win) The difference between the true odds and what they actually pay you is 2/38, or 5.26%. 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.