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. 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. 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. Now lets take a look at each of the individual bets you can make. 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. 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. This is different than inside bets, where the total of all of your inside bets must meet the table minimum. Red or Black - you can choose to bet on the outcome either being a red number, or a black number.

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. In most games players can continue making bets even while the ball is still spinning. 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. Each player's chips are a different color. 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. Sometimes the dealer will ask you "Inside or Outside? Remember that you can bet inside or outside if you like; there's no requirement to bet both on a given spin. 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. There have been 152 spins (coincidentally, 4 x 38), and so we expect that each number should have come up 4 times 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) if you win, the casino doesn't pay you 37 to 1, they pay you less - 35 to 1. The European wheel has a lower house edge (2.63%) because it has only 37 slots instead of 38 (no 00) In effect, this variation has the ability to turn a loss into a tie.