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. 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. When the new session starts you can put your chips down where you want to bet, and you don't really have to be in a hurry. 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. On inside bets, the total of all of your bets must add up to at least the table minimum. Fiver number bet - there is only one five number bet available. There are no winning outside bets for 0 or 00 results. Columns - at one end of the set of 38 numbers are boxes with the words '2 to 1' written in them.

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. 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. The house edge is the same whether you make one bet per spin or several. 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. 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) 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. Black and Red still have equal chances of hitting. There have been 152 spins (coincidentally, 4 x 38), and so we expect that each number should have come up 4 times on average. The wheel has no memory. The chances of #27 coming up on a given spin are the same, whether it just come up on the last spin or not - 1 in 38. 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. On an American wheel, there are 38 spots - numbers 1-36, plus 0 and 00. The European wheel has a lower house edge (2.63%) because it has only 37 slots instead of 38 (no 00) 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.