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. 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) All of your chips of the same
color are worth the same amount. After the ball has started spinning, the dealer will wave his hands across the
table and say 'no more bets'. 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. Fiver number bet - there
is only one five number bet available. Odd or Even - similar
to the red black bet, this even money bet is based on whether the resulting
number will be odd or even. 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. Columns - at one end of the set of 38 numbers are
boxes with the words '2 to 1' written in them.
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) 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 is getting
ready to drop, the dealer will wave his hand over the table, which means "No
more bets". 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. 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. There's no advantage to
limiting yourself to inside or outside. Roulette games have minimum bets, which will be posted on a
placard at the table. For outside bets, any bet you make has to be the table minimum. 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. 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! 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. 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. If you play Roulette, the most important thing is to find a casino that
offers the European wheel (which is called "Single 0" Roulette)