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. 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. At this point, as you intuition may have mentioned to you, you can't place any more bets. Now lets take a look at each of the individual bets you can make. 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. 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. Fiver number bet - there is only one five number bet available.

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. When the ball is getting ready to drop, the dealer will wave his hand over the table, which means "No more bets". 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. That's because if you're betting only inside and someone else is betting only outside, he can give you both the same color chips and there won't be any confusion. Roulette games have minimum bets, which will be posted on a placard at the table. Remember that you can bet inside or outside if you like; there's no requirement to bet both on a given spin. 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. There's an old saying, "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. Your odds of winning a one-number bet are 37 to 1 (37 ways to lose, 1 way to win) If you play Roulette, the most important thing is to find a casino that offers the European wheel (which is called "Single 0" Roulette) 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. You don't get paid for the win, though, but it's better than losing it outright. In effect, this variation has the ability to turn a loss into a tie.