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. All of your chips of the same color are worth the same amount. 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. After the ball has started spinning, the dealer will wave his hands across the table and say 'no more bets'. At this point, as you intuition may have mentioned to you, you can't place any more bets. Just sit back and let the ball fall where it may. 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. Split bet - you can place a single bet on two individual numbers if those numbers are beside each other on the table layout. Red or Black - you can choose to bet on the outcome either being a red number, or a black number.

Roulette would be a great game were it not for the high house edge - usually 5.26%, sometimes as low as 2.63%, which is still higher than blackjack, craps, or baccarat. Making a bet is easy - you just place your chip(s) on the number(s), color, or sets you want to bet on. 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) In most games players can continue making bets even while the ball is still spinning. Each player's chips are a different color. Sometimes the dealer will ask you "Inside or Outside? " when you're buying chips, to find out whether you're making inside bets (the ones listed in purple in the table, on specific numbers) or outside bets (the ones listed in yellow, on kinds of numbers) If you're asked Inside or Outside, always answer "Both", even if you only intend to bet one or the other. Inside bets can usually be as small a you like, as long as the total of all your inside bets is the table minimum. 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. 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. Now let's say you've been playing Roulette for a few hours, betting on Red every time, and you've been keeping track of what numbers have hit. The wheel has no memory. You can certainly switch to another number if you want, but that won't improve or worsen your chances. 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. 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.