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. 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. 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. There aren't many specific things that can be
considered roulette rules at the table, but here's one you shouldn't forget. After the ball has started spinning, the dealer will wave his hands across the
table and say 'no more bets'. Just sit back and let the ball fall where
it may. Now lets take a look at each of the individual bets you can make. The outside bets on a roulette board are
simply the bets that reside 'outside' of the main playing area of 38 numbers. This is different than inside bets,
where the total of all of your inside bets must meet the table minimum. There
are the different types of outside bets.
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) Here are the
different bets you can make. In most games players can continue
making bets even while the ball is still spinning. There's no advantage to
limiting yourself to inside or outside. Minimum bets work differently for inside and outside bets. Inside bets can
usually be as small a you like, as long as the total of all your inside bets is
the table minimum. 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. 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! There have been 152 spins (coincidentally,
4 x 38), and so we expect that each number should have come up 4 times on
average. You can certainly switch to
another number if you want, but that won't improve or worsen your chances. 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. The difference
between the true odds and what they actually pay you is 2/38, or 5.26%. 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. If
you win the second spin, your bet is "released from prison" and you
get it back.