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. 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. 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. At this point, as you intuition may have mentioned to you, you can't place any more bets. On inside bets, the total of all of your bets must add up to at least the table minimum. Street bet - this is a bet not unlike a split. It allows you to bet on three different numbers with the same bet. Red or Black - you can choose to bet on the outcome either being a red number, or a black number. 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.

Roulette is the game where you guess where the little marble is going to drop on the spinning wheel. 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. When the ball is getting ready to drop, the dealer will wave his hand over the table, which means "No more bets". Don't reach for your winnings until the dealer removes the marker, or the dealer will scold you. Each player's chips are a different color. That way if two players bet on the same number (or set of numbers), then the dealer knows who to pay, and arguments can't arise over who bet what. " 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) 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! If Black has come up for the last 10 spins in a row, the next spin is not more likely to be Red. Black and Red still have equal chances of hitting. " That means it doesn't know what it spun before, and even if it did, the wheel can't select what number comes up out of its own volition. The wheel has no memory. You can certainly switch to another number if you want, but that won't improve or worsen your chances. 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.