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. Each roulette table moves in sessions, each session is associated with a spin of the wheel and that spin's result. 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. 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. Split bet - you can place a single bet on two individual numbers if those numbers are beside each other on the table layout. 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. The outside bets on a roulette board are simply the bets that reside 'outside' of the main playing area of 38 numbers. 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.

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. 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 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. 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. If you're asked Inside or Outside, always answer "Both", even if you only intend to bet one or the other. There's no advantage to limiting yourself to inside or outside. In other games the color of the chip denotes the denomination, but in Roulette the color denotes only which player the chip belongs to. When you buy in, tell the dealer what denomination you want. 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. 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! It's important to understand that the outcome of the roulette wheel is truly random. The wheel has no memory. You can certainly switch to another number if you want, but that won't improve or worsen your chances. On an American wheel, there are 38 spots - numbers 1-36, plus 0 and 00. if you win, the casino doesn't pay you 37 to 1, they pay you less - 35 to 1. 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.