A session ends when the ball lands where it may, and the dealers clear
the board of losing bets (and pay winning ones of course) 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. All of your chips of the same
color are worth the same amount. Most roulette sessions move at a fairly slow pace, to accommodate the number of
people betting, and the variety on which they can bet. 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. Red or Black - you can choose to bet on
the outcome either being a red number, or a black number. 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.
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. Making a bet is easy - you just place your chip(s) on the number(s), color, or
sets you want to bet on. 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. The house edge is the same whether you
make one bet per spin or several. In other games the color of the chip
denotes the denomination, but in Roulette the color denotes only which player
the chip belongs to. 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) 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! Black and Red still have equal chances of hitting. There's an old saying,
"The wheel has no memory. 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 European
wheel has a lower house edge (2.63%) because it has only 37 slots instead of 38
(no 00) If you play Roulette, the most important thing is to find a casino that
offers the European wheel (which is called "Single 0" Roulette) 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. In effect, this variation has the ability to turn a loss into a tie.