At this point the dealer will say 'place your bets' and everyone at the table will start throwing chips down like crazy. 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. Most roulette sessions move at a fairly slow pace, to accommodate the number of people betting, and the variety on which they can bet. 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. Now lets take a look at each of the individual bets you can make. Split bet - you can place a single bet on two individual numbers if those numbers are beside each other on the table layout. The outside bets on a roulette board are simply the bets that reside 'outside' of the main playing area of 38 numbers. When you place an outside bet your bet must meet the table minimum. There are the different types of outside bets. Red or Black - you can choose to bet on the outcome either being a red number, or a black number.

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. 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. In most games players can continue making bets even while the ball is still spinning. When the ball is getting ready to drop, the dealer will wave his hand over the table, which means "No more bets". New players often have to be told this repeatedly the first time they play because they kept forgetting and because they're excited about collecting their winnings. Roulette chips can in fact be any denomination - $1, $5, $25, etc. Minimum bets work differently for inside and outside bets. 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. 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. The wheel has no memory. 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%. The European wheel has a lower house edge (2.63%) because it has only 37 slots instead of 38 (no 00) The last time we checked, Single 0 Roulette was available at the Stratosphere and the Monte Carlo on the Vegas Strip. 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.