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. Now lets take a look at each of the individual bets you can make. 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. Split bet - you can place a single bet on two individual numbers if those numbers are beside each other on the table layout. Fiver number bet - there is only one five number bet available. There are no winning outside bets for 0 or 00 results. When you place an outside bet your bet must meet the table minimum. 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. Columns - at one end of the set of 38 numbers are boxes with the words '2 to 1' written in them.

Here are the different bets you can make. Each player's chips are a different color. " 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) That's because if you're betting only inside and someone else is betting only outside, he can give you both the same color chips and there won't be any confusion. If you're asked Inside or Outside, always answer "Both", even if you only intend to bet one or the other. Roulette chips can in fact be any denomination - $1, $5, $25, etc. Remember that you can bet inside or outside if you like; there's no requirement to bet both on a given spin. 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. If Black has come up for the last 10 spins in a row, the next spin is not more likely to be Red. There's an old saying, "The wheel has no memory. 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. There have been 152 spins (coincidentally, 4 x 38), and so we expect that each number should have come up 4 times on average. 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. 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. 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.