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. At this point the
dealer will say 'place your bets' and everyone at the table will start throwing
chips down like crazy. Each player plays with their own color chips. 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. 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. There are no winning outside bets for 0 or 00 results. Columns - at one end of the set of 38 numbers are
boxes with the words '2 to 1' written in them.
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. 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. Here are the
different bets you can make. 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. Sometimes the dealer
will ask you "Inside or Outside? That way, you're not locked in
and you always have the ability to change your mind. There's no advantage to
limiting yourself to inside or outside. Roulette chips can in fact be any denomination - $1, $5,
$25, etc. Inside bets can
usually be as small a you like, as long as the total of all your inside bets is
the table minimum. 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. " 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. There have been 152 spins (coincidentally,
4 x 38), and so we expect that each number should have come up 4 times on
average. 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. On even money bets when 0 comes up, instead of losing right
away, your bet is "imprisoned" and rides again for the next spin.