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. 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. Most roulette sessions move at a fairly slow pace, to accommodate the number of people betting, and the variety on which they can bet. Now lets take a look at each of the individual bets you can make. Fiver number bet - there is only one five number bet available. 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. Red or Black - you can choose to bet on the outcome either being a red number, or a black number.

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". 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. Then he'll scoop up all the losing bets towards the dealer area. Each player's chips are a different color. There's no advantage to limiting yourself to inside or outside. Roulette chips can in fact be any denomination - $1, $5, $25, etc. For outside bets, any bet you make has to be the table minimum. Here's a handy way to remember the payouts when you're betting on a set of numbers: Take 36 divided by the quantity of numbers you're betting on, and subtract 1. 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. 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 wheel has no memory. 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. On even money bets when 0 comes up, instead of losing right away, your bet is "imprisoned" and rides again for the next spin.