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. 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. After the ball has started spinning, the dealer will wave his hands across the table and say 'no more bets'. At this point, as you intuition may have mentioned to you, you can't place any more bets. On inside bets, the total of all of your bets must add up to at least the table minimum. 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. Fiver number bet - there is only one five number bet available. This is different than inside bets, where the total of all of your inside bets must meet the table minimum. 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.

now, let's see how to play roulette. 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. 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. If you're asked Inside or Outside, always answer "Both", even if you only intend to bet one or the other. In other games the color of the chip denotes the denomination, but in Roulette the color denotes only which player the chip belongs to. When you buy in, tell the dealer what denomination you want. Minimum bets work differently for inside and outside bets. Remember that you can bet inside or outside if you like; there's no requirement to bet both on a given spin. 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. 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. 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. On even money bets when 0 comes up, instead of losing right away, your bet is "imprisoned" and rides again for the next spin. In effect, this variation has the ability to turn a loss into a tie.