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. Each roulette table moves in sessions, each session is associated with a spin of the wheel and that spin's result. A session ends when the ball lands where it may, and the dealers clear the board of losing bets (and pay winning ones of course) All of your chips of the same color are worth the same amount. Most roulette sessions move at a fairly slow pace, to accommodate the number of people betting, and the variety on which they can bet. At this point, as you intuition may have mentioned to you, you can't place any more bets. There are no winning outside bets for 0 or 00 results. When you place an outside bet your bet must meet the table minimum. Red or Black - you can choose to bet on the outcome either being a red number, or a black number.

We've added blue circled letters to the diagram to point out how to make the not-so-obvious bets (the sets of 2-6 numbers) you will likely lose money faster the more bets you make, because you're betting more. When the ball is getting ready to drop, the dealer will wave his hand over the table, which means "No more bets". Then he'll scoop up all the losing bets towards the dealer area. Sometimes the dealer will ask you "Inside or Outside? 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. Roulette games have minimum bets, which will be posted on a placard at the table. 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. " 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. 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.