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) 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. 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. Just sit back and let the ball fall where
it may. Street bet - this is a bet not unlike a split.
It allows you to bet on three different numbers with the same bet. 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.
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. For most bets it's fairly obvious - you can't miss the
Red diamond for Red bets, and things like Even, 1-18, and 1st 12 are written out
in plain English. In most games players can continue
making bets even while the ball is still spinning. 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. Don't reach for your winnings until the dealer
removes the marker, or the dealer will scold you. 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? 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. For outside bets, any bet you make has to be the table minimum. 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. 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. if you win, the
casino doesn't pay you 37 to 1, they pay you less - 35 to 1. If you play Roulette, the most important thing is to find a casino that
offers the European wheel (which is called "Single 0" Roulette) The
last time we checked, Single 0 Roulette was available at the Stratosphere and
the Monte Carlo on the Vegas Strip.