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. 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. There aren't many specific things that can be
considered roulette rules at the table, but here's one you shouldn't forget. Now lets take a look at each of the individual bets you can make. The
inside bets are made up of specific numbers or combinations of numbers within
the number layout, or along the border of it. 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. 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. Red or Black - you can choose to bet on
the outcome either being a red number, or a black number.
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. Here are the
different bets you can make. The house edge is the same whether you
make one bet per spin or several. 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. That's because if you're betting only inside and someone else is
betting only outside, he can give you both the same color chips and there won't
be any confusion. There's no advantage to
limiting yourself to inside or outside. In other games the color of the chip
denotes the denomination, but in Roulette the color denotes only which player
the chip belongs to. Roulette chips can in fact be any denomination - $1, $5,
$25, etc. Minimum bets work differently for inside and outside bets. 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. Now let's say
you've been playing Roulette for a few hours, betting on Red every time, and
you've been keeping track of what numbers have hit. The
chances of #27 coming up on a given spin are the same, whether it just come up
on the last spin or not - 1 in 38. 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. On an American wheel,
there are 38 spots - numbers 1-36, plus 0 and 00. The difference
between the true odds and what they actually pay you is 2/38, or 5.26%. The
last time we checked, Single 0 Roulette was available at the Stratosphere and
the Monte Carlo on the Vegas Strip. 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.