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) 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. 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. 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. Low or High - this bet lets you predict whether you think the next number to come up will be part of the range from 1 to 18, or part of the range from 19 to 36. Columns - at one end of the set of 38 numbers are boxes with the words '2 to 1' written in them.

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. 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) Here are the different bets you can make. you will likely lose money faster the more bets you make, because you're betting more. In most games players can continue making bets even while the ball is still spinning. Then he'll scoop up all the losing bets towards the dealer area. That way, you're not locked in and you always have the ability to change your mind. Roulette chips can in fact be any denomination - $1, $5, $25, etc. Inside bets can usually be as small a you like, as long as the total of all your inside bets is the table minimum. " 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. 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. if you win, the casino doesn't pay you 37 to 1, they pay you less - 35 to 1. 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. If you win the second spin, your bet is "released from prison" and you get it back. In effect, this variation has the ability to turn a loss into a tie.