Each player plays with their own color chips. 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. 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. Now lets take a look at each of the individual bets you can make. 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. Split bet - you can place a single bet on two individual numbers if those numbers are beside each other on the table layout. There are no winning outside bets for 0 or 00 results. Red or Black - you can choose to bet on the outcome either being a red number, or a black number. 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.

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. 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. 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) 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. Don't reach for your winnings until the dealer removes the marker, or the dealer will scold you. That way if two players bet on the same number (or set of numbers), then the dealer knows who to pay, and arguments can't arise over who bet what. 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. 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. if you win, the casino doesn't pay you 37 to 1, they pay you less - 35 to 1. 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.