At this point the
dealer will say 'place your bets' and everyone at the table will start throwing
chips down like crazy. If you haven't read up on the rest of the site I'll
quickly go over the different colors of chips and how they relate to the rest of
the roulette rules. 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. Most roulette sessions move at a fairly slow pace, to accommodate the number of
people betting, and the variety on which they can bet. After the ball has started spinning, the dealer will wave his hands across the
table and say 'no more bets'. On inside bets, the total of all
of your bets must add up to at least the table minimum. There are no winning outside bets for 0 or 00 results. This is different than inside bets,
where the total of all of your inside bets must meet the table minimum. There
are the different types of outside bets. 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.
Making a bet is easy - you just place your chip(s) on the number(s), color, or
sets you want to bet on. 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. 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 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. 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. All the bets on the layout carry the same house edge, with the exception
of 5-number Line Bet (0, 00, 1, 2, 3), which carries a whopping 7.29% edge! There's an old saying,
"The wheel has no memory. 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. Your odds of winning a
one-number bet are 37 to 1 (37 ways to lose, 1 way to win) The difference
between the true odds and what they actually pay you is 2/38, or 5.26%. You don't get paid for the win, though, but it's better than losing
it outright.