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. 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. Split bet - you
can place a single bet on two individual numbers if those numbers are beside
each other on the table layout. Street bet - this is a bet not unlike a split.
It allows you to bet on three different numbers with the same bet. There are no winning outside bets for 0 or 00 results. When you place an outside
bet your bet must meet the table minimum. This is different than inside bets,
where the total of all of your inside bets must meet the table minimum. 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.
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. You don't have to make just one kind of bet for
each spin, you can make several, and you win if the ball lands on any of your
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. 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. 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. Minimum bets work differently for inside and outside bets. 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. Black and Red still have equal chances of hitting. There have been 152 spins (coincidentally,
4 x 38), and so we expect that each number should have come up 4 times on
average. The wheel has no memory. 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%.