At this point the dealer will say 'place your bets' and everyone at the table will start throwing chips down like crazy. 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. If you have a player you likes to put down twenty different bets each time they play, the sessions are going to move a little slower. Now lets take a look at each of the individual bets you can make. On inside bets, the total of all of your bets must add up to at least the table minimum. Street bet - this is a bet not unlike a split. It allows you to bet on three different numbers with the same bet. 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. Columns - at one end of the set of 38 numbers are boxes with the words '2 to 1' written in them. Dozens - a bet very similar to the columns bet, dozens lets you place a bet on either the first dozen numbers (1-12), the second dozen (13-24), or the third dozen (25-36)

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. Making a bet is easy - you just place your chip(s) on the number(s), color, or sets you want to bet on. 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) 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. The house edge is the same whether you make one bet per spin or several. Sometimes the dealer will ask you "Inside or Outside? There's no advantage to limiting yourself to inside or outside. When you buy in, tell the dealer what denomination you want. Remember that you can bet inside or outside if you like; there's no requirement to bet both on a given spin. 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! 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. There have been 152 spins (coincidentally, 4 x 38), and so we expect that each number should have come up 4 times on average. If you play Roulette, the most important thing is to find a casino that offers the European wheel (which is called "Single 0" Roulette) The last time we checked, Single 0 Roulette was available at the Stratosphere and the Monte Carlo on the Vegas Strip. Atlantic City has a special rule which reduces the house edge to 2.7% on even money bets (Red/Black, Odd/Even, 1-18/19-36): If 0 or 00 comes up on on even money bet, you lose only half your bet. In effect, this variation has the ability to turn a loss into a tie.