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. Most roulette sessions move at a fairly slow pace, to accommodate the number of people betting, and the variety on which they can bet. 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. Red or Black - you can choose to bet on the outcome either being a red number, or a black number. Columns - at one end of the set of 38 numbers are boxes with the words '2 to 1' written in them.

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) The house edge is the same whether you make one bet per spin or several. Then he'll scoop up all the losing bets towards the dealer area. Each player's chips are a different color. That's because if you're betting only inside and someone else is betting only outside, he can give you both the same color chips and there won't be any confusion. That way, you're not locked in and you always have the ability to change your mind. 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! Black and Red still have equal chances of hitting. 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. You can certainly switch to another number if you want, but that won't improve or worsen your chances. The European wheel has a lower house edge (2.63%) because it has only 37 slots instead of 38 (no 00) 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. On even money bets when 0 comes up, instead of losing right away, your bet is "imprisoned" and rides again for the next spin. In effect, this variation has the ability to turn a loss into a tie.