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. Each roulette table moves in sessions, each session is associated with a spin of the wheel and that spin's result. A session ends when the ball lands where it may, and the dealers clear the board of losing bets (and pay winning ones of course) At this point the dealer will say 'place your bets' and everyone at the table will start throwing chips down like crazy. All of your chips of the same color are worth the same amount. Just sit back and let the ball fall where it may. Fiver number bet - there is only one five number bet available. 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. Columns - at one end of the set of 38 numbers are boxes with the words '2 to 1' written in them.

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) The house edge is the same whether you make one bet per spin or several. That way, you're not locked in and you always have the ability to change your mind. There's no advantage to limiting yourself to inside or outside. 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. For outside bets, any bet you make has to be the table minimum. In this way, Roulette is more like slots - one single bet can win a lot. 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. There have been 152 spins (coincidentally, 4 x 38), and so we expect that each number should have come up 4 times on average. You can certainly switch to another number if you want, but that won't improve or worsen your chances. The difference between the true odds and what they actually pay you is 2/38, or 5.26%. If you win the second spin, your bet is "released from prison" and you get it back.