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. 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. Each player plays with their own color chips. 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. After the ball has started spinning, the dealer will wave his hands across the table and say 'no more bets'. The inside bets are made up of specific numbers or combinations of numbers within the number layout, or along the border of it. Split bet - you can place a single bet on two individual numbers if those numbers are beside each other on the table layout. 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. 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. When the ball falls into a slot, the dealer will announce the number and the color, and place a marker on the layout where the winning number is. 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. " when you're buying chips, to find out whether you're making inside bets (the ones listed in purple in the table, on specific numbers) or outside bets (the ones listed in yellow, on kinds of numbers) Minimum bets work differently for inside and outside bets. For outside bets, any bet you make has to be the table minimum. It most other games a bet usually wins only even money, but Roulette gives you the chance to win 35 times your bet (a winning bet placed on a single number) In this way, Roulette is more like slots - one single bet can win a lot. It's important to understand that the outcome of the roulette wheel is truly random. If Black has come up for the last 10 spins in a row, the next spin is not more likely to be Red. Black and Red still have equal chances of hitting. 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. 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%. If you play Roulette, the most important thing is to find a casino that offers the European wheel (which is called "Single 0" Roulette) 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.