Roulette is one of the casino’s oldest and most venerated games. A highlight of the original French Riviera casinos were the roulette tables where European’s royalty and members of high society would gather to gamble on whether they could predict which of the roulette wheel’s pockets would collect a tossed ball.
Many people are unaware, however, that roulette isn’t totally a game of luck. If you understand roulette basic strategy, the house odds and probabilities of the different types of roulette, your betting options and the table layout, you’ll enjoy more opportunities to succeed in the game.
These guidelines are applicable to both in-person roulette games and online roulette. Check out the Grande Vegas online casino’s manual which will give you a full overview of everything that you need to know to win at roulette.
Roulette
The game of roulette originated with French inventor Blaise Pascal’s “perpetual motion machine.” The machine was adopted by 17th century gambling houses which integrated them into the “Roly-Poly” English gambling game where people would spin a wheel and bet on the outcome. By the late 18th century, the roulette wheel had evolved into a wheel that featured 36 alternating red and black numbered pockets and a green zero pocket.
Players would toss a ball into the spinning wheel and bet on where the ball would fall within the wheel. In the 19th century, American gaming operators added a second green pocket which increased the house odds from 2.70% to 5.26%. The two variations became known as “European roulette” and “American roulette”.
If you’re playing European roulette your roulette will have 37 numbered slots (36 black and red and one green). If you’re playing American roulette, the 2 green zero slots make it a 38-pocket wheel. The key to playing successful roulette is the betting table.
You have multiple wagering options including inside bets – straight-up bets on a single number, split bets on two adjacent numbers, street bets on a row of three numbers, corner bets on for numbers that form a square, a six-line (double street) bet on two adjacent rows with six numbers, a Trip bet on three numbers (European roulette only) and a basket bet which includes bets on 0, 1, 2, and 3 in European roulette or 00, 1, 2, and 3 in American roulette.
You can also place an outside bet which includes bets on the color (black or red) of the pocket into which you predict that the ball will fall, bets on whether the ball will fall into a pocket with an odd or even number, a high or low number or on one of the three dozens groups 1-12, 13-24, 25-36 (dozens bets). There are also options for betting on the zero (European roulette) or either of the zero pockets (American roulette).
As you look at the table, you’ll see the inside bets options in the central area of the table with the numbers laid out in a grid. The Outisde bets surround the grid with specific areas for each type of bet (e.g., red, black, odd, even). Inside bets are riskier but pay out at a higher rate of payout while outside bets are less risky but pay out at a lower rate of payout.
House Edge and Probability
It’s important to understand the mathematics of roulette and the probabilities of different bets before you start playing. The double zero pocket in American roulette increases the house edge and reduces the probability that the player will achieve a win.
There are 37 pockets in a European roulette wheel (1-36 plus a zero pocket) which gives the house an edge of 2.70%. The American roulette wheel, with 38 pockets (numbers 1-36, a zero pocket and a double zero pocket) boosts the house edge up to 5.26%. The probabilities of single-number bets succeeding are lowest, followed by groups of numbers. The probability that a bet will succeed are highest when there’s close to a 50% chance of success (odds or evens, blacks or reds. Payouts for both American and European roulette are 35 to 1.
Strategies
It’s common for roulette players to use strategies when they play roulette. These strategies are completely unscientific and offer no proof that employing a strategy will increase wins. However, it is fun to experiment with such strategies if you can do so while staying within your gambling budget.
Some of the most popular roulette strategies include:
- The Martingale Strategy – promotes the idea that you should double your bet after every loss because eventually, you’ll recover past losses with a single win.
- The Fibonacci Strategy – based on the Fibonacci sequence in which each bet amount is the sum of the two preceding ones
- The D’Alembert Strategy – suggests that you increase or decrease your bet size by one unit after every spin of the wheel, regardless of whether you won or lost
- The Labouchere Strategy – determines the bet size by a sequence of numbers
- The James Bond Strategy – utilizes a specific betting pattern that covers a wide range of numbers.
Prepare for your roulette gaming session before you place your first bet by reading Grande Vegas’s roulette guidebook.
