Roulette

As most great games are, the basics of Roulette are simple. A croupier spins a wheel with numbered slots on it and where a bouncing ball eventually lands on one number. Before the wheel is spun, players bet on which number they think the ball will land on. You can place one or more chips on one number, or you can place chips on a combination of numbers which increases your total bet but also increases your chance of one or more of your bets winning.

Roulette Payouts

Bets pay out according to their probability. For instance, a winning bet placed on just one number will pay 35 to 1. If you split a bet between two numbers by placing your chip(s) on the line between them, iyou'll be paid 17 to 1 if either number wins. Your payout is half because your chances of winning, by selecting two numbers, are twice as good.

There are lots of other bet combinations. You can bet on any two rows, 6 numbers in all, and if any of them win the payout is 5 to 1. If you bet on a third of the numbers at a time, either a full column of 12 numbers, or 1-12, 13-24 or 25-36, the payout is 2 to 1. Bets where you have, basically, a fifty-fifty chance of winning, such as betting on whether the winning number will simply be "red" or "black" or "odd" or "even", the payout is only 1 to 1.

For other bets and payouts consult the casinos payout tables.

Special Section Bets

Bets placed on a specific group of numbers are called “Section Bets”. Some section bets are so popular they have been named! In basic Roulette games you have to know which numbers are included in these section bets and manually place the chips on that set of numbers. In more deluxe versions of Roulette you can place the most common section bets with one click.

Voisins, Tier and Orphelins

"Voisins" is the seventeen number section on the wheel from 22 to 25 and is particularly popular in Eastern Europe, especially Czech Republic. The "Tier" is the third of the wheel between 27 and 33 and is very popular in Britain.  “Orphelins” are the numbers not in either the Tier or Voisins sections.

Voisins section bets are a personal favourite of mine, mostly because they've been lucky for me. I always seem to come out ahead with this combination of straight up and split bets.

Regional Variations

There are two basic types of Roulette: American Roulette and European Roulette. There are 37 numbers on a European Roulette wheel but in American Roulette there is both a 0 and a 00 making 38 numbers in total. That one extra number on the wheel gives any number you pick slightly less chance of winning. The House Edge – or how much more likely it is that the casino will win and the player will lose – is 5.26% in American Roulette but drops to 2.63% in European Roulette.  Many players prefer European Roulette because the odds of winning are just a bit better.

Roulette can also be played by “Atlantic City Rules”. In this game, if the ball lands on 0 or 00 you only lose half of any even money bets that you’ve placed (red, black, odd, even, 1-18, 19-36).

Roulette Tournaments

Many online casinos host Roulette tournaments. In a tournament, each player pays the same entry fee and starts out with the same number of chips. You then have a specified playing time, usually 30 minutes or so, to see how many chips you can accumulate. tournament players don't necessarily all play at the same time. You can usually play your thirty minutes any time within a 24 hour period. In most tournaments, if you aren’t happy with your score you can pay another entry fee and try it again.

Tournament entry fees are generally quite low, usually £1 or £2 or maybe £5. Sometimes it’s even free to enter. The prize usually depends on the entry fee amount. Prizes in £1 tournaments are lower than in £5 tournaments.

Live Dealer Roulette

Thanks to fast computers and improved internet connections, it is now possible to play casino games by viewing an actual game table through a live video feed. Instead of playing a completely computerized game, you actually see a dealer dealing real cards or, in the case of Roulette, a living, breathing croupier spinning a real wheel. While many of these video feeds come from a studio where there  are no players, some come from real casinos so you can actually see other players standing around the table and placing bets. You can almost always chat with the dealer and you can often chat with the other online players as well.

Most live dealer casinos offer a relatively limited selection of games, but they all have several Roulette tables to choose from! To learn more about live dealer casinos, please see our Live Dealer Games section for reviews of some of the most popular live casino sites.

Roulette Strategy

Some say that no strategy can really help you win Roulette since each spin of the wheel selects a winning number completely randomly. Some players believe that if the ball has been landing on red a lot it must be about due to land on a black number, or that if a particular number has just been hit it isn’t likely to be hit again right away. But there is actually no truth to this misconception at all!  Each number is completely random and is not related to previous winning numbers. Having said that, many players also have favourite numbers or groups of numbers that, over time, seem to have been lucky for them, so they keep playing those numbers until they win.

One sure way you can increase your chances of winning, though, is to bet on more than one number. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to bet more than you’d bet on one number – just take that bet and split it on several numbers. You’ll win smaller payouts this way, but you’ll win more often and that, I think, makes the game a lot more fun!

Another obvious but often ignored method of increasing your winnings is to quit while you are ahead.  ;)