Roulette is one of the casino world’s most popular games. It has offered glamour, mystery, and excitement to gamblers since the 17th century. While it is a simple game based solely on luck, serious players can use a strategy to maximize their winnings.
Whether you play in land-based casinos or online, the Roulette wheel and table have a special charm. It’s the only table game where you can bet on a single number and get a payout of 35 times your wager. The wheel is a solid wooden disk, slightly convex in shape, with metal compartments (called frets or pockets) that are painted alternately red and black. Thirty-six of these compartments are numbered, non-consecutively from 1 to 36, while two green ones on American roulette wheels carry the symbols 0 and 00.
A croupier, or dealer, spins the wheel while players place their bets. When the croupier announces that betting is closed, players watch as the ball spins around and settles into one of the numbers on the board. Once the winning number is determined, the croupier removes the losing bets from the table and pays the winners with normal casino chips. The remaining chips on the table become part of the house’s income.
Each player gets a color of roulette chips that differentiates them from the other players at the table. Those chips are different from regular casino chips, as they have no value away from the roulette table. If you want to leave a table, simply tell the croupier that you would like to cash out your chips. They will give you the same value in regular casino chips that you used to purchase your roulette chips.
Besides the main bets, there are also several side bets to choose from, which can increase your chances of winning. These include the Line Bet, which pays out if you make a row of three consecutive numbers. The Split Bet, or a cheval in French, is another option. This bet is similar to the Street Bet, except your chip(s) will straddle the line between two rows of numbers. The Line Bet has a higher payout than the Split Bet. There are also Outside Bets, which cover categories of numbers rather than specific ones. These bets have lower payouts, but they offer more security than the individual number bets. The Dozens Bet, for example, pays out if the winning number is in the first, second, or third dozen on the table. The Odd or Even Bet, also known as impair et pair in French, is another outside bet that offers an even money payout of 1:1.