The Incredible Game of Roulette!

Roulette is a remarkable casino game. It is fashioned off the work of French physicist and mathematician, Blaise Pascal from the 17th century. The meaning of Roulette is ‘Little Wheel’, but there’s nothing little about the fun-filled entertainment and winning potential of this casino game. Pascal’s efforts at creating a perpetual motion machine resulted in arguably one of the most popular casino games in history being created. The modern game of Roulette has only been slightly modified from the original version.

There are some 37 numbers on a standard French Roulette and European Roulette wheel, and 38 numbers on an American Roulette wheel. The sum of all 36 numbers adds up to 666, considered by many to be the devil’s number. Fast-forward to the 1800s in America, and that’s when the 00 variants first appeared on the scene. This casino game won critical acclaim from players around the world, and it wasn’t long before Roulette became the poster child of land-based casinos, and later online casinos too!

What makes Roulette such an exciting game to play?

Roulette is a casino table game that relies purely on chance. Players have no influence over the outcome of every spin, but intelligent gameplay and bankroll management can have a significant impact on your winning chances. For example, there are multiple variants of Roulette available including French Roulette, European Roulette, and American Roulette. Each game has unique odds and betting options. It is the variety of Roulette games that resonates with players, since the games have a distinct personality, and different playing techniques are required for each variant.

French Roulette is a particularly exciting variant with French wording emblazoned on the Roulette betting deck and a unique table layout. What is remarkable about French Roulette is the house edge can be reduced to as little as 1.35%. This is thanks to the ‘la partage’ rule where players get to enjoy a much lower the house edge with certain wagers. When an even money wager is placed, and the ball lands on the green 0 slot, the wager will be split in two, with the house winning 50% and the player winning 50%.

European Roulette is quite possibly the most popular of all the Roulette variants, although the house edge in this game is 2.70%. With European Roulette, there are no ‘la partage’ or ‘en prison’ rules, but players can make calculated betting decisions with Roulette strategies, bankroll management techniques, and probability analysis to anticipate which quadrant the ball is likely to land in. While this type of analysis typically falls outside the scope of most players’ understanding, mathematicians and physicists have shown remarkable progress in being able to anticipate quadrant-based outcomes.

American Roulette offers players the option of placing wagers on a 0 and a 00 in addition to numbers 1 – 36. This raises the house edge in American Roulette to 5.26%. Some players question the viability of playing a game with such a high house edge, but since the outcomes are based purely on chance, many players enjoy the option of placing an additional wager on a 00. This increases the range of possible bets. Besides, many Roulette players are superstitious and believe the 00 slot to be a fortuitous addition to the casino wheel and dismiss the increased house advantage of the game. In total, there are 38 divisions/slots on an American Roulette wheel.

What Roulette Bets Pay the Most and What Bets Pay the Least?

Despite there being multiple variants of Roulette, the payouts are similar for the most part. The most lucrative payoff is on a straight-up bet. This is a bet where you place a wager on an individual number, including the 0 in European, French and American Roulette, and the 00 in American Roulette. Any time you place your chips on one number, and that number lands, you will win a payout of 35:1. This is the most lucrative bet in roulette, although the odds of that happening in American Roulette are 2.63% (1÷38), and 2.70% in European and French Roulette (1÷37). That the house pays odds of 1:35 on individual numbers is attributed to the house edge for the casino. For a $100 wager on an individual number, you can win $3,500 on a straight up bet.

Split bets – when you place a wager between individual numbers (such as 10 and 13, 22 and 25, 36 and 35, etc.), the payout is 17:1. For a $100 wager, you could win $1700 on a split bet that comes good.

Street bets – when you place a wager on 3 numbers on a line, this is known as a street bet. An example of a street bet could be a wager on 4, 5, 6, or 0, 1, 2 The payout on Street bets is 11:1. A $100 wager will pay out $1,100.

Corner bets – when you place a wager on 4 numbers at a time, by placing your chip at the confluence of all four numbers, you will win 8:1 if any of those numbers comes up. A good example of a corner bet is one on 11, 12, 15, and 14, or, 31, 32, 34 and 35. A $100 wager on a corner bet would pay out $800.

Sucker bets – when you place a wager on 0, 00, 1, 2, and 3 in American Roulette, the payout is 6:1. This is known as a 5 bet, or a sucker bet. A $100 bet would net you $600.

Line bets – when you place a line bets, you’re placing a wager on 6 numbers at a time. Each Roulette betting deck has 3 numbers per line, and a line bet is a wager on 6 neighboring numbers. The payout is 5:1. A $100 wager on a line that would pay you $500.

Those are the highest paying bets in roulette – regardless of the version you are playing. There are also other wagers known as outside bets which pay out significantly less. It should be remembered that inside bets (bets on numbers and combinations of numbers) have the highest payouts, but the lowest odds of coming good. Outside bets by comparison are wagers on the outside of the Roulette betting table. They include things like column bets (payouts of 2:1), dozen bets (payouts of 2:1), red or black (payouts of 1:1), otherwise known as even money bets, and wagers on odds and evens (payout of 1:1). Other outside bets include low or high bets (payout of 1:1).

As you can tell, the safe bets are the outside bets, and the lucrative bets are the inside bets.

Is Online Roulette More Popular than Land-Based Roulette?

The answer to this question is perhaps evident in the actual numbers. Firstly, more players all over the world have access to online roulette games than ever before. Regulation across Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, various states in the US and elsewhere has made roulette online available to hundreds of millions of people. Compared to land-based casinos, Internet Roulette games are much easier to access.  Players don’t need to get dressed up, take time off work, or plan a vacation to go and play Roulette at a land-based casino. At reputable online casinos such as Spinit, you can simply power up your PC, smartphone or tablet and enjoy a treasure trove of games at the click of a button. These include: Roulette Master, French Roulette, American Roulette, European Roulette, English Roulette, European Roulette Gold, Roulette Pro Low Limit, Premier Roulette Diamond Edition, and others.

There are many additional benefits to playing online roulette. These are found in the bonuses and promotional offers available to new players and seasoned veterans. When you sign up with an online casino, you are typically rewarded with matching deposit bonuses, multi-deposit bonuses, and various promotions.  At a standard land-based casino, players are unable to play for free to test out their roulette betting strategies and bankroll management techniques. This is not the case with online Roulette casinos. At Spinit, you can practice various betting strategies direct off your browser – no download required. By playing Roulette online games, you get to see the games in action. Once you are content with your selection, you can register and play for real. Such luxuries are not available at land-based casinos in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, or Macau.

Which Roulette Games are Best for New Players?

New players will always want a roulette game with the lowest house edge. That way, you are assured of a better outcome over your gaming sessions. The roulette games with the lowest house edge are European Roulette and French Roulette. These games have a house edge of 2.70%, but with the ‘la partage’ rule in French Roulette, you can enjoy a house edge of just 1.35%. What this means in simple terms is that you will lose just $1.35 of every $100 wagered over the long-term on that selection. Compare that to American Roulette with a house edge of 5.26% where you stand to lose $5.26 of every $100 wagered. At Spinit, there are several low-limit Roulette games that you can play, including French Roulette (Low Limit), Roulette Pro (Low Limit) and European Roulette.

Which Roulette Games are Best for High Rollers and VIP Players?

High rollers and VIP players tend to enjoy raising the stakes during their Roulette gaming sessions. When you play Roulette online, it’s important to look at the table minimums and maximums. That way you can intelligently assess whether your bankroll and playing style is best suited to the game. The live roulette games offer one-on-one sessions with professional and courteous roulette dealers. High rollers tend to enjoy this level of customized service. It’s similar to playing at a land-based casino in the roped-off section. Many live dealer roulette games are available, including Immersive Roulette, European Roulette, French Roulette, Auto-Roulette VIP and European Roulette VIP. Other swank roulette games include Premier Roulette Diamond Edition, Roulette Pro, and European Roulette Gold.

What Roulette Strategies Really Work?

The literature on roulette betting strategies is peppered with examples such as Martingale, Reverse Martingale, D’Alembert, Fibonacci and others. However, these are not strategies to help you win more by playing roulette; they are merely loss prevention techniques to help you manage your bankroll more effectively. Every outcome of the online roulette wheel is independent of the prior result. Roulette is a game of chance, and this means that the correct playing strategies to adopt are the following:

• Carefully select a roulette game with the lowest possible house edge. Recall that French Roulette and European Roulette are best for this.
• Carefully determine your bankroll in advance. You certainly don’t want to be going into an online roulette session in a haphazard way.
• Determine ahead of time what types of wagers you’re going to place – inside bets, outside bets, or a combination thereof.

A major shortcoming of most Roulette strategies is that they are progression strategies. You are typically wagering more on every losing outcome to try and recover losses (Martingale is a classic case in point), and you will reach a point where the table maximum exceeds the bet that you are required to make to recover your losses. This nullifies the effectiveness of certain Roulette strategies. Besides, unless you have an unlimited bankroll (in which case no strategy would be needed) Roulette strategies can become extremely expensive. Chance governs all roulette outcomes.

There is no failsafe technique to determine where the ball will land, or which types of bets are going to yield consistently positive returns. However, it should be noted that over the short-term it is possible to win huge amounts of money playing roulette. You may opt for positive progression betting techniques or negative progression betting techniques – it doesn’t matter. Neither of these progression-style techniques will work because they do not determine or influence the outcome of the roulette spin. The odds of every outcome and the payouts of every outcome remain constant with every single spin in Roulette. A contrarian perspective on gaining more from the roulette playing experience is to play at a full table. This slows the rate of play between spins, and increases the comps (free drinks, and benefits) that players get to enjoy at land-based casinos.

Effective bankroll management is key when you play roulette online. It allows you to extend the duration of your playing sessions, but does nothing for improving your likelihood of winning. Recall that the more you play, the more likely you are to see an increasing number of wins and losses. If there was a perfect roulette online strategy, it would eliminate the house edge. No such strategies exist, save for commonsense play, budgeted Roulette betting, and intelligent gameplay selection. Since it is a negative expectation game, various physicists have attempted to come up with inventive ways to beat the wheel. Einstein himself studied Roulette extensively and found that there was no mathematical configuration to overcome the house advantage.

10 Interesting Roulette Facts

1. In American Roulette, the house edge rises as high as 7.89% when you place the 5-bet, otherwise known as the sucker bet. This is the worst possible bet to place in the game of Roulette.
2. One of the most successful players in the history of Roulette was Joseph Jagger. He was known as The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo. He identified defective Roulette wheels and placed wagers accordingly.
3. In 2004, Ashley Revell wagered his entire life savings of £77,000 on the spin of a wheel in Las Vegas. It was televised internationally and he won an incredible £153,860.
4. The walls that separate pockets in a game of Roulette are known as frets. When these frets are loose, the ball’s bounce is less pronounced, making it land in nearby pockets. Identifying loose frets is something that professional Roulette players are highly skilled at.
5. Many players use Roulette systems such as Fibonacci, Paroli, and Martingale to try and minimize the impact of the house edge by placing wagers on even money bets such as odd/even or red/black.
6. A Bristol casino one saw 36 red numbers land in succession, despite the statistical probability of such events occurring being infinitesimally small. This just goes to show that anything can happen in a Roulette game.
7. The world’s most famous roulette betting system is the Martingale system. With this strategy, you double your wagers on every losing bet until you eventually win. You will then come out slightly ahead. This only works on tables with unlimited maximums, and the premiums can get steep.
8. No roulette system has effectively beaten the odds. Flat betting systems trump progressive betting systems all the time, and random betting always generates the best outcomes.
9. The most played number in Roulette is 17, and Newcastle United owner, Mike Ashley made a whopping £1.3 million when that number came up.
10. The ratio of male and female players who play Roulette online games is evenly matched, with 54% males and 46% females.