As with all forms of gambling, the higher the return: the higher the risk. Roulette is no different. But what it does offer that is unique is betting options of both high and low risk, which makes it flexible and appealing for bettors of all levels of playing.
Whether you choose to play a ‘low risk’ roulette game or focus on the high risk/high return roulette game, you should know the odds you’re playing against.
Odds Overview
Understanding how to work out the chance of something happening is just one half of the gambling equation: the other is cost. We can calculate probabilities as a fraction or a percentage, but you rarely see a percentage figure at a bookmaker’s or in a casino.
Gambling propositions are more usually expressed as odds. Odds describe how much money you will win if the selection you have backed comes up. When you bet, you are buying a chance that something might happen - that a particular football team might win, that a particular number might be rolled. The odds quoted represent the price at which that chance can be bought.
In a casino, payouts on roulette wheels have been worked out in such a way that the casino always has an advantage.
This is called the ‘house edge’, or the ‘house advantage’. This advantage is gained by paying the winners a chip or two (or a proportion there-of) less than what it would be if there was no advantage.
As an example: on single-zero roulette wheels there are 36 numbers plus the zero. If you bet on a ‘straight-up’ (which offers the biggest win potential) you will receive 35 chips. This means that even if you covered every number on the table, you would win, but you would still be two chips (not including your stake) behind. This is the house edge. Casinos need this ‘edge’ to pay their bills and make a profit.
Players are always looking for ways to beat this edge.
Some follow the winning numbers calling them ‘hot’ numbers and therefore likely to come up more times.
Others wait to see which numbers haven’t come up for some time and bet on them believing that their turn must be coming.
Some players bet on many numbers to increase their chances of winning at every spin, but this way the payout is considerably reduced.
Other methodical players use a specific roulette strategy , roulette system or roulette method, money management systems, or both.
But whatever method a player chooses, the underlying odds to beat are:
On single zero roulette tables the house advantage is 2.63%.
On double zero roulette tables it is 5.26%.This house advantage stretches out to 7.9% on the ‘First Five’ bet of 0, 00, 1, 2 / 3: which is why it’s a bet that should be avoided.
As you can see the odds of winning are better on a single zero table than they are on a double zero.
Some casinos (mostly European and British) offer an even greater advantage by applying the En Prison rule to their single zero tables.
The En Prison rule is a roulette rule applied to even-money bets only: that is, Red/Black, Odd/Even, High/Low, and only by some casinos (not all). When the outcome of a croupier’s spin is zero, some casinos will allow the player to either take back half of his or her bet or, leave the bet (en prison means ‘in prison’) for another roulette spin. In the second case, if the following spin the outcome is again zero, then the whole bet is lost.
A variation on the En Prison rule is the La Partage rule. This is similar to the en prison rule, only in its case the player loses half the bet and does not have the option of leaving the bet en prison for another spin. What this all means, is:
The house edge on a single zero table that enforces the En Prison rules is 1.35%
If you are given a choice between playing European or American Roulette, remember that the odds are more in your favour with the European Roulette Wheel.
For the best odds, look for the En Prison option.
Remember the bottom line: payouts on Roulette wheels are set up to give the casinos an advantage. Your job, as a player, is to find a way to beat that edge.
On American roulette tables the action is fast and furious. The wheel is spun between 70 and 90 times an hour, and the tables are often so crowded that it is sometimes hard for a casual player to place a bet. The three best seats in the middle of the table are usually occupied by heavy betters. Players are not obliged to bet on every spin of the wheel, but casinos do not take kindly to people in these seats who make modest bets or who are overly cautious.
European Roulette tables are much more relaxed affairs. They are more spacious, and the spin rate can be as low as 30 an hour. However, to make up for this slow rate of play and the smaller European margin many European casinos enforce high minimum stakes.
Increasing the Odds
Biased Roulette Wheels
A biased roulette wheel is one that possesses a mechanical flaw that allows a particular number to come up more often that it statistically should. This mechanical flaw could be (as an example) a roulette wheel with a minutely worn compartment let’s say, for the purpose of this example, the zero. This wear may not be visible to the naked eye but it would leave the compartment very slightly larger than the others. This would be just enough to increase the space the croupier’s marble could land in. And this would be enough to give the roulette wheel a bias.
Finding a biased roulette wheel like this is every roulette player’s dream because, if you can find one and ‘track’ its favoured numbers, then there’s a good chance you can beat the house advantage.
Finding a biased roulette wheel may be desirable, but it isn’t easy. You need to watch and record spin numbers methodically and for a long time (at least a thousand numbers, say), and to then recognise what is a true bias, and what is just one of those peculiar pattern numbers can fall into. I have seen a croupier spin 27, then 19, and finish for the night, and for the new croupier to immediately spin 27 followed by 19. The world record for how many times a number has come up sequentially, is 8. If you saw that, you could be forgiven for thinking the table had a bias, but no, it was just a fluke. An amazing fluke, maybe, but a fluke never-the-less
If you do come across a genuine bias, it could be the result of imperfections in the wheel or the marble or because of a slant of the table. And you should know too, that if you’re looking for a biased roulette wheel, then the casino owners and operators are looking much harder.
They have much more to lose than you do. So if you do find a biased roulette wheel, take advantage of it quickly, before the casino fixes it.
Dealer Signature
Dealer signature is a term that refers to the style in which a roulette croupier plays. At a roulette table you’ll often here experienced players muttering things like he’s all over the place today, meaning there’s no recognisable pattern: or he’s spinning opposites, meaning that the ball is tending to stop approximately half-way, 18 slots around the wheel from the previous spin each time its’ spun.
This is because roulette dealers can get into a rhythm. They’re supposed to vary their spin effort and speed, but croupiers are human and they can get tired. They pick up the ball from the compartment where it came to rest, and spin it the same way each time, with the same force. As a result, the ball will spin the same number of spins and often land the same number of pockets away from the last spin. It may not be possible to guess the actual compartment the ball will land in, but it’s often possible to guess the general zone.
In fact, some experienced roulette players swear that there are those dealers who spin the ball at exactly the same speed each time. By noting where the wheel is at the exact moment the ball takes off, these players believe they can predict, within a few numbers, where the ball is going to land. Since you can continue to bet after the spin begins, they say they are able to cover those numbers and, they claim, they win more often than not.
Skeptics discount these theories. Even if that were possible, they say, there are ‘ball stops’ scattered around the roulette wheel, little pieces of ornamentation that deflect the ball, making it difficult, if not impossible, to predict the ball’s path.
Well, maybe sometimes it is possible. Dealers are human. They have friends and family, and lives outside of the casino. Not every dealer pays attention to his or her job 100 percent of the time. Because dealers may be thinking about other things while spinning the ball around the roulette wheel, the observant roulette player may be able to determine whether that dealer is unconsciously (or consciously) giving the players an edge.
If you want to give it a try, note the speed of the ball as it leaves the dealer’s hand. Count the number of times the ball circumnavigates the wheel. And, of course, note where it lands in comparison to where it was launched.
If you do find a ‘dealer signature’, it may only last for a short time. It could be at the end of the shift, when the dealer is thinking only about going home, or it could be at the beginning of the shift, when the dealer is thinking about the events of the previous evening.
The Law of Averages
You’d think that the law of averages would say that, in a given number of spins, each and every number on the roulette table would come up the same amount of times. It’s true that in the end, with enough spins, the numbers will even out. But they take some strange journeys along the way:
Statistics show that some numbers can fail to appear for up to 400 spins.
In 36 straight spins, chances are only two-thirds of the numbers on a roulette table will appear. This means some numbers are ‘sleeping’ and others are being spun up two or three times.
The record for the same number to be spun consecutively is 8 times.
In 1913 a roulette wheel in Monte Carlo came up black 26 times in succession. Believe it or not, this isn’t the roulette record: in New York in 1943 red came up for 32 consecutive spins.
It is a fallacy to assume that if, in a hundred spins there are 18 red and 82 black, in the next hundred there will be 18 black and 82 red. The law of averages isn’t so cut and dried.