Roulette is one of the most popular table games in modern casinos. Although variations on the game have been around for several hundred years, there are now only 3 variations in American casinos.
Remember to stay realistic about the long odds on this popular game of chance. Approach roulette with the sober realization that, with a house advantage of 5.26 percent on the American wheel, roulette is among the worst bets in a casino. Despite the odds, you can still use some simple strategies to stretch your roulette. Jun 08, 2020 Advantage play exists in almost every casino game including roulette. And it's the only proven effective approach. In the Simplest Terms Possible. The winning number is determined by real physical variables, like wheel and ball properties, spin spins etc. If spins are random, the odds of winning are fixed. On the other hand, a roulette number generator, used in any legitimate virtual roulette game, is actually classified as a random number generator, known simply as an RNG. This software is based on highly sophisticated mathematical algorithms and ensures that every single outcome of a roulette wheel spin, is indeed 100% random and fair. In roulette, numbers pay differently according to how the player wishes to bet. Even money bets are those on red/black, even/odd and 1-18/19-36.
You're likely already familiar with American roulette and European roulette. The most recent addition to the table game inventory is Sands Roulette.
Which of these games should you play?
How should you bet on them?
What's the smartest strategy for roulette betting?
I'll explain all that in this post:
What Are the Differences between American, European, and Sands Roulette?
Although these games have a few other differences, the most significant distinction between the 3 versions of roulette are the number of green slots the wheels contain.
Every roulette wheel has at least 37 slots.
36 of those slots are always numbered 1 to 36, and they're alternately colored RED or BLACK.
Roulette Numbers Statistics
The additional slots are green.
In European roulette there is only one green slot, the '0'.
In American roulette there are two green slots: '0' and '00'.
In Sands roulette a third green slot, 'S', has been added to the wheel.
The green slots are there for one reason:
Red stag login. They make the game's statistical probabilities uneven.
Best Number To Play In Roulette Game
This is because of the way roulette bets are paid off. You can win anywhere from 35-to-1 (for betting on a single number) down to 1-to-1 (for betting on 18 slots at a time).
The payoffs, called 'odds', are not as fair to you as the actual estimated probabilities of the roulette ball landing on any given slot. This is how the casino makes its money.
In a game of roulette the house should keep at least 2.70% of all the bets players make over time. The casino has no need to cheat the players. In fact, the players often make really bad bets that improve the 'house edge', as that casino profit is called.
One of the other differences between European roulette and both American and Sands roulette is that the European roulette table has an additional betting area. This secondary betting area is used to place specially designed bets. They are more complicated than the normal bets made in American and Sands roulette. I'm going to ignore this section of the table, because I'm going to show you how to place bets that have the best chances of paying off.
Is There a Winning System for Roulette?
Everyone who gets into roulette sooner or later starts to think about how they can 'beat the system'.
I'm going to be honest here:
There is no way to do that.
The green slots on the wheel make it impossible for anyone, anywhere, to ever design a betting system that is guaranteed to win. If you really want to guarantee yourself a win every time, then put a chip on each of the 2-to-1 outside bets and on each of the green number bets.
That's the only way you'll be paid money every time the wheel spins.
You'll also go broke.
You may have heard about a system called the Martingale System. It's a popular betting system with new roulette players.
Experienced roulette players just turn their heads and roll their eyes when someone mentions the Martingale System. The only way you can make money with the Martingale System is to write a book about it and get people to buy your book.
Even that's a gamble, though, because most people now know that the Martingale System promises more than it delivers.
Here's how this system works:
You start out betting the minimum. If you lose, you double your bet. If you win on your doubled bet, you go back to betting the table minimum. If you lose again, you double the size of your bet again. Horn to control dragons.
This sounds great to inexperienced bettors but the problem is that you'll either run out of money or hit the table limit before you can recoup your losses as they add up.
The Martingale System is a sucker bet, plain and simple.
Every betting system in every form of gambling tries to leverage probability theory. The Martingale System and other roulette betting strategies also rely on probability estimates.
But there's a flaw in the thinking behind these systems. If you account for the flaw you'll be okay. You won't always win but your expectations will be more reasonable.
The secret to not going broke when you gamble is to set reasonable expectations and maintain your self-discipline. You should never drink or take drugs when you gamble. They lower your inhibitions and impair your judgment.
You might as well just hand your money over to the casino at the cashier window and say 'keep it' if you're going to drink or do drugs when you gamble.
How Do Probabilities Work in Roulette?
Probability theory came out of statistics. It tries to give us rules by which to guess what happens next in any situation. The guesses are seldom accurate predictions. Sometimes the guesses work out, and sometimes they don't. Gamblers love probability theory because they think it helps them pick the best betting strategies.
You're actually more likely to double your money during a roulette session if you put all your money on a single bet. The more bets you place, the less likely it becomes to double your money.
That's because every bet brings you close to the long term expectations. The closer you are to the short term, the more likely you are to get better than expected results.
In roulette, the probabilities are simple. The dealer spins the wheel and releases a ball that whirls around the outside of the wheel and finally settles in a slot. With only 37 slots on a European roulette wheel you have a 1-in-37 probability of the ball landing on a specific slot.
This probability never changes.
This probability is calculated on the basis of all the known possibilities.
What probability theory cannot do, however, is predict where the ball will stop.
Nor can it predict whether the ball will land on red, black, or green any number of times over the next 100 spins.
Nonetheless, a lot of gambling guides tell you that you have the best chances of winning if you do this because of such-and-such probabilities. And many of these guides warn you that there is no way to predict the future, but by setting the expectation that the ball will land on red about 47% of the time, these guides are making predictions and promises they cannot keep.
They'll even back up their claims by talking about how to run computer simulations for 1 million spins of the wheel so that you see how often the ball lands on red, black, or green.
In the real world the Probability Fairy is always on vacation. She'll never be there to wave her magic wand to make things happen the way experts say they should. The ball could land on red over the next 20 spins. Or it could land on black or green or some random mix of color combinations.
You have no way of knowing how many of the next [X] spins will turn out a certain way. Talking about probabilities in this way is just dishonest.
What you can do is look at the wheel and ask yourself how much it costs to bet on the largest possible set of numbers. The idea here is to get as much coverage as you can without losing money too fast.
Best online casino offers. But even if you cover every number on the wheel you'll lose money.
So the only way to win in roulette–and this is completely random, never guaranteed–is to bet on less than all the numbers on the wheel.
You also want to play bets that pay better than even money. You can place a variety of bets, but most of them aren't worthwhile.
Betting on single numbers is a bad idea. You can place bets on the lines between the numbers (these are called 'street bets') and on lines at the corners of numbers (these are called 'corner bets').
But even though you get pretty good odds (payoff) you're still covering too few numbers.
How Bets Work in Roulette
Divide the bets into two groups:
- Inside bets
- Outside bets
Inside bets are based on individual numbers or small groups of numbers. When you see players betting on the lines, corners, and individual numbers on the table they are making inside bets.
Outside bets are based on pre-selected groups of numbers on the wheel. The '2-to-1' bets cover 12 numbers each: 1 to 12, 13 to 24, and 25 to 36. The '1-to-1' or 'even money' bets cover 18 numbers each:
- Odd
- Even
- Black
- Red
- 1 to 18
- 19 to 36
The bets more likely to pay are the even money bets.
But unless you can win 5 times out of 9 on even money bets you'll lose your stake. That's the problem with roulette. You always have to win at least 1 more time than you lose no matter how you place your bets.
The '2 to 1' bets pay better than the '1 to 1' bets because they cover fewer numbers. You have less of a chance of winning.
There are 6 types of '2 to 1' bets:
- 3 kinds of dozens bets: (1 to 12, 13 to 24, and 25 to 36)
- 3 kinds of columns bets: ([1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25, 28, 31, 34], [2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26, 29, 32, 35], [3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, 30, 33, 36]).
You can make a bet by betting on any two of the '2 to 1' groups. That means that instead of covering only 18 numbers you'll be covering 24 numbers.
This type of bet is often called the 'double dozen' bet. It's popular among gamblers who like to hedge their bets. They have a better chance (all other things considered) of scoring a win with a 'double dozen' than with one of the standard even money bets. If you're playing it safe and going for even money odds, you should always play a double dozen bet.
If you want to bet more aggressively, then instead of betting more money on your double dozen, you can cover all 36 of the red and black numbers. Leave the green numbers alone. Yes, they'll come in every now and then, and you'll lose money.
But there's a way to keep your losses low.
How to Bet on Columns or Dozens Aggressively
Take 6 chips and distribute them across EITHER the three dozen bets or the three column bets.
Place 3 chips on 1, 2 chips on the 2nd, and 1 chip on the 3rd. If the ball lands on a green number you'll lose your entire bet, so always play the table minimum with this aggressive style.
If the ball lands on any number with your single chip bet, you'll win 2 chips and lose 5–for a net loss of 3 chips (half your bet).
That's the safest way to bet aggressively on the table.
If the ball lands on any number in your 2 chip bet you'll win 4 chips and lose 4 for no loss. This keeps you in the game.
If the ball lands on any number in your 3chip bet, you'll win 6 chips and lose 3 for a net gain of 3 chips. This will offset 1 single chip win.
The way this betting strategy works out, your money can grow substantially and still take some big hits. Where the strategy will fail you is when the ball lands on green or if the ball lands on the single chip bet more often than it lands on the 3 chip bet.
Sorry, but there's no way to prevent that from happening.
There Is No Guaranteed Way to Win in Roulette
I can't say this often enough:
You can't win at roulette in the long run.
I think roulette is a fun game to play. It's exciting because you don't know where the ball will land. You take an active role in making your wagers.
And you'll find there are a lot of different betting systems to experiment with. The only thing that is guaranteed in roulette is that the casino will make a profit. What you hope for is that they make their profit at someone else's expense.
Players who try to improve their luck by making big bets do sometimes win, but most often the people who come out ahead are the patient players who use conservative betting strategies and take money off the table. If you only walk away with your beginning stake you'll be luckier than most gamblers.
And you can take that to the bank.
It's no secret that people are a superstitious bunch. Detectives act on their 'hunches', students taking exams cross their fingers and knock on wood, and hotel owners skip from 12 straight to 14 in their floor plan. And in roulette, players favour some numbers over others. Is there any rhyme or reason to this, or is it simply what it sounds like: an old wives tale? Can humans really tap into something deeper when it comes to luck and probability, or are we really all stuck in a gradually overheating RNG machine?
A Brief History
The link between betting and probability has a long and intermingled history. In fact, gambling is the mother of probability. Blaise Pascal, who accidentally invented the roulette wheel in his attempt to construct a perpetual motion machine, struggled with the idea of probability from a mathematical standpoint. Through the contemplation of a notoriously difficult hypothetical gambling problem, he and Pierre de Fermat formulated the theory of probability. Before this time, there was no other 'scientific' way for people to rationally predict outcomes to situations. They had to guess and trust their gut instinct. Since roulette and the theory of probability have grown together side by side, why is it that many people still adamantly hold onto their superstitious ways? Perhaps, sometimes there really is something that guides people to choose the way they do.
The Legend of 17
The number 17 is the number in the centre of the roulette board and is also famous for delivering some staggering wins.
- 'Newcastle boss wins £1.3 million on lucky number 17'
- Sean Connery wins on 17 3 times in a row
If you ask croupiers what the most common number people bet on, the answer will always be 17. Not only does it lie in the centre of the board, making it the most obvious place to bet, MIT have described the number 17 as the 'most random number', meaning that when people choose a random number they go straight for 17. In several studies when correspondents were asked to choose a random number from 1 to 20, 17 was the most frequently chosen, making it the least random number by human standards. 7 followed closely behind. Computerised RNG made no such biases.
So, perhaps the phenomenal wins commonly associated with the number are simply because more people bet on 17. Ashley, a long time roulette player, most likely bet on the number 17 a lot of times before he hit his big break.
Sean Connery's Staggering Win
But, this doesn't explain Sean Connery's unbelievable achievement on the roulette wheel. Reportedly, while playing in Casino de la Vallee in Saint-Vincent, Italy, he placed 5 bets on the number 17. The first two he lost, but he persisted. The third time lucky, his number came up winning him 31:1 odds. Not content to settle with that, he placed all his winnings back on the number 17. Literally against all odds, the movie star wins again. Instead of walking away, Connery tempts fate and puts all his money on the 17 for a fifth and final time. The number comes up. Apparently the probability of hitting three single number bets in a row is 0.0000197% or 50,000:1. While it is weird that it would be the same number three times in a row, mathematically it's like as likely as Connery guessing any other number correctly. Of course, that doesn't make it any less bizarre.
What on earth is going on here? Perhaps the number 17 truly is a mythical number for roulette.
Perhaps the reason is simply that Connery spotted a bias with the roulette wheel, and went with it. However, since the roulette wheel missed the mark the first two times, it still seems extremely risky. Maybe Connery was simply in the mood for a thrill! Or, perhaps he slipped the croupier a little something under the table… Sadly, we will never really know the answer to the mystery of the number 17. We can see why people love betting on it though!
Other Common Lucky Numbers
The number 7 is perhaps the most common number that people like to bet on, after 17, because it is generally considered to be lucky. People also love the number 3, as everyone knows all good things come in threes. However, these numbers are all lucky in the Western culture. Eastern casinos would tell an entirely different story of what the most common numbers bet on are. For instance, the number two has extremely positive associations in Asian casinos: double your luck and double your chances!
Least Favourite Numbers To Bet On
As we already mentioned, people tend to avoid the number 13. Its unluckiness is well established throughout most of Western culture. However, in Italy the number 13 is lucky and the number 17 unlucky. So, if you are betting with an Italian you can expect them to do the reverse of what you might expect. Players universally tend to dislike betting on the zeros, perhaps because of the placement on the board, and perhaps because of their unlucky associations with the house edge.
Conclusion
17 is a very common number to bet on, which is most likely why you hear so many great success stories surrounding it. 7 is also very common and has enjoyed fame because of a number of big wins associated with it. The more fame these number have, the more likely people are to bet in them – thus increasing their fame and luck further.
Whatever number you bet on mathematically has the same chance of coming up. So if you do have a favourite number spread that means a lot to you, like a birthday or anniversary date, there's no reason why you shouldn't use it. They are just as likely, or rather unlikely, to come up as any other. Then, when your numbers do come up you'll have all the more reason to favour them! Keep this in mind when playing online for real money.
