Roulette is a casino game in which players wager on what number will come up when the ball rolls over a spinning wheel. Bets are placed by laying chips on a special betting mat, the precise placement of each chip indicating the type of bet being made. The chips have no value denomination printed on them and are instead distinguished by their color. Bets that place chips on six numbers or less are called “Inside bets”, while bets that cover a wider category of numbers are known as “Outside bets”.
The Roulette wheel is a solid, slightly convex disc with thirty-six compartments painted alternately red and black, numbered nonconsecutively from 1 to 36. There is also a green compartment labeled 0, and on American tables, there are two additional green pockets, one labeled 00.
Before each round, the croupier clears the table of all losing bets and resets it for the next game. Then bets are placed and the croupier spins the wheel, rolling the ball in the opposite direction of its travel. When the wheel comes to a stop, the croupier will announce the winning number. Losing bets are then removed from the table and the winning ones are paid out according to the payout tables.
A roulette is a device for making lines of marks, dots or perforations: a stampers’ roulette, used to perforate sheets of postage stamps. The word is derived from the French noun rouleau, meaning a small wheel.
There are many different roulette rules and strategies, but the basic gameplay is fairly simple. You can place bets on single numbers, various groupings of numbers, colors (red or black), whether the numbers are odd or even, and if they are high (19-36) or low (1-18).
If you’re new to Roulette, the best way to make money is by placing outside bets, which cover groups of numbers rather than individual digits. These bets pay out at higher odds but have a lower payout than inside bets.
Outside bets include straight-up, split, and corner bets. A straight-up bet is a bet on an individual number and pays out at the highest possible payout. A split bet is a wager on two numbers and pays out at the lowest possible payout, while a corner bet covers four numbers in a square on the betting mat. The payout for a straight-up win is 392 chips. The house edge for this bet is 5.26%.