Roulette is a gambling game in which players place bets on which red or black numbered compartment the small ball will drop into as it comes to rest in the wheel. The odds of winning a bet depend on the number and the grouping of numbers, whether the numbers are odd or even, and if the numbers are high or low. Roulette is played in casinos and at many land-based gaming establishments. It is also available online through websites that offer real money casino games.
It is a game with an ancient origin and the odds of winning depend on luck rather than strategy. Nevertheless, a wide range of betting systems have been devised, some of which are simple and others highly complicated. Most of them promise to improve the player’s odds by predicting the outcome of individual spins or groups of spins. The best known of these is the James Bond betting system, which involves placing bets opposite to the largest bets and then switching to a more advantageous bet when the table’s money balance starts to run low.
The game is played on a special roulette wheel, a solid wooden disk slightly convex in shape with metal separators around the edge. These separators are called frets or canoes by roulette croupiers and they create thirty-six coloured compartments numbered nonconsecutively from 1 to 36, with an extra green division marked 0 on European wheels. An additional green division on the American wheel carries the number 00 and is largely responsible for the lower odds of the American version of the game compared to its European counterpart.
Before the wheel is spun, bets are placed by putting a colour chip on a corresponding section of the roulette table map. Normally, the dealer will ask the player what denomination they wish to assign to each chip. They will then give the player coloured chips of that value. Typically, each person gets their own unique color of chips to avoid confusion between bettors and spouses are advised to stay separated for this reason.
A dealer then spins the wheel and rolls a small ball in one direction, around a tilted circular track that runs on the perimeter of the wheel. When the ball slows down and is about to drop into a compartment, the player places a bet against the house. If the bet wins, it is paid out and the process begins again. The first rule of Roulette is that no new bets may be made until the dealer announces ‘no more bets’ to prevent cheating or gaining an unfair advantage.
