Roullete, French for little wheel, is a casino game that is simple enough for beginners yet provides an intriguing depth of strategy. It involves predicting which numbered compartment on a spinning roulette wheel a small ball will land in when the wheel comes to rest. Players may bet on a single number, various groupings of numbers, the colors red and black, whether a number is odd or even and so on. Bets are made against the house, and winners are rewarded according to betting odds.
The roulette wheel consists of a solid wooden disk, slightly convex in shape. Around the rim are thirty-six metal compartments, painted alternately red and black and numbered nonconsecutively from 1 to 36. On European-style wheels, a green compartment carries the sign of 0, while an American roulette wheel has two green compartments that mark 0 and 00. The roulette dealer, known as the croupier, spins the wheel and drops the ball into one of the compartments. If the player correctly predicted the location of the winning number or grouping, the player wins money based on the odds of those bets.
Before you begin playing, choose a table within your budget and determine the maximum amount of money that you’re willing to risk. Each roulette table carries a placard that describes the minimum and maximum bets allowed. Most roulette tables have a $5 minimum bet for inside bets and a $1,000 maximum for outside bets.
Once you’ve decided how much to wager, give the dealer (croupier) your money by placing it on the table and asking for “colour.” The croupier will then hand you colored chips of the value you designate. This helps to keep your personal bankroll separate from the betting pool and makes it easy for you to keep track of your bets.
A single chip placed on the end of any outside bet – such as high or low, red or black – wins you a payout of 1:1. You can also place chips on the side of a street, three-number, or other bets and win smaller amounts at lower odds.
The Dozens Bet, or rosé, pays out 2-1 on any of the first 12 numbers on the layout or any of the first, second, or third dozen. This bet is a popular choice because of its low house edge. This is because the symmetries of the Roulette wheel make it so that there are only 12 low and high numbers on each side of the zero, and low red and high black numbers on either side of the 0 and 00. In addition, the first, second, and third dozens all contain no numbers between 13 and 24 (the “first six”). This means that your odds of winning are significantly higher than those for most bets in roulette. The house edge in this bet is therefore a mere 1.35%. Despite this, it is still an even-money bet and is among the most popular of all outside bets.