Roullete, meaning “wheel of fortune,” is a classic casino game that offers glamour and mystery to players. Its rules are simple enough for beginners to learn, but the game has surprising depth for serious betters. The right strategy can reap high rewards.
In most casinos, the roulette wheel is located near the entrance to the gambling floor. This is where people place their bets, and it’s also the only table where a player can watch the action unfold before their eyes. This is an important advantage of the roulette table, because it allows players to see how each spin affects their chances of winning or losing.
The wheel consists of a solid, slightly convex disk with a metal separator around the perimeter. Its 36 compartments, alternately painted red and black, are numbered nonconsecutively from 1 to 36. A croupier spins the wheel in one direction while the ball is dropped into the compartment in the opposite direction. Bets are placed on which red or black numbered slot the ball will fall into.
If a bet on a single number wins, the croupier pays out the winnings in coloured chips. These chips are worth their denomination, so for example, a $1000 straight-up bet will pay 392 chips. This is not true of all bets, however, and some bets require multiple chips to win.
For instance, a bet on the two numbers forming a square on the betting table requires five chips to make (zero costs 17 and pays 235 chips, and the other numbers in a corresponding corner cost 25 and pay 297 chips). In this case, the winnings are split evenly between the players.
The modern professional roulette ball is made of ivory-look-alike polycarbonate resin or Teflon, which is much lighter than traditional ivory and more unforgiving if it hits the track. The differences in size, weight and material are not trivial, because the ball’s impact on the track makes more difference to your odds of hitting a number than any other aspect of the game. The smaller, lighter balls bounce more quickly and jump around more unpredictably before landing on a number, making the game harder to predict. It also takes more effort for the croupier to spin the ball between revolutions. This adds to the speed of the game and increases the probability that the croupier will lose control of the ball. But despite these risks, the house edge for even money bets is still just 1.35% on European wheels with a single zero.