Rules of Roulette

The Roulette is a very popular wheel-based casino game played in gambling establishments around the world since the 1800s.

It is played on a table with special layout usually by eight players at a time. The croupier (also known as dealer) spins a wheel on which 37 (European Roulette) or 38 (American Roulette) pockets are arranged in a particular way along its outer rim. The pockets are numbered “0” to “36” in the European version, there is an additional ”00” number in the American version. Each number is coloured either in red or black, the zero (zeroes) is in green. The croupier spins then a small ball (“roulette” in French) in the other direction. The surface around the wheel is slanted towards it so that the ball spinning along in the opposite direction will eventually near the pockets and fall into one of them.

By the time the ball is just about to roll onto the wheel, the croupier announces “no more bets” and the players are no longer allowed to place, change or remove their bets. The number of the pocket that the ball falls into is the winning number. The croupier places then the dolly on the winning number on the table layout and clears all losing bets to make room for the next bets. The winning bets are those placed on or including the winning number and those placed outside of the layout on an area including the winning number in one way or another. All the players can now place their next bets while the croupier is paying the winners.

As mentioned above, the players can make various bets against the house by placing chips on the numbers or on the outside areas of the table layout until the croupier announces that betting must stop. All possible bets and there payouts are as follows:

35:1 for one-number bets (also known as straight-up bets). There is a 2.63% house advantage at the single-zero game, that is you collect 36 (instead of 37) if you win. At the double-zero game the house advantage is 5.26%, meaning that you collect 36 instead of 38.
17:1 for two-number (split) bets.
11:1 for three-number (street) bets.
8:1 for four-number (corner) bets.
5:1 for six-number bets.
6:1 for the 0, 00, 1, 2, 3 combination (American Roulette only). The house advantage here is 7.89%.
2:1 for 1st 12 (1 to 12), 2nd 12 (13 to 25), or 3rd 12 (25 to 36) dozen bets and for column bets.
1:1 for red, black, odd, even, 1 to 18 and 19 to 36 bets (even-money bets).

Pay attention that neither of the last two types of bets includes the 0 (or 00) number, which means that they will all not win if either of those two numbers comes out!

In European Roulette there is an additional rule called “En Prison”. It allows a player who placed an even-money bet (all that pay 1:1) and then the 0 (0 or 00 in Atlantic City in the United States) was the winning number to choose whether to “imprison” his bet, which means to leave it where it is for the next betting round, or to surrender half of it. If the player decides to imprison his bet and then 0 comes out again, different casinos apply different rules that you must inform about because the bet could still not be lost. Another similar rule is the so-called “La Partage” in which no “imprisoning” is allowed, but the player gets half his bet back in case of the above-mentioned situation.