Vegas Country
Vegas Country

An introduction to roulette

| Published on September 23, 2011

An introduction to roulette
Roulette and casinos have gone hand in hand for centuries, with the basic concept of either not changing very much. And even when online casinos firs appeared on the scene, roulette has changed the least from its land casino setting.

One thing that has most definitely remained untouched is that, the odds still remain in favour of the hose, but much less in favour of the land casino than the online version, while the game play and strategies remain unchanged.

The rules of the game of roulette are very straightforward. Each sequence of the game is dictated by a single spin of the wheel with no accumulations and continuation bets. This means that every bet, winning or losing, has to be reset before each spin, meaning that players are always under pressure to get their bets down on time, with all the pushing, shoving and jostling required for a player to get their bets placed on time, which is what playing roulette in a land casino usually involves.  

The roulette wheel is always spun in the same direction and, as it rotates; a small white ball is placed inside the wheel, with the croupier calling out the famous phrase "no more bets" as the wheel begins to slow down.

 Eventually, as the wheel finishes its rotation, the ball will land in one of the notches on the wheel: every notch denotes both a number and a colour.  In the European version of the game there is only one zero, while in the American version there are two, which means that the odds are  considerably  more in favour of the house. There are absolutely no advantages for a player to wager on the American version of roulette, with all of the advantage being in favour of the house. This reason is the reason why the American version of roulette is rarely played in an online casino setting.

Both online or off, the one thing that is for sure is that roulette players have absolutely no say on the outcome of the spin, with  all they need to do is bet on the  statistical eventuality of on which number the ball  might land.

Roulette players who have studied the game will know which bets to place will have chosen a path of odds that can vary from 36-1 to 1-36.  Odds of 36-1 means betting on just one number and hope that number hits, an exciting bet, but one that rarely works out well for the player in the long term. 1-36 means betting on 36 numbers including the zero in the hope that the single number that wasn't bet on won't come up. That means that for every 36 chips that a player bets, they win one. In an online setting, it can be done and some players have enjoyed reasonable profits.

With online casino players enjoying the important tactical privilege of controlling the pace of the game so that they have all the time that they need to place any bet they want, before the virtual heel begins to spin, and even play in a form of "automatic pilot" mode if they want to.

Where the game can become interesting is deciding on which bet or bets to take. Somewhere between 36-1 and 1-36 is where players prefer to find themselves, and only time practice an understanding will help a player reach their ideal comfort level when it comes down to their  betting combinations.