How to Play Roulette

Reassuringly familiar

There’s no trickery about the roulette wheel. You place your betting chips on the table, the croupier sets the wheel and the ball in motion and when the ball comes to rest in one of the numbered pockets, you either win or lose. It really is as simple as that.

It is worth remembering when playing in a live roulette setting that you can still place bets for a brief period after the ball has been released. But when the croupier says “no more bets,” you must keep your chips to yourself. It’s basically the most fundamental of the roulette rules.

Negotiating the roulette table

So much for the wheel. Next, we need to look at that roulette table and understand what all those sections mean. This is where you will be placing your bets, so it is where the magic of your roulette system, if you have one, will be put to the test!

The first thing to note is that just as there is a subtle difference between an American and European roulette wheel, there is a similar variation in the tables. As the American wheel has an additional double zero slot, there is likewise an additional area marked “00” on the table. Otherwise, the two are identical.

They contain the 36 numbers in a 12x3 grid, and colored red or black to correspond with the numbers on the wheel. Outside this grid are various boxes for placing outside bets. At the end of each column of 12 numbers, there are three boxes, each of which contains the phrase “2 to 1.” Along the long side of the grid are three areas marked “1st 12,” “2nd 12” and “3rd 12.” Finally, outside those, there are six more boxes. These say “1 to 18,” “Even,” “Red,” “Black, “Odd,” and “19 to 36.”

Different types of roulette bets

The different areas of the table allow for 11 different types of bets. When learning how to play roulette, you will need to understand all of them, but it is highly intuitive and each proceeds logically on from the last.

Starting with the 12x3 grid, this is where you place your chips for an “inside bet” on a specific number or choice of numbers. A “straight up” is the most basic roulette bet, when you simply place your chips on a single number, for example, Red 5. You can bet on two numbers by placing your chips on the dividing line between them, on three numbers by placing it on the outer edge of a row of three or on four numbers by placing on an intersection of four. Finally, you can bet on six by putting the chips on the border of a six-number group.

Moving to the outside, the bets here are intuitively obvious. Red / black, odd / even, and high / low are the 50/50 bets on the long outside edge, and are typically the most popular ones to place – but we will discuss that more when we talk about roulette strategies. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd 12 similarly refer to the numbers 1-12, 13-24 and 25-36 on the wheel, while the three 2:1 boxes are for betting on the 12 numbers in any one of the three columns.

What are the odds?

The winning odds range from 35/1 for winning a straight-up bet on a single number to even money on any of the 50/50 bets. Again, we discuss this in detail on our roulette strategies page, but it is worth mentioning now that on any given roulette wheel, the house edge is exactly the same whatever bet you place. The only difference is between different roulette wheels, as the edge on an American wheel is different to that on a European wheel.

Roulette is a game that literally anyone can play. There’s no better place to play it than at Refuel Casino, where our simplified payment system means there is no lengthy registration process. So come on in, choose your table and find out if today is going to be your lucky day!