Understanding the Basics of Roulette
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Roulette is a casino game in which players place bets on a single number, various groupings of numbers, the color red or black, whether the number is odd or even, or if the numbers are high (19-36) or low (1-18). A dealer spins a wheel in one direction and rolls a ball around a tilted circular track that runs around the outer edge of the wheel. The objective is to predict where the ball will land when the wheel comes to a stop. The rules of the game are complex, and a variety of strategies exist for playing (and winning) roulette.
Roulette was invented in the 17th century, and there are many fanciful stories about its origins. The most accepted story credits the French mathematician Blaise Pascal with the invention while he was working on a perpetual motion machine. The roulette wheel gained traction relatively quickly, and was soon in use at gambling dens across Europe.
When playing online, you must always play within your bankroll limits and never risk more money than you can afford to lose. While it may be tempting to increase your bets after each loss, this will only lead to bigger losses in the long run. To avoid this, you should stick with the bet types that offer the best odds.
The first step in determining which bets to make is understanding the different types of roulette bets. There are two main bet types, Inside and Outside bets. Inside bets are placed on the numbered portion of the table, while Outside bets cover a larger section of the table. Inside bets have a higher house edge than outside bets, but also pay out more often.
Before the ball is spun, players place their bets by laying chips on a betting mat, with precise placement indicating the type of bet being made. The table has a betting range of up to $5,000, and the betting mat will usually have French terms on it (although English terms are also used at some online casinos). The monetary value of each chip can be found in the lower left corner of the table.
The Roulette wheel consists of a solid wooden disk slightly convex in shape with a metal partition or frets that separate it into thirty-six compartments, painted alternately red and black and numbered consecutively from 1 to 36. There is a separate green compartment numbered 0, and on some American-style wheels there are a pair of green pockets numbered 0 and 1. The ball is spun in the opposite direction from the wheel, and when it reaches its resting position it will either fall into one of these compartments or on the zero. The roulette ball is normally made of ivory, but modern ones are typically resin, teflon or ceramic. The material of the ball has a significant effect on the dynamics of the game, as a small light ceramic ball will have more revolutions on the wheel and jump more unpredictably before landing than a large heavy ivorine ball would.