Roulette is one casino game that is widely considered to be a matter of pure luck and blind risk, rather than one of skill and strategy, but beginning to play while holding this belief is a sure fire way of ending up a roulette write-off. This piece is intended to serve as a basic guide to playing roulette in a more canny fashion, to give you a better chance of ending up on top.
Invented during the 18th century, the word ‘roulette’ is French for ‘little wheel’ reflecting the wheel that is at the heart of the game. The basic principle behind the different versions of the game – from American to European Roulette – is that the wheel has numbers and red and black colours and you bet on which number or colour the ball will land on when the wheel stops spinning. There are differences in the number of green ‘0’ colours on an American or European roulette wheel – with American ones having two and thus a higher house edge, while the European wheels have a single green ‘0’ pocket. The green 0 pockets are referred to as banker’s slots and the existence of two on an American Roulette wheel increases the odds in favour of the casino, at 5.26 percent, while opting for European Roulette reduces the house advantage to just 2.7 percent. Thus to begin with, you are far better off trying to find a European Roulette game to play.
The next strategy to reduce your risk of heavy losses is to restrict how much you actually bet, based on your bankroll – as you want to survive as long as possible. A lot of the commonly touted roulette strategies, notably the famed Martingale strategy, make it difficult to do this as they require you to keep upping your bet for each loss, until you eventually win. The point behind this to ensure that all of these losses are finally offset by a huge win, but it will not work as a strategy unless you have a big bankroll, as you will simply be wiped out before you get to that point. Thus, skip the Martingale strategy unless you are rich and keep the bets small while you are losing. Equally, betting on certain numbers based on the idea that they are ‘lucky’ is not a good strategy if you want to come out on top – as there simply are no lucky numbers. A number of players do deploy this sort of superstitious approach, but they are highly unlikely to be the ones walking away with winnings. A much more effective strategy is to purchase 20 £1 chips, and put five stacks of four chips onto five of the available six-line bets, spreading the chips across two rows to cover the maximum amount of numbers. This gives you a very strong chance of a win, albeit not a massive one. However it can be repeated or expanded upon by taking the 24 chips you now have and putting two stacks of 12 on a couple of the available three dozens. Again, it gives you good winning odds and would get you up to 36 chips.
In conclusion, there are strategies out there whilst trying your hand at playing online roulette, and now that you have been shown some of the available ones it is time to test them out by hitting the online roulette tables.