Betting at the Roulette Table

If you read our article “The Basics of Roulette”, you should now be familiar with what you are seeing when you sit down at the roulette table – the wheel, the croupier, and the betting surface. Now we will delve further into the concept of how you actually make bets on the game of roulette. We won’t get into strategy just yet; instead, we will take you through the different types of bets that appear on the roulette board and what kind of payout you can expect from each of them when you win.

The bets with the greatest probability of winning are also the ones that pay out the least – you shouldn’t go into a casino expecting to win big on any bet that comes in fairly often. This group of bets is known as ‘Outside Bets,’ and they have payouts ranging from even money, where you win the exact amount of your bet back, to 2-1, where you receive double your money on a win. Betting on either red or black, odd or even, or 1-18 and 19-36 are even money bets. These bets offer one of the best probability-to-payout ratios in the casino and are recommended for those who just want to try the game out with little risk or exhausting a bankroll quickly. It is not recommended, however, to bet on two sides of an even money bet on the same spin, as you can never hope to win money that way. Other outside bets include betting on a group of numbers or a column; both of these bets pay 2-1 on your money.

Although outside bets can be a lot of fun to play and usually give you great bang for your buck, the ‘Inside Bets’ are where you are going to see most of the high rollers placing their money. These bets all involve placing chips down on the numbers of the board in some combination and offer payouts up to 35-1 for hitting a single number, meaning that one $10 bet can turn into $350 on one lucky spin of the wheel. Bets can be placed on an individual number, including both 0 and 00, but they can also be put in between two numbers to bet both of them, along a row of three numbers, on the corner of four numbers, and even on a group of six numbers consisting of two rows. You should note that the house has the same edge on every single bet on the roulette board – around 5% - but you will win your outside bets more frequently on average.