How to play Online Roulette

for Real Money or just for fun

Roulette is a game of chance that involves colors and numbers. A roulette table consists of a wheel that has numbers alternating in red and black colors. The numbers are from 00 to 36. The other end of the table has numbers. Players place chips in a variety of betting opportunities to wage on what the spin of the roulette will land on.

There are several types of bets to make. A player can simply choose that the number the roulette spin lands on will be black or red. This type of wager doesn’t pay well, but has the best odds of winning at a 50/50 chance. A player can bet that the winning number will be odd or even. Again, this has very good odds.

Inside bets are the hardest to win, yet they pay the most. Simply select a particular number and place your chips on that number. You will win $36 for every $1 that you bet. Split bets allow the player to place their chips between two numbers. This gives you the opportunity to win if either number wins. You will be paid $16 for each dollar you bid on this type of play. A street bid gives a player the chance to win by choosing a street of three numbers. The payout is $10 for every $1 bet. A square bet is done by placing your chips in the center of a four number square. If one of the numbers comes up, you will win $8 for every $1 you bid.

As you can see, there are many ways to bet on the game of Roulette. This fast pace game can be intimidating for new comers who aren’t very sure how others are winning because there are so many different ways to place a bet. Watching a few rounds just might give you the courage to make a wager or two of your own. Roulette is a very popular Casino game. It is action packed and often the roulette table is surrounded by betters and onlookers. Online roulette is also very popular. Many online Casino sites offer roulette gaming. The game is played the exact same way.

Differences between land-based and online roulette

With the advent of the Internet, gambling enthusiasts can now play roulette online. That said, there are several differences between playing roulette online and in a land-based casino that are worth mentioning. Playing “the game of kings” in the casino does have a bit of elegance attached to it that is lost when playing online. The finely crafted roulette wheel surrounded by players dressed for the occasion has been replaced with a digitized version where players play from the confines of their home. However, one advantage that the online roulette game has over the land-based casino is the choices offered in how to play the game. Most “brick and mortar” casinos will have only one roulette wheel that reflects the continent where it is being played – American or European.

Land-based casinos oftentimes must follow the rules established for roulette by the gaming commissions in the area where the casino exists. This is not true online. Online roulette offers the player a choice of roulette games: American, European, and other even more specialized versions of the roulette wheel that have different rules according to how the roulette game was designed.

One such development in the world of online casinos that does not exist at all in the land-based casino is a roulette game where there is a progressive jackpot. This game is called Roulette Royale and offers gamblers an excellent choice where they can win big. In Roulette Royale, the progressive jackpot is won when a player hits the same number five times in a row. In many online casinos, this progressive jackpot can reach sums totaling over $1 million.

Online roulette tips

Since there is no strategy to winning, the best tip for an online roulette player is to understand the odds and payout involved in a particular bet. Additionally, if a player likes to make “even bets” or bets on red or black or odd or even, then a European wheel should be sought out. The type of bets a roulette player likes to make largely depends on their individual personality or mood at the time. A tip for the roulette player that likes to take risks on long odds, a bet on a single number for example, is to pocket the winnings should the number come up in a spin. The odds dictate on these types of bets that the win won’t happen very often, so you should pocket the winnings while you are ahead. Most of all, roulette is a thrilling game so have fun!

Origins of Roulette Game

While some historians claim rudimentary spinning wheel games of chance in the ancient Chinese and Roman societies as the forefathers to modern roulette, documentation of the modern roulette wheel establishes that the gambling game as we know it today came directly from 17th century France. “Roulette” is a French word that translates to “small wheel” in English. The invention of the roulette wheel can be pinned to famed French mathematician Blaise Pascal who, in 1655, came up with a crude version of the device in his attempts to develop a perpetual motion machine. Had Pascal’s invention actually been a perpetual motion device, the game of roulette would have never developed because the wheel would have never stopped, hence it would be perpetually spinning.

Pascal’s version of the roulette wheel remained relatively unchanged for over two hundred years where the game was mostly played in the confines of French monasteries (no gambling involved) as a way to pass the time. However, the game the monks played was discovered to be a game of chance and made its way into the Palais Royal by the year 1796. At this time, the roulette wheel consisted of 36 numbered slots from 1 to 36 and bettors placed their wagers on where they thought the ball would land or on a combination or range of numbers where the bettors thought the ball would land. The greater the chance the ball would fall in the combination or range of numbers, the lesser the value of a winning bet. For example, in these first roulette games, a bet on the number 1 would have a probability of 1 in 36 so the winning bet would be much greater than the winning bet on the odd numbers, for example, where the odds are 1 in 2 for a winning result.

In the year 1842, the French brothers Francois and Louis Blanc established the first casinos in Monte Carlo on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. A bit of legend surrounds this development where it is said that the Francois Blanc sold his soul to the devil for the secret of the roulette wheel – adding a zero. Whether Francois Blanc made a deal with the devil or not will never be known, but the Blanc brothers did forever change the game into the form that it is still known in Europe today by lengthening the odds a bit for a winning wager when they added the number 0 to make 37 numbers on the wheel from 0 to 36. Adding this 0 gave the house an edge in bets on odd or even numbers or red or black numbers. Where these odds were 50/50 before the zero was added to the wheel, a bet on red or black or odd or even now became a 51.36% chance in favor of the gambling establishment, or house. In Monte Carlo, roulette earned its nickname as the “game of kings” where it was first widely played on royal ground and in royal casinos.

Roulette as we know it today has an American version and a European version. The European version still retains the version introduced by the Blanc brothers to Monte Carlo in 1842 that has 37 numbers from 0 to 37. When roulette arrived on American shores in the latter half of the 19th century, proprietors of American gambling establishments weren’t happy with the small edge in favor of the house and added a second naught slot – the double zero (00). This addition of the double-zero (00) slot on the American version of the roulette wheel brings the total number of slots to 38: 00, 0, and 1 to 36. The odds on the American version are even more slanted in the house’s favor where a bet on odd or even or red or black is now 52.64% in favor of the gambling establishment. This is exactly what the Americans were looking for and roulette rapidly became wildly popular with gold and silver miners in the mining boom towns of the American west.

Thus, today there are two versions of the game of roulette that are played in a “brick and mortar” casino – the American version with two zero slots and the European version with a single zero slot. Here it becomes obvious that if one has a choice on where to place an “even bet” they would always choose the European roulette wheel where the odds of a winning bet are slightly more in favor of the bettor placing the wager than on the American roulette wheel.