Roulette, online or offline, is an incredibly easy, and terrifically fun game. Here’s how you can start playing and winning online roulette & real money.
It’s the year 1655. Titan, Saturn’s largest moon is discovered, John Casor becomes the first legally recognized slave, and Sweden has occupied Warsaw. It’s also the year in which Blaise Pascal, the famous French mathematician, devised a “roulette”. A French term that means “little wheel”, with 36 numbers whose original purpose was to achieve perpetual motion and to study the theory of probability. This game, expanding rapidly in Europe, became hugely successful after a shockingly short amount of time. So much so, that in the 18th century the king of France, Louis XV, even decided to ban it, much like sex, drugs, and rock n roll, swiftly solidified its status. The king had hoped to avoid French citizens losing time and money playing it. However, the ban was about as effective as American prohibition.
By the 19th century, the game had piqued the interest of players all over Europe. In 1842 the Blanc brothers modified the original roulette, adding a new number. The zero, introducing the number that would give advantage to the casino or the house. Making it an enticing game for players and casinos alike, it was quickly debuted in Monte Carlo giving rise to the well-known French roulette of today. Some years later it was modified again adding another number (“00”), and it became known as American roulette. Finally, the well loved casino game came to our doorstep between the years 1994 and 1999, when software used to produce and run online roulette for real money, was finally available to all. And with it, came casino review sites like Casino Genie, that can help keep the dream of king Louis alive, by showing you the best casinos, safest tables, and killer bonuses. Keeping you from wasting a load of time and money.
Play Online Roulette. Real Money for All.
But how do you play the third most popular, real money online casino game?
The game of roulette starts with the players making their bets, even while the croupier (dealer) throws the ball into the spinning wheel. While the wheel is spinning the croupier will signal the end of betting by saying “no more bets”, from then on, no more bets can be made. Finally, the ball will land on a number inside the roulette wheel, where in case of a winner, the player will be rewarded with the winnings according to the odds of his original bet.
In roulette, there are a number of special bets, where the most applied and well known are balanced probability bets: red/black, even/odd, 1-18/19-36 (high/low), which offer the same probabilities of winning and losing, and are used in many almost all of the available versions of Roulette. These balanced bets are often the ones that have “regional” rules applied to them.
In French Roulette, the “Le Partage” rule states that if you make a balanced probability bet and the ball lands on 0, you get half of the bet back. French roulette also has the “Prison Rule”, where the player does not get half the money back, instead the balanced probability bet stays on the table when the ball lands at 0. The croupier marks it, indicating that it is “in prison” and it is held until the next round. If the player wins this bet, he gets back the original bet amount without any winnings. Otherwise, he loses it all. The “surrender rule” used in some versions of American Roulette, is the same as the “Le Partage” rule, but it applies to 0 and 00, if the ball lands on one of these numbers, the player gets half of the money back from each lost balanced bet.
In every roulette table there is basic etiquette, which you definitely should know before you play. Unwritten rules that establish how you should behave at the table. Such as how to get and cash-in chips. Roulette tables use color-coded chips that are specific to Roulette, and not used at other tables. Which you will get from the dealer by putting the money on the table after the “no more bets” has been called. Which is also the point at which you can “color up” or exchange your roulette chips for standard casino gaming chips. The croupier begins play by paying out any winning bets, removing any losing bets, and removing the marker that marks the last winning number. When the croupier withdraws that object, the betting begins.
How to Bet
There are a number of ways to bet in roulette. Largely depending on the version that you are playing. But the most basic bets that are standard to almost any version are the “inside” and the “outside” bets. These bets get their name from the location on the layout that you will lay your chips to bet them. For example, if you lay your chip on the “black” bet, this is considered an “outside” bet because the black square exists outside of the rectangle containing all of the numbers. Where straight bets (betting on one specific number) is an “inside” bet, as you lay your chip directly on the number, inside the main layout rectangle.
Basic Inside Bets
- Straight (single number bet)
- Split (2 numbers- placing chip on line (|) between them)
- Street (3 numbers- placing the chip on the border of a line of the 3)
- Corner (4 numbers- placing the chip at the intersection (+) where the 4 meet)
- Five-Number (0,00,1,2,3)
- Line (6 numbers- placing the chip on the line (|) between two streets)
Outside Bets
- Column (12 numbers- single column, horizontally)
- Dozens (12 numbers- 3 streets)
- Odd/Even
- High/Low
- Black/Red
If you play roulette online, it is not difficult to follow the instructions of the roulette, getting a feel for how the betting works. Where live roulette tables with a croupier, while you may be able to talk to the croupier, and learn the bets that way, this can be difficult at busy tables. Because the basic bets of Roulette are so easy and straightforward, often sitting in for only a few rounds is really all you need to get the hang of it. Once you feel comfortable with the basics, there are a number of other strategies, bets, and combinations of bets that you can begin to learn and comfortably play around with.