Roulette Strategies
The math behind roulette is simple, but it also has some of the worst odds in casino gaming. American roulette gives the house an edge of 5.26% for every bet except one. The other bet gives an even worse house edge of 7.29%.
There is a little known rule called ‘surrender’ in some casinos. If this rule is in place (ask at the table before you play) you're as close as you're going to get to using any roulette strategies.
The surrender rule applies only to outside bets that pay even money, such as red/black, even/odd, and high/low. With the surrender rule, ff the ball lands on 0 or 00 (double zero) you only lose half of your bet instead of all of it. The casinos edge then drops to about 2.63% in this case, and that is about as good as it gets as far as roulette strategies.
The numbers:
Advantage = [18/38 x 1] + [18/38 x (-1)] + [2/38 x (-0.5)]
= -1/38
= -0.0263
or a house edge of 2.63%
Another one of the well known roulette strategies is to look for wheels that don’t have a double zero. European roulette wheels typically don't have a double zero, but American tables almost always have it, as it increases the house edge. In that case, your best bet is to look for a wheel with no double zero in the online casinos, as well as those in real American casinos.
Roulette Rules
Roulette is one of the easiest casino games to play and understand in the gambling casino. A roulette wheel consists of 37 or 38 numbered slots: numbered 1 to 36, a zero, and in most places in the United States a double zero. The roulette betting layout consists of every individual number as well as a host of "outside" or combinations of numbers. After the players make their bets the dealer spins the roulette wheel and a ball and after several seconds the ball will land in one of the numbered slots.
| United States Rules | |||
| Bet | Pays | Probability |  |
| Red | 1:1 | 47.37% | |
| Black | 1:1 | 47.37% | |
| Odd | 1:1 | 47.37% | |
| Even | 1:1 | 47.37% | |
| 1 to 18 | 1:1 | 47.37% | |
| 19 to 36 | 1:1 | 47.37% | |
| 1 to 12 | 2:1 | 31.58% | |
| 13 to 24 | 2:1 | 31.58% | |
| 25 to 36 | 2:1 | 31.58% | |
| Any column | 2:1 | 31.58% | |
| Any one number | 35:1 | 2.63% | |
| Two number combination | 17:1 | 5.26% | |
| Three number combination | 11:1 | 7.89% | |
| Four number combination | 8:1 | 10.53% | |
| Six number combination | 5:1 | 15.79% | |
| 0,00,1,2,3 combination | 6:1 | 13.16% | |
As mentioned above, most roulette wheels in the United States have both a zero and a double zero. These double zero roulette games have a house edge on every bet of 1/19, or 5.26%, except the 0-00-1-2-3 combination which has a house edge of 3/38 or 7.89%.
The numbers on the roulette wheel
It would appear that the numbers on the roulette wheel are not organized, and seem to be distributed randomly. The only obvious patterns are that red and black numbers alternate and that usually two odd numbers alternate with two even numbers. However, the distribution of numbers was carefully arranged so that the sum of the numbers for any given section of the wheel would be roughly equal to any other section of equal size. In particular the numbers are usually organized in pairs, with one number in between, and whose sum is either 37 or 39. This is true of all of the following pairs: (10,29), (25,12), (29,8), (12,19), (8,31), (19,18), (31,6), (18,21), (6,33), (21,16), (33,4), (16,23), (4,35), (23,14), (35,2), (9,30), (26,11), (30,7), (7,32), (20,17), (32,5), (17,22), (5,34), (22,15), (34,3), (15,24), (3,36), (24,13), (36,1). The only numbers that fall outside this pattern are 27,14,2,28,11,13, and 1.