The Basic Rules When Playing Roulette
- Roulette starts with players making bets.
- The croupier (or dealer) throws a ball into the spinning roulette wheel. Players can still make bets within the process.
- While the ball is rolling at the roulette wheel, the croupier/dealer announces: “No more bets.”
- At that point, players are not allowed making bets
- The ball lands on a number in the roulette wheel. If there are winners who bet the number, section or colour, they will be rewarded according to their betting odds.
Let’s take a look at the spacing of numbers first on the American double-zero wheels, and then on the European single-zero wheels.
The Number Sequence on the American Wheel
- There are 38 numbered pockets for the ball to land in, 1-36 and 0, 00.
- Half the numbers are red; half are black and the 0 and 00 are usually green, although on some wheels these might be blue.
- You can see that directly (or almost directly) across from each even number is an odd number. Check out 34 and you will see that it is almost directly across from 33. Then look at 36 and it is across from 35.
- This is not, however, a perfect design since the numbers 18 and 19 are only separated by the number 33.
- Pairs of odd numbers alternate with pairs of even numbers except in the areas of the 0, which splits 2 and 28, and 00 which splits 27 and 1.
- The colors of the numbers match the color of the numbers on the layout. The colors only deal with one bet, the black or red.
The Number Sequence on the European Wheel
- There are 37 numbered pockets for the ball to land in, 1-36 and 0.
- Half the numbers are red; half are black and the 0 is either green or blue.
- Some of the positions of the numbers are similar to the American wheel with an odd number being directly across from an even number such as 27 across from 28 but this does not prevail throughout the wheel.
- The colors of the numbers match the colors on the layout; again this is used for one bet, the red and black.
Here is a normal walkthrough of a typical game round:
1. Find your favourite roulette wheel
While it’s often the operators that receive all the praise, credit is really due to the makers of the table games you choose to bet on. Knowledge on who creates what and at a bankroll to suit you is fundamental. For example, Evolution Gaming is more than likely to have something to tickle your fancy whether you’re looking for a standard game, a variant of roulette or some unique title such as Double Ball or Lightning Roulette.
However, if you’re trying to recapture the essence of that Las Vegas casino you visited on your 21stbirthday, Authentic Gaming succeeds in doing just that. The likes of Extreme Live Gaming and Ezugi supply plenty of little wheels too. It’s our suggestion that you begin with our game provider reviews to better understand what’s on offer and what matches up with your preferences.
2. Where should I play live roulette online?
Your choice of live casinos will depend on your selection in Step 1. Let us elaborate.
If you like the sound of what Evolution has to offer, then your choice of operator will come down to factors such as promotions or security, as this provider is available almost anywhere. On the other hand, if the talented and tattooed live dealer pin-ups of Lucky Streak catch your eye, you may have to opt for somewhere other than your first choice of operator.
3. How do I deposit at a live roulette table?
You’ll need to add funds to your account before you can stack your chips on your chosen surface. This can be done in two ways – either through the operator’s Deposit page or at the table itself.
The former is the most convenient way. You decide you’d like to play roulette, up your bankroll on your chosen casino and just like that you can begin betting.
But what happens if your funds dip as your applying the Martingale strategy and you don’t want to move away from the table? Most providers and operators cater for this point of contingency through an in-game deposit feature whose functionality is revealed in the name. All you need to do is press a discreet button on the interface and enter the CVV number of a bank card you used to deposit with previously. It’s that simple.
4. How betting works in online roulette
While it’s definitely less fiddly than manually placing chips on a roulette table at a land-based casino, there are some things to know about how roulette betting works online.
Betting time opens with clear on-screen instructions that notify that wagers will be accepted. You will have on average 30-90 seconds to place your bet, depending on the roulette variant. Betting is only allowed during this period so make sure you place your bet well within this timeframe.
As we mentioned, playing online roulette means there’s no need to worry about where to place your roulette chips. Potential betting areas become highlighted as you hover over them and complex chip patterns such as racetrack bets are automatically placed correctly with a click of a button.
Not only does it make things more straightforward, but this technology gives you two distinct benefits. The first is that the act of placing as many bets as your bankroll allows is a no-brainer as it only involves a few mouse clicks. Additionally, you may also be able to place bets while the ball is spinning as you can in Evolution Speed Roulette.
In that way, betting online succeeds in eliminating any first-time awkwardness, however, moving your mouse around to figure out where the eligible betting areas are will become tiresome fairly quickly.
5. What does the live roulette dealer do?
The live dealer (sometimes referred to as a croupier since these individuals don’t deal anything to the table) represents the house as the friendly, sometimes untouchable, figure behind the wheel and table. Once the betting time ends, the spin starts when the croupier drops the ball onto the wheel track as it spins in the opposite direction.
After the ball comes to rest in its final pocket, the dealer announces the winning number with some information on where the number appears on the betting layout thrown in too. That’s the most basic level of interaction you can expect from your table host. When the nature of the game calls for sociability you can bet your bottom dollar they’re up to chat with you about live casino, current events or almost any topic you’d like to discuss.
6. Winning roulette number is announced
When the spin concludes, the ball falls into a particular pocket and when it does, the winning number is revealed.
In a brick-and-mortar establishment, the winning number of each game round is verbally communicated by the dealer but things differ slightly online. In addition to this verbal utterance, digitally-rendered overlays will display the winning roulette number on screen. Following this, winning bets are paid out immediately while losing ones are kept.
7. How do I calculate my roulette winnings?
If you bet on a single number, calculating your winnings is easy as these pay at 35:1. Similarly, bets on odd or even and red or black even your odds of winning at payouts of 1:1 but they won’t titillate you for long. So, what about when you venture to bet on a group of numbers or around the racetrack?
Bets such as columns or corners are placed on specific areas of the roulette table to denote that you are betting on a certain group of numbers. Such wagers pay out if the ball stops on a number within your chosen group thus your winnings are simple enough to determine.
Say you bet €5 on the first column of numbers on the layout. You’ll have twelve opportunities to win on the numbers 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25, 28, 31, 34. If the dealer spins the wheel and the ball stops on red 16, you’ll receive €5 back and €10 in winnings, as the bet pays 2:1.
Image source: Evolution Gaming Live Roulette
Things can get a little more complicated if you choose to bet on the racetrack. A gut feeling for the numbers that appear close to the green 0 on the layout means that you should place what is called the Voisins du Zero bet. It covers seventeen numbers – namely 0, 2, 3, 4, 7, 12, 15, 18, 19, 21, 22, 25, 26, 28, 29, 32, 35 – as shown in the image, but can be placed via a single click or tap on your screen. You’ll win if the ball lands on any one of those numbers, but each one is grouped into a different bet type and therefore pays out at the amount for that group.
Let’s see this in practice assuming you’re playing the round with 50c orange-coloured roulette chips. Those 50c chips will be placed on most number groupings excluding the numbers 0, 2, 3 and 25, 26, 27, 28 where €1 chips will be set down instead. Your total bet will amount to €4.50. If the winning number of the round is 29, that is a corner bet which pays at 8:1, meaning you’ll walk away with a total of €9 in winnings – your original bet of €4.50 returned to you plus €4.50 in pure winnings.
Those are only two examples but don’t fret if you’re getting nightmarish flashbacks of high school mathematics class. The founding mathematicians and physicists of this age-old game worked out the calculations many moons ago, and we’ve summed them up in payouts tables you can refer to as you play on the Odds and Payout page. Best of all, it’s not cheating.
8. What happens if the game hits a glitch?
Just as human error may occur at a physical table and roulette wheel, the same too can happen online. Add computer technology to the mix and there’s even more that could go awry.
In order to combat this, providers and operators come together to develop processes that resolve errors in record time. Each live dealer has their own key card which is used to log their twenty-minute intervals at the wheel. In this way, suppliers can keep track of their top performing employees (in terms of customer engagement, uniform tidiness, etc.) and compensate them accordingly but that’s another story.
Once the live dealer is logged in for their session, they have direct access to casino personnel known as pit bosses who manage the people at the tables and supervise what’s going on. If the dealer makes a small mistake such as dropping the ball or spinning the ball in the wrong direction, the pit boss is called to assess the situation. In instances such as the former, the round is usually cancelled, bets are returned to the players and the game proceeds as normal.
A technical issue, on the other hand, cannot be solved immediately after it occurs and usually requires collaboration with operator where the betting occurred to solve. Take a delayed or incorrect payout on a winning round, for example, which the dealer will be unable to rectify this on the spot without referring to footage of the round in question and subsequently putting the game on hold for all other tablemates. Therefore, common practice is to look into what occurred off-camera and come back with a resolution at a later time with the assistance of the casino’s customer support team.
Similarly, if you were to think something is off in a round you were a part of, you can always query this with a casino support agent. Just give them as much information as possible – the game name, the time you were playing, the device you were playing on, etc. – so that they can locate the round in question much quicker and iron out what went wrong in record time.
