How to Play Roulette

Learning how to play roulette is relatively easy compared to poker or most other card games. It is also more of a social game which accounts for the big groups you often see milling around the roulette tables.

As a beginner, you can learn how to play roulette by watching. It is very easy to pick up the mechanics of the game. The difficult part of learning how to play roulette is when you decide you want to learn the different roulette systems. Then it becomes a whole new ball game and can get very complicated.

But, let’s start with the basics. The roulette game consists of a table with a roulette wheel, a small white ball, and chips. Learn to play roulette by learning about the chips first. This is because in roulette, you are not using house chips. It has its own set of special chips.

The reason why the roulette game uses different chips is because it helps the dealer distinguish the players from one another. Each player gets a specific color to play with.

In addition to the colored chips, you will notice that there are no values to the chips. This is because the dealer uses a “lammer” to let everyone know how much a stack of chips is worth. For example, if you see a stack of green chips with a lammer that says $100 on top of the stack, it will tell you that all the green chips in that stack amounts to $100. If there are 10 green chips, then each green chip is worth $10.

The next step to learning how to play roulette is knowing how the roulette wheel works. The roulette wheel is a little wheel with numbers around it. There are two versions of the roulette wheel - the American version and the European version. Basically they are the same except for one distinguishing feature. The American version has one extra slot - the double zero.

The reason for the extra slot was to give the house a better edge. If you are still learning how to play roulette, try looking for the European roulette wheel because you have a slightly better chance at winning.

The numbers in the wheel alternate between red and black, odd and even. All you have to do is place a bet on a number, color, whether odd or even. Make sure you follow the table minimum bet. Some tables have higher minimums, so before you decide on placing a bet, check out what the minimum is. You can place as many bets as you like until the dealer shouts out, “No more bets.”

He will then spin the small ball on the wheel, turning the wheel one direction, then faster in the other direction. The slot where the ball drops will determine the winning bet. It’s really that simple.

Learning how to play roulette starts with simple bets. Don’t try to outsmart the table since most wins you will have will be pure luck at this point. If you really want to have a system, you will need to adopt one of the roulette systems, customize it, or create your own. Whatever works is fine.