Roulette Strategy Basics

Roulette is probably the traditional casino game that all gamblers have to try at least once in their life. The origins of Roulette (meaning 'little wheel' in French) date back to the 18th century and has been the most popular gambling game ever since.

But Roulette is much more than pure gambling - to be successful in the game you have to have very solid money management. Here at casino-strategy.com we provide you with every tool you need to get the most out of this game as well.

About the table

The Table consists of the Roulette Wheel and the betting area called Layout. The Wheel has 37, 38 or very rarely 39 slots: numbers from 1 to 36 (with red or black colour), a zero (with green colour), in certain variants a double-zero and in very special cases there may be an extra slot for something special. When the bets are placed a ball is spun on the edge of the wheel and ends up in of the 37 slots in the inner circle. The number below is the winner number.

Casino-strategy.com's best roulette strategy tip: always play French or European Roulette, if available.

The layout is divided into three parts: the parts where you place the inner, outer and announced bets. Inner bets are simply the wager you put on the numbers themselves. You can bet on one, two adjacent or three numbers in a row. You can also bet on a corner (4 numbers sharing a corner) and two lines (6 numbers in 2 adjacent rows). You can also bet on 0 alone or combined with 1 or 2 adjacent numbers. The odds on a number is 35:1 (you win 35x your initial bet if you win), and you can calculate any of the combined bets' odds accordingly: a 2-number bet has 17:1, a 3-number bet has 11:1 odds and so on.

The second part of the layout is the outer bet area. Here you can bet on certain attributes of the winning number like its colour, parity, which column it's in or if it's lower or higher than 18. Zero counts as none of these, it's green, neither even nor odd, and is not part of the lower than 18 group. The third part is the home of the announced bets: these are some premade patterns in the inner circle (by the Roulette wheel's segments).

Odds, House Advantage, Strategies

Roulette odds are always based on a 36-number wheel. A single number has a 35:1 odds, even has 1:1 odds, etc. This shows that the edge of the house comes from the 0 being on the wheel. That makes the casino's advantage 2.7% (5.3% with double zero) which makes it a reasonable option from a financial standpoint.

Some sites provide so-called "Winning Strategies" for Roulette - we're sorry to say, but there is no such thing from a theoratical view (all the consistent winners in Roulette used some kind of an exploit, an imperfection of the wheel or not truly random RNG online). The thing you actually can control is the volume vs the frequency of your wins and losses by using different betting structures you can lose a tiny bit often and win huge amounts rarely or lose huge amounts rarely but win a lot of smaller ones. Find out more in our Betting Strategy section. If you're interested in a certain betting pattern, read our Martingale Strategy guide or the Labouchere System. Don't forget that you have to manage your bankroll well in order to maximise your chances, you can read all about that in the Roulette Bankroll Management article.