How to Play Roulette

It’s simple to play roulette. At the start of each turn, you must place your bets – and then wait to see if the white ball lands on a number within the wheel that matches your bet.

There are regular online roulette games, where you place your bets then click to spin the wheel when you’re ready, and live dealer games where you must act before the dealer closes the action and spins the wheel.

What makes roulette so popular is that there are so many different types of bets you can make – and you can mix and match as you play. Some players like making just one bet at a time, while others prefer to sprinkle their chips around the roulette table liberally.

You can group the types of bets into two: inside bets and outside bets. Let’s explain the details of each.

• Outside Bets
• Inside Bets
• The Roulette Ractrack
• What Happens if the Ball Falls on Zero or Double Zero?
• Try Roulette Now

Outside Bets

Think of these as those bets you can place away from the actual 36 numbers on the inside of the table.

• Red/Black and Odd/Even – Perhaps the simplest and most common of all roulette bets, you’re backing the winning number to be red or black, or odd or even. You have a 50/50 chance of being right on both bets, so the payout is 1 to 1.
• Column Bets – The roulette numbers display on the table in three columns of 12. You can elect to bet on the winning number falling in one chosen column. By definition, you will be right one in three times, and so the payout is 2 to 1.
• Dozen – Similar to column bets but you cover the first 12 numbers, or the middle or last 12.
• 1-18, 19-36 – Place a bet on the winning number being 1 to 18 or 19 – 36, with a 1 to 1 payout.
• Basket Bet – Placing a chip carefully by the green double zero (in American Roulette) or single zero in other variants will allow you to bet on 00, 0, 1, 2, 3 in American Roulette or 0,1,2,3 in other game types.

Inside Bets

Inside Bets are those where you place chips directly on a number or a group of them.

• Straight Up – Betting on a single number to win, which comes with the biggest payout of any roulette bet at 35 to 1.
• Split Bet – You can select to back two numbers with one bet, so long as they are next to one another on the table. Place your chip over the dividing line. The payout is 17 to 1.
• Quad Bet – Pick a group of four numbers at once by placing your chip over the corner shared by all four numbers. The payout here is 8 to 1.
• Street Bet – Back any row of numbers, for example, 13, 14 and 15, by placing a chip over the first number of the row on the line dividing it with the outside area. It is also known as a line bet or row bet, and the payout is 11 to 1.
• Double Street Bet – Back two rows of numbers by betting on the line dividing the first numbers of each row and the line separating them from the outside area. The payout for a double street bet is 5 to 1.

The Roulette Racetrack

Many online roulette games have an option to bet on the racetrack. This is an oval-shaped collection of the roulette numbers depicted in the order they fall on the roulette wheel.

In this way, you can bet easily on neighboring numbers on the wheel rather than neighboring numbers as represented on the table. For example, on the racetrack (and the wheel), 32 is flanked by 20 and 17. However, on the table, it is sandwiched by 31 and 33. The racetrack, therefore, gives you an alternative way to place your bets.

What Happens if the Ball Falls on Zero or Double Zero?

Unless you placed a chip in the green zero (or double zero in American Roulette) or made a Basket Bet, nobody wants to see the ball land there. That’s because the house automatically wins all the outside bets – the 00 or 0 are not colored, odd or even, and do not belong in any row or column. The house also picks up all the bets placed on the 36 other numbers.

Try Roulette Now and Enjoy the Action

Now that you understand the rules of roulette, you’re primed to go and try the game out for yourself with top-rated US sportsbooks and online casinos.

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