Roulette Revealed – Inside the Wheelhouse of Casino Gaming’s Most Iconic Game

Roulette is a gambling game in which a small ball is spun around the flange of a inclined wheel. Players may bet on any red or black compartment on which the ball will come to rest. They place their bets on a special table in front of which it is laid and upon which it is marked to correspond with the compartments on the wheel.

Roulette wheels, as with all machines, can acquire physical flaws that cause them to display behaviour contrary to their random nature. So Jarecki spent his weekends travelling between casinos, hunting for ageing wheels with possible defects.

Origins

Roulette is one of the longest-running and most popular games… today it has become the visual centrepiece of the casino. Just the spinning wheel, by itself, is all that is necessary to create an endless source of excitement and unpredictability.

Believed to have been first invented in 1655 by the French mathematician Blaise Pascal while he was developing perpetual motion machines, roulette might, however, have first come into being due to a result he hadn’t foreseen – namely the creation of a biased wheel (even though he had never envisioned it to become a casino game).

A betting layout is placed in front of the players, on which they place chips, making inside bets (eg on a single number or a group of numbers such as red or black numbers or an even/odd combination) or outside bets (ie higher ranges, with a group of up to 19, and up to 36 numbers). After selecting the chips with a winning number, the dealer gathers and honours them by raking the value specified on the table towards the layout to pay.

Rules

That’s what keeps roulette possible, because with appropriate betting choices, the rank amateur can win just as often as the roulette veteran. Gambling jargon romanticises this truth with the classic red-or-black bet, which pays even money, if you win it.

Outside bets encompass more of the table’s numbers with a lesser payout. One of the more popular kinds of outside bets is called ‘Dozens or Columns’, covering 12 numbers in each of three blocks on the table.

But many have tried to beat the house edge in roulette using betting systems, which claim that a game designed for players to lose can be turned around so that the player – not the casino – has the edge. As so often happens, such systems rely on the gambler’s fallacy, that past results can be used as predictors for the future – hence such methods are perhaps the least reliable strategies for winning out in casino profits.

Variations

Roulette gamers can improve their odds because they can make a corner or square bet, which has better odds than outside or inside bets. A bet containing four numbers pays even better!

Once the winning number and colour are known, the dealer will put a marker, called a dolly, over their section of the table layout while bets remain locked in place. This means that players cannot make any further bets or remove chips for winning bets during that time.

If you’re a casino fan, make sure to click on the right games — ones with random number generators checked for the most reliable RNG will provide the most trustworthy, independent results. For roulette, the results need to be random — the croupier shouldn’t be able to affect them in any way, and only a roulette variant with a reliable RNG and an official approval by an independent testing agency can possibly do that.

Bets

Roulette players can choose to place a variety of different bets: inside bets cover single numbers or groupings of numbers on the layout of the roulette table; outside bets cover multiple numbers at once on the basis of either colour or parity (odd/even). These options involve differing probabilities, which determine the payout odds.

Immediately after the chip rack closes and a winning number and colour is determined by the wheel, the dealer will insert a dolly marker on the playing surface so as to restrict players’ actions of placing new bets or withdrawing winning chips until the dolly is taken out.

Common in casino roulette is the application of a martingale betting system, where one doubles their bet each time they lose – a foolproof approach, provided that one eventually wins. Left unchecked, however, this strategy inevitably leads to huge accumulated losses over time.

Payouts

The payouts for bets in roulette depend on the selections. There are several wagers to select from that payout at differing rates. You can choose whether to place a bet on streets (bets on four numbers) or corners (bets on 8, 9, 11 and 12). A street bet pays out at 11-1 while a corner bet pays 8 to 1.

Popular betting systems are used, which aim to beat the odds by playing at different levels, often based on what is known as ‘gambler’s fallacy’, or seen as a tip that the future is influenced by the past.

Jarecki found that casinos would replace cards and dice every few days, but that they often left expensive roulette wheels in place for years, piling up physical mismarks that made them land more frequently on certain numbers than randomness would predict. He spent his weekends driving between arcades, inspecting wheels and writing down thousands of spins.