As you can see, the outside bets, the more straightforward of the two types of bets – numbers, colors – carry lower risks and rewards, while the inside bets, the more complicated ones, carry higher risk and higher rewards (although, on an important side note – this article refers to standard roulette, without a double zero – ‘00. The first thing we are to mention in roulette strategy is to choose an European wheel game as the odds here are higher than the odds in American roulette (2.7% to 5.26%). As a result, the roulette odds of winning each bet are a little bit higher than in the American-style roulette game.

Roulette is one of the most popular table games in modern casinos. Although variations on the game have been around for several hundred years, there are now only 3 variations in American casinos.

You’re likely already familiar with American roulette and European roulette. The most recent addition to the table game inventory is Sands Roulette.

Which of these games should you play?

How should you bet on them?

What’s the smartest strategy for roulette betting?

I’ll explain all that in this post:

What Are the Differences between American, European, and Sands Roulette?

Although these games have a few other differences, the most significant distinction between the 3 versions of roulette are the number of green slots the wheels contain.

Every roulette wheel has at least 37 slots.

36 of those slots are always numbered 1 to 36, and they’re alternately colored RED or BLACK.

The additional slots are green.

In European roulette there is only one green slot, the “0”.

In American roulette there are two green slots: “0” and “00”.

In Sands roulette a third green slot, “S”, has been added to the wheel.

The green slots are there for one reason:

They make the game’s statistical probabilities uneven.

This is because of the way roulette bets are paid off. You can win anywhere from 35-to-1 (for betting on a single number) down to 1-to-1 (for betting on 18 slots at a time).

The payoffs, called “odds”, are not as fair to you as the actual estimated probabilities of the roulette ball landing on any given slot. This is how the casino makes its money.

In a game of roulette the house should keep at least 2.70% of all the bets players make over time. The casino has no need to cheat the players. In fact, the players often make really bad bets that improve the “house edge”, as that casino profit is called.

One of the other differences between European roulette and both American and Sands roulette is that the European roulette table has an additional betting area. This secondary betting area is used to place specially designed bets. They are more complicated than the normal bets made in American and Sands roulette. I’m going to ignore this section of the table, because I’m going to show you how to place bets that have the best chances of paying off.

Is There a Winning System for Roulette?

Everyone who gets into roulette sooner or later starts to think about how they can “beat the system”.

I’m going to be honest here:

There is no way to do that.

The green slots on the wheel make it impossible for anyone, anywhere, to ever design a betting system that is guaranteed to win. If you really want to guarantee yourself a win every time, then put a chip on each of the 2-to-1 outside bets and on each of the green number bets.

That’s the only way you’ll be paid money every time the wheel spins.

You’ll also go broke.

You may have heard about a system called the Martingale System. It’s a popular betting system with new roulette players.

Experienced roulette players just turn their heads and roll their eyes when someone mentions the Martingale System. The only way you can make money with the Martingale System is to write a book about it and get people to buy your book.

Even that’s a gamble, though, because most people now know that the Martingale System promises more than it delivers.

Here’s how this system works:

You start out betting the minimum. If you lose, you double your bet. If you win on your doubled bet, you go back to betting the table minimum. If you lose again, you double the size of your bet again.

This sounds great to inexperienced bettors but the problem is that you’ll either run out of money or hit the table limit before you can recoup your losses as they add up.

The Martingale System is a sucker bet, plain and simple.

Every betting system in every form of gambling tries to leverage probability theory. The Martingale System and other roulette betting strategies also rely on probability estimates.

But there’s a flaw in the thinking behind these systems. If you account for the flaw you’ll be okay. You won’t always win but your expectations will be more reasonable.

The secret to not going broke when you gamble is to set reasonable expectations and maintain your self-discipline. You should never drink or take drugs when you gamble. They lower your inhibitions and impair your judgment.

You might as well just hand your money over to the casino at the cashier window and say “keep it” if you’re going to drink or do drugs when you gamble.

How Do Probabilities Work in Roulette?

Probability theory came out of statistics. It tries to give us rules by which to guess what happens next in any situation. The guesses are seldom accurate predictions. Sometimes the guesses work out, and sometimes they don’t. Gamblers love probability theory because they think it helps them pick the best betting strategies.

You’re actually more likely to double your money during a roulette session if you put all your money on a single bet. The more bets you place, the less likely it becomes to double your money.

That’s because every bet brings you close to the long term expectations. The closer you are to the short term, the more likely you are to get better than expected results.

In roulette, the probabilities are simple. The dealer spins the wheel and releases a ball that whirls around the outside of the wheel and finally settles in a slot. With only 37 slots on a European roulette wheel you have a 1-in-37 probability of the ball landing on a specific slot.

This probability never changes.

This probability is calculated on the basis of all the known possibilities.

What probability theory cannot do, however, is predict where the ball will stop.

Nor can it predict whether the ball will land on red, black, or green any number of times over the next 100 spins.

Nonetheless, a lot of gambling guides tell you that you have the best chances of winning if you do this because of such-and-such probabilities. And many of these guides warn you that there is no way to predict the future, but by setting the expectation that the ball will land on red about 47% of the time, these guides are making predictions and promises they cannot keep.

They’ll even back up their claims by talking about how to run computer simulations for 1 million spins of the wheel so that you see how often the ball lands on red, black, or green.

In the real world the Probability Fairy is always on vacation. She’ll never be there to wave her magic wand to make things happen the way experts say they should. The ball could land on red over the next 20 spins. Or it could land on black or green or some random mix of color combinations.

You have no way of knowing how many of the next [X] spins will turn out a certain way. Talking about probabilities in this way is just dishonest.

What you can do is look at the wheel and ask yourself how much it costs to bet on the largest possible set of numbers. The idea here is to get as much coverage as you can without losing money too fast.

But even if you cover every number on the wheel you’ll lose money.

So the only way to win in roulette–and this is completely random, never guaranteed–is to bet on less than all the numbers on the wheel.

You also want to play bets that pay better than even money. You can place a variety of bets, but most of them aren’t worthwhile.

Betting on single numbers is a bad idea. You can place bets on the lines between the numbers (these are called “street bets”) and on lines at the corners of numbers (these are called “corner bets”).

But even though you get pretty good odds (payoff) you’re still covering too few numbers.

How Bets Work in Roulette

Divide the bets into two groups:

1. Inside bets
2. Outside bets

Inside bets are based on individual numbers or small groups of numbers. When you see players betting on the lines, corners, and individual numbers on the table they are making inside bets.

Outside bets are based on pre-selected groups of numbers on the wheel. The “2-to-1” bets cover 12 numbers each: 1 to 12, 13 to 24, and 25 to 36. The “1-to-1” or “even money” bets cover 18 numbers each:

• Odd
• Even
• Black
• Red
• 1 to 18
• 19 to 36

The bets more likely to pay are the even money bets.

But unless you can win 5 times out of 9 on even money bets you’ll lose your stake. That’s the problem with roulette. You always have to win at least 1 more time than you lose no matter how you place your bets.

The “2 to 1” bets pay better than the “1 to 1” bets because they cover fewer numbers. You have less of a chance of winning.

There are 6 types of “2 to 1” bets:

• 3 kinds of dozens bets: (1 to 12, 13 to 24, and 25 to 36)
• 3 kinds of columns bets: ([1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25, 28, 31, 34], [2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26, 29, 32, 35], [3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, 30, 33, 36]).

You can make a bet by betting on any two of the “2 to 1” groups. That means that instead of covering only 18 numbers you’ll be covering 24 numbers.

This type of bet is often called the “double dozen” bet. It’s popular among gamblers who like to hedge their bets. They have a better chance (all other things considered) of scoring a win with a “double dozen” than with one of the standard even money bets. If you’re playing it safe and going for even money odds, you should always play a double dozen bet.

If you want to bet more aggressively, then instead of betting more money on your double dozen, you can cover all 36 of the red and black numbers. Leave the green numbers alone. Yes, they’ll come in every now and then, and you’ll lose money.

But there’s a way to keep your losses low.

How to Bet on Columns or Dozens Aggressively

Take 6 chips and distribute them across EITHER the three dozen bets or the three column bets.

Place 3 chips on 1, 2 chips on the 2nd, and 1 chip on the 3rd. If the ball lands on a green number you’ll lose your entire bet, so always play the table minimum with this aggressive style.

If the ball lands on any number with your single chip bet, you’ll win 2 chips and lose 5–for a net loss of 3 chips (half your bet).

That’s the safest way to bet aggressively on the table.

If the ball lands on any number in your 2 chip bet you’ll win 4 chips and lose 4 for no loss. This keeps you in the game.

If the ball lands on any number in your 3chip bet, you’ll win 6 chips and lose 3 for a net gain of 3 chips. This will offset 1 single chip win.

The way this betting strategy works out, your money can grow substantially and still take some big hits. Where the strategy will fail you is when the ball lands on green or if the ball lands on the single chip bet more often than it lands on the 3 chip bet.

Roulette Inside Bet Strategy

Sorry, but there’s no way to prevent that from happening.

There Is No Guaranteed Way to Win in Roulette

Roulette Inside Betting Strategy

I can’t say this often enough:

You can’t win at roulette in the long run.

I think roulette is a fun game to play. It’s exciting because you don’t know where the ball will land. You take an active role in making your wagers.

And you’ll find there are a lot of different betting systems to experiment with. The only thing that is guaranteed in roulette is that the casino will make a profit. What you hope for is that they make their profit at someone else’s expense.

Players who try to improve their luck by making big bets do sometimes win, but most often the people who come out ahead are the patient players who use conservative betting strategies and take money off the table. If you only walk away with your beginning stake you’ll be luckier than most gamblers.

And you can take that to the bank.

Roulette is a negative expectation game. On the American double zero wheel, the house has a 5.26 edge, and there is no betting strategy or system that can change the house edge. If you see any advertisements for a system that claims to beat the game of Roulette, don’t waste your money. These claims are false. Over the years some of the greatest minds in history have tried to devise a system to beat the game.

Albert Einstein studied the problem of how to beat the game of Roulette. After spending time on the problem he concluded that it could not be done and he was quoted as saying, 'The only way to beat Roulette is to steal the money when the dealer's not looking.' In a sense, he was correct. His point was that there is no way to employ some mathematical configuration of bets to overcome the house edge.

Roulette Betting Patterns

Although there is no strategy for beating the game, many players like to employ a set betting pattern when they play Roulette. Instead of dropping chips all over the layout they prefer to make bets that cover multiple numbers along with a straight bet on a single number in hopes of grinding out small wins while allowing them to play longer. Here are two popular Roulette betting strategies for playing the inside numbers. If you are unfamiliar with the inside bets, look at this Roulette step by step.

Double Street Quad Strategy

With this strategy, you will make wagers on two double streets along with a quad or corner bet and one straight up number. By using this betting pattern, you are covering 17 numbers on the layout, and there will not be more than five adjacent slots on the wheel that are not covered.

You will be wagering six chips per spin. You will put two chips on each of the double streets and one chip on the corner bet and straight number. You can select your favorite number to play straight up. I like to play the number five so here are the numbers I use.

Two chips on the double street to cover: 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15
Two chips on the double street to cover: 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33
One chip on the corner to cover: 17, 18, 20, 21
One chip on the number 5. (You can pick your favorite number, but it should be one that is not covered by one of your other bets.)

The Pay Off

The double street pays 5 to 1. You have two chips on it, so you will collect ten chips if the ball lands on one of the numbers covered by your double street bet. You will have a profit of six chips. (You will lose four chips. Two from your other double street and one from your quad bet and one from your straight up bet.)

The Corner/Quad bet pays 8 to 1. If the ball lands on one of these four numbers you will have a profit of three chips. (You will lose four chips on the double street wagers and one chip on the straight number.)

The straight up number pays 35 to 1. If the ball lands on your number you will have a profit of 30 chips. (You will lose four chips on the double street wagers and one chip on the corner bet.)

Five Quad Strategy

With this strategy, you will make five quad/corner bets along with a single straight up number. With this betting pattern, you are covering 21 numbers on the layout. If you select a straight up number that is included in one of your corner bets, you will only be covering 20 numbers. You will put a single chip on each of the following corner bets:
5, 6, 8, 9
10, 11, 13, 14
17, 18, 20, 21
25, 26, 28, 29
32, 33, 35, 36
Bet one chip on your favorite straight number.

The quad bet pays 8 to 1 so if the ball lands on one the numbers in any of you quad bets you will collect will make a profit of three chips. You collect eight but lose four on your other quad bets and one on your straight up bets.
The straight up number pays 35 to 1. If the ball lands on your number you will have a profit of 30 chips. (You will lose five chips on the five corner bet.)

Final Tips

Both of these strategies are designed to extend your time at the table. You will not get rich as you are only grinding out small profits on each winning spin. If you want to try for a bigger win, you can add one chip to the bet that wins in hopes of having repeating numbers. You can also vary the specific numbers that you use for the double street or corner bets. Experiment with your own betting patterns. You won’t get rich, but you will have fun. One final tip is always to try to play at a full table. This will slow the game down and reduce the time your money is at risk while increasing your comp time.