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Roulette

If a player bets on a single number and wins, he is paid 35 to 1. This means that he is paid 35 times his bet, while also his bet is returned, in total he gets 36 times his bet. (In a lottery one would say 'the prize is 36 times the cost of the ticket', because in a lottery the cost of the ticket is not returned additionally.)

A player can bet on numbers, combinations and even colors.

Table of contents

1 Board depiction 2 Bet odds table 3 See also 4 External Link

Board depiction

Bet odds table

(in addition to the mentioned payout the bet is returned)

Bet name	Winning spaces	Payout
0	0	35 to 1
00	00	35 to 1
1	1	35 to 1
2	2	35 to 1
...
36	36	35 to 1
Row 00	0, 00	17 to 1
Row 3	1, 2, 3	11 to 1
Row 6	4, 5, 6	11 to 1
Row 9	7, 8, 9	11 to 1
...
Row 36	34, 35, 36	11 to 1
Column 1	1, 4, 7, ..., 34	2 to 1
Column 2	2, 5, 8, ..., 35	2 to 1
Column 3	3, 6, 9, ..., 36	2 to 1
First 12	1, 2, 3, ..., 12	2 to 1
Middle 12	13, 14, 15, ..., 24	2 to 1
Last 12	25, 26, 27, ..., 36	2 to 1
Odd	1, 3, 5, ..., 35	1 to 1
Even	2, 4, 6, ..., 36	1 to 1
Red	1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 30, 32, 34, 36	1 to 1
Black	2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 13, 15, 17, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 29, 31, 33, 35	1 to 1
1 to 18	1, 2, 3, ..., 18	1 to 1
19 to 36	19, 20, 21, ..., 36	1 to 1
five number bet	0, 00, 1, 2, 3	6 to 1

Note also that 0 and 00 are neither odd nor even in this game.

The house average or house edge is what is lost on average relative to the bet. If a player bets on a single number in the American game there is a probability of 1/38 that he gets 36 times his bet (including the return of his bet), so he ends up having on average 36/38=0.9474 times his bet. Thus the house average for American roulette is 1/19 (5.26%); the same applies for the other kinds of bets, except for the five number bet where it a greater than 7%. The house average is appoximately halved in the European game.

Roulette has been known as the devil's wheel since the total of all numbers adds to 666, the legendary number of the beast. Albert Einstein is reputed to have stated "You cannot beat a roulette table unless you steal money from it."

Various attempts have been made by engineers to overcome the house edge through predicting the mechanical performance of the wheel, most notably by Joseph Jaggers, the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo in 1873.

To try to prevent exploits like this, the casinos monitor the performance of their wheels, and rebalance and realign them regularly to try to keep the result of the spins as random as possible.

More recently Thomas Bass, in his book The Newtonian Casino 1991, has claimed to be able to predict wheel performance in real time. He is also the author of The Eudaemonic Pie, which describes the exploits of a group of computer hackers who attempt to use computers in their shoes to win at roulette by predicting where the ball will fall. In 2004, it was reported that a group in London had used mobile cameraphones to predict the path of the ball. [1]

In 2004, Ashley Revell of London, England sold all of his posessions, clothing included, and brought $135,300 to the Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas and put it all on "Red" at the roulette table in a double-or-nothing bet. The ball landed on "Red 7" and Revell walked away with his money doubled to $270,600.

See also

• Russian roulette.

• Briton bets it all on roulette spin, and wins