American Roulette Tips
Approach roulette with the sober realization that, with a house advantage of 5.26 percent on the American wheel, roulette is among the worst bets in a casino. Despite the odds, you can still use some simple strategies to stretch your roulette bankroll and enjoy the thrill of the spin.
American Roulette Strategy And Tips First time casino goers who sit down to play American Roulette online assume that a single zero or a double zero is an even number. While that may be the case in mathematics, in Roulette, it's not. And it's not odd, either. So an even or odds bet will lose if the Roulette wheel hits one of the two zeros. America Roulette Roulette (American Roulette) Tips. Roulette is one of the most iconic casino games in the world. Who has not been mesmerized by the spinning ball rounding the roulette wheel then bouncing to a stop on one lucky number? It has been around since the 1700’s, creating lots of history around the game.
If you’re looking for a way to increase your chances of winning at roulette, you have come to the right place! In this review, we will explore some tips and strategies that might help you to beat the game.
It is essential to mention that roulette, like all casino games, is a gambling game, so you will also need a shot of luck to help you win. Of course, you won’t win every time you play and there is no magic formula for winning because you are basically relying on luck to come out ahead.
Keep in mind that there is no skill in roulette because each spin of the wheel is random and each spin is also independent of what happened in the past. The main goal when playing roulette is to hope that you are lucky enough to place a winning bet on the layout.
First, let’s do a little introduction on how to play. Roulette is not a hard game to understand and it doesn’t have too many rules. You just choose a number where you think the ball will land. Half of the numbers on the wheel are red, and half are black one, plus there is the green “0”. If you are playing American double zero roulette, then there would also be a “00” space on the wheel.
On the betting table layout, you simply place your betting chip(s) on the corresponding number, color, or section you want to bet. Don’t forget that, even if you become an expert at this game, the house will end up winning most of the time because it has a mathematical edge over you because of the zero(s)!
And, if you are deciding between the European or American Roulette, we must advise you to choose the European one, as it has one less zero and the chances for you to win are slightly better.
On a double zero wheel the house edge is 5.26 percent, while on a single zero wheel the edge is lower at only 2.70 percent.
Roulette Tips
First, it might be helpful to have your strategy already prepared before you start to play, and not just make it up as you make your bets at the table. Changing your approach while you are in the middle of a game could be considered an act of despair and unpreparedness, which could lead to a loss based on emotional decisions. However, since roulette is basically a game of luck, you could also throw all caution to the wind and just make things up as you go along!
Please keep in mind that the most essential tip is to never bet more than you can spare to lose! When drawing up your budget, remember that this amount should be considered an entertainment expense and not an investment. It must be ready to “be lost,” because, as we have said, you are counting on luck to win.
If you feel that your desire to play continues, even when things are getting out of your control, do not hesitate to seek help. It is wise to know when to stop! In the end, it doesn’t make sense to chase big wins, without knowing when it’s time to stop. You especially don’t want to finish up losing everything that you have won if you’ve been on a lucky streak.
Some players like to observe the flow of the game from the outside before taking their seat at the table and they might also want to watch the moves of the other players. Other players might want to observe the ball spinning for a few rounds in the roulette wheel before placing their bets. This way, these players think they can check the authenticity of the wheel and determine if they think there are any trends (some roulette wheels tend to stop at odd numbers, for example).
The “split bet” is a popular wager for roulette players
Also, some players will take time to observe the casino staff and see how they spin the wheel. If the same person has been in that role for a long time, spinning the wheel and releasing the ball with the same strength and in the same way every time then some players think they might be able to “clock the dealer” by calculating the end result based simply on the motions of the dealer.
Here are other tips some roulette players may like to use:
1 – Pay attention if the roulette wheel oscillates. Stay in a position where you can see the reflection of the light on the roulette wheel. If it swings, the representation becomes deformed. It can directly affect where it ends up;
2 – Try to identify biased roulette wheels. It may be that a wheel has dominant areas (imperfections that force the ball to stop at specific points), is crooked (the more twisted, the greater the tendency), higher barriers between houses, or reduced acceleration at particular points.
3 – Observe if the roulette balls are deformed. If the ball makes more noise in certain parts, it might be the result of a deformity. See if the roulette track is straight and firm. If so, the ball could bounce or make a different move. These deformities could allow the ball to fall in certain places more frequently.
If you are gambling online, before you play with your money, you should confirm the legitimacy of the platform. Look for a site that uses software by a well-known developer, such as RTG (Real Time Gaming). Also, be sure to look for online casinos that will give you a FREE no deposit bonus. This is like a welcome bonus, where the casino will offer you free spins or free money to play. This way, you can try their game to get familiar with the roulette wheel, table structure, payouts, and the dealer’s personality (this part only applies if you choose to play in the live version), before you bet your own money!
If you are new to online casinos then be sure take the opportunity to play for free to start familiarizing yourself with the dynamics of the game and also to try out your different strategies.
Roulette Strategies
Here, we will present you with some interesting strategies that some players think can improve their chances of winning in roulette!
Let’s begin with the most famous one: The Martingale System. It is easy to understand, but its accuracy is debatable. It works as follows: each time you place a bet and lose, you should make the same bet, but with twice the amount of money. So, imagine a situation where you bet $10 on red and lose, in the next move, you double the bet to $20, but you lose again. Then, the next bet would be $40. You just keep increasing your bet until, hopefully, you win. Then you will recover the money you lost in the previous bets, plus you will realize a profit that is equal to the amount of your original bet. The big problem with this system is that your bet size increases very rapidly. This system can usually work for a while, but eventually, your luck will run out and you will have a very expensive losing streak which could bust your bankroll. Also, every casino game has a maximum betting limit, so at a certain point, you will no longer to be able to double your bet!
All roulette tables have minimum and maximum bet limits
Next, we present to you the Grand Martingale Betting System. It works like the previous system, except that every time you double the bet, you add an extra amount to the initial bet. If this system goes right and you win on one round, in addition to covering your expenses, you also make some profit, which probably is your number one goal. But if you lose, your budget will end faster.
Another lesser-known roulette strategy, but popular among beginners, is the James Bond System and is only used on single zero wheels. It consists of a combination of bets, totaling $200, but it gives you a lot of chances to win. In this system you need to bet $10 on zero, $140 on the 19-36 box, and $50 on the 13-18 table. With this kind of strategy, you have a good chance of winning because you will only lose if the ball lands on a number between 1 and 12. And, if you do win you will have a profit of $80 when the winning number is between 19 and 36; a $100 profit if one of the six numbers is from 13 to 18 the winner: and if the winning number is zero then you will make a $160 profit.
While these are all interesting roulette strategies, the big problem is that none of them will really help you to walk away as a winner because they do nothing to lower the casino’s mathematical advantage over you.
The best strategy is to only play a single zero roulette wheel, rather than a double zero wheel because the house edge is much lower: 2.70 percent versus 5.26 percent.
Lastly, we introduce you to the rule “en prison.” This rule usually applies only to the European single zero roulette wheel, but not always. Let’s say you bet on black. If the ball lands in zero, the table takes your $10, and the wheel spins again. If it falls into a black number, you win your $10 back. You will not make a profit, but at least you will get your money back.
Conclusion
All the tips you found in this article can be fun to follow! They certainly won’t guarantee you a winning roulette game, but they will allow you to look at the game differently. And, while we know that, ultimately, your chances of winning at roulette will be based on luck, it might be a little more adventurous to try out some different strategies to find the best one for yourself!
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If you find a page about American roulette strategy that purports to be written by a “pro,” run the other direction. There are no “pro” roulette players, unless you count the casino. Roulette is a negative expectation game.
I’m going to explain the intricacies of roulette in this post, including the math behind the game that prevents players from turning pro. This post focuses on American roulette, which is the version of the game I learned on.
But I’ll touch on European roulette and other variations in the final section so that you’re not completely lost.
The American roulette strategy advice I have to offer is probably different from what you’ll find on most roulette strategy pages, but I hope to offer more accurate advice than the average gambling writer. I do know a couple of roulette tips and tricks you might find useful.
About American Roulette
I’ve seen various pages about roulette which start off with a history of the game. They usually compare the age of the game roulette with the age of other casino games. I’m going to skip that nonsense in this post.
I’m an expert on gambling strategy, not gambling history.
I don’t care whether roulette is older than craps or vice versa.
Roulette is a simple enough game, though. You have a spinning wheel, similar to the wheel on the game show Wheel of Fortune. Instead of having dollar amounts attached to the various stops, though, you have numbered slots.
And instead of a pointer, you have a metal ball that gets spun around the rim of the bowl that holds the wheel. The wheel spins in one direction, and the metal ball spins in the opposite direction. Eventually, the ball loses momentum and lands in one of the 38 pockets on the wheel.
The pockets are numbered 0, 00, and 1 through 36. The 0 and the 00 are colored green. Half the other numbers are black, while half of them are red.
The gambling comes in when you bet on the outcome. You’re basically betting on where the ball is going to land, but you have lots of ways of placing that bet.
The most obvious bets are the single-number bets and the bets on which color will win.
If you place a single-number bet, you only win if the ball lands on that number. When you win, though, you get a 35 to 1 payout.
For example, if you bet $10 and won, you’d get a payout of $350. You’d get your $10 bet back, too.
If you place a bet on red (or a bet on black), you win if the ball lands on any of the 18 red (or one of the 18 black) numbers. But since you have such a relatively good chance of winning, you only win even money.
For example, if you bet $10 on black and won, you’d get a payout of $10. You’d get your $10 back, too.
Those are far from the only betting options available to you, though.
Roulette Bets and the Math Behind Them
You can also bet that one of two numbers will win, or you can bet that one of three numbers will win. You can also place a four-number bet.
Or you can bet that the final number will be even. Or that it will be odd.
You can bet that the number will be high (19-36). Or that it will be low (1-18).
All the bets pay off as if there were no house edge on a game with 36 numbers.
If it weren’t for the 0 and the 00, these bets would be a break-even proposition in the long run.
But casinos aren’t in the business of breaking even. They’re in the business of making a profit — hence the 0 and the 00.
A bet on black loses if you get a red result OR a green result.
A bet on even loses if you get an odd result or a 0 (or 00).
This gives the casino an unassailable mathematical edge over the player.
Let’s look at the payoff for a single-number bet and compare it to the payout odds to see how the casino profits.
Let’s assume you made 38 statistically perfect spins of a roulette wheel. You’d see each outcome once. You’d lose $100 every time you lost, but on the one number where you won, you’d win $3,500.
But there are 37 losing numbers, for a total loss of $3,700.
With a loss of $3,700 compared to a win of $3,500, you’d show a net loss of $200 over 38 spins.
That’s an average of $5.26 per spin, or 5.26%.
That 5.26% is the house edge for the game of American roulette. If you played an infinite number of spins of the roulette wheel, that would be the amount you’d lose.
Let’s look at another example — the even money bet.
You bet $100 on black on 38 perfect spins. You win 18 of those bets because there are 18 black numbers. That’s $1,800. You lose 20 of those bets at $100 each, for a loss of $200. That’s 5.26% again.
All the bets at an American roulette table carry that same 5.26% house edge — except one.
There’s a bet at the roulette table called the five-number bet, and it’s a bet that wins if the ball lands on any of the following numbers:
American Roulette Wheel Tips
- 0
- 00
- 1
- 2
- 3
That bet pays off at 6 to 1.
Let’s look at 38 perfect spins again. You win on five of those spins, and you win 6 to 1, which is $3,000 ($600 x 5 winning spins).
But on the other 33 spins, you lose $100 each, or $3,300 total.
That’s a net loss of $300.
Over 38 spins, that’s an average of $7.89 per spin, or 7.89%.
This makes the five-number bet the only “incorrect” bet at an American roulette table.
The best strategy for any casino game is to place the bet with the lowest house edge. All the bets at the American roulette wheel have a house edge of 5.26% with the exception of the five-number bet.
Therefore, if you’re betting on anything OTHER than the five-number bet, you’re using the perfect American roulette strategy.
Congratulations!
Some Roulette Systems and Strategies You Might Consider (With Their Pros and Cons)
You’ll find plenty of more involved strategies and systems for roulette, though. These are usually structured ways of raising and lowering your bets based on what happened on previous spins of the wheel.
The most famous of these, and my favorite, is the Martingale System. To some extent, the Martingale System is unjustifiably maligned, too — and I’ll explain why.
First, though, how does the Martingale System work?
It’s simple. Every time you lose, you double the size of your next bet until you win. Then, you go back to your initial bet size.
For example, you bet $10 on black and lose. On the next spin, you bet $20 on black and win.
You won back the $10 you lost on the first spin, AND you have a $10 profit.
But sometimes you’ll lose multiple times in a row. Every time you lose, you double the size of your previous bet, so you need to have a bankroll to pull off the Martingale System.
Here’s another example of the Martingale in action.
You bet $10 on black and lose. You bet $20 on the next spin and lose again. You bet $40 on the third spin and lose yet again.
On the fourth spin, you bet a whopping $80, and you win.
You lost $70 on the first three spins, so now you have a $10 profit.
Most gambling writers are quick to point out that the Martingale System cannot overcome the house edge for American roulette in the long run. It might not be immediately obvious why that is, though. After all, this system seems foolproof at first glance, doesn’t it?
If you had an infinitely large bankroll and no betting limits, the Martingale System WOULD be perfect.
The problem is that you DON’T have an infinite bankroll.
And you DO have betting limits.
The problem with the whole “doubling up” strategy is that the size of your bets gets much larger than you’d expect them to, much faster than you’d expect them to.
Sure, it’s rare to lose a bet on black five, six, seven, or eight times in a row.
But it happens at least once a day in every casino.
Let’s look at the size of the bets in a progression like that:
- $5
- $10
- $20
- $40
- $80
- $160
- $320
- $640
- $1,280
Most of the people I know who can afford to risk $1,280 on a single roulette bet are going to be bored silly with a $5 bet.
They’re not going to have much fun playing American roulette for these stakes, and they’re not going to be satisfied with a $5 profit, either.
Also, I’ve never seen a roulette game with a $5 minimum bet that didn’t also have a maximum bet of $500. I’ve seen games with a $20 minimum that had a $1,000 max bet or even a $2,000 max bet.
American Roulette Strategy Tips
But there’s always a maximum bet, and the betting spread between the two isn’t usually very large.
The Pros and Cons of the Martingale System
Here’s the reality of the Martingale System. In the short run, it can improve your probability of walking away a winner. I’ve seen one educated, well-researched estimate that said if you only play for an hour or so, you have an 80% probability of walking away from your session a winner.
But keep in mind that with the Martingale, after a progression, you’re only ahead by one unit.
Those winning sessions are guaranteed to be small.
Eventually, though — on average, 20% of the time, you’ll have a losing session.
And because of the exponential nature of the betting system, those losing sessions will be bigger losing sessions than the size of the winning session. You’ll wind up with a net loss, over time, that will eventually average out to about the same size as your 5.26% house edge.
This means that this American roulette strategy won’t overcome the house edge in the long run. It’s not really a winning strategy.
It can be a fun strategy to use in the short run, though. I’ve been with buddies at the casino and showed them this system. They were impressed when I walked away with a profit.
I didn’t bother to tell them the flaws in the system. I guess I’m just ruthless in that respect.
Although some people are too dull to even follow what’s going on when you make this kind of system known in the first place.
There are other ways to play American roulette, though.
Trying to Win a Massive Amount of Money Playing American Roulette
Everyone knows that the odds of winning a million dollars playing the lottery are ridiculously low. Winning a progressive slot machine jackpot is also a big longshot.
ANY game where you can win a million dollars will be a longshot, though.
You could try to win a huge amount of money playing roulette, though. You just need to win several times in a row. You could try to win even-money bets repeatedly, or you could go for a shorter winning streak on a longer shot bet. Either would work.
For example, you could start by betting $5 on black. If you win, you leave your winnings there and go for it again. Look at the progression if you go on a winning streak:
- $5
- $10
- $20
- $40
- $80
- $160
- $320
- $640
- $1,280
- $2,560
- $5,120
- $10,240
- $20,480
- $40,960
- $81,920
- $163,840
- $327,680
- $655,360
- $1.3 million
You only have to win 18 times in a row to win over a million dollars.
That sound impossible, but it happens.
Another way to do this more aggressively is to place a single-number bet repeatedly.
Here’s what that progression looks like:
- $5
- $175 + $5 = $180
- $6300 + $180 = $6,480
- $226,800 + $6480 = $233,280
- $8,164,800
Win a single-number bet five times in a row, and you’ve won over $8 million.
Of course, with either of these options, you run into a similar problem that you’d run into with the Martingale System. You can’t place the next bet in the progression because of the betting maximums.
Still, you can win some big jackpots with this strategy.
The house still has an edge, though. You don’t get to overcome that no matter what happens.
Still, your odds of getting a significant payout are better when letting your winnings ride in roulette than they would be playing a slot machine.
This is my favorite system to play.
Other Variations of Roulette and Their Strategies
The most common variation of roulette is one in which you have a single 0 on the wheel instead of a 0 and a 00. This changes the probability significantly. The payouts remain the same, but the probability of losing drops.
American Roulette Tips
Instead of having a 37 to 1 probability of winning a single-number bet, you have a 36 to 1 probability. The payout is still 35 to 1, though.
The house edge for this version of roulette — single-zero roulette — is 2.70%.
You can find variations which offer you opportunities to cut your losses in half, too. The house edge on these versions is 1.35%. They put your even-money bet in prison and wait a spin to see what happens. If it loses a second time, then it’s lost for good.
Otherwise, your original bet is returned to you with no winnings.
Conclusion
American roulette is a game where you can’t get an edge over the house. That’s just the nature of the game, its probabilities, and the payout odds. No system or strategy can overcome that house edge in the long run.
This doesn’t mean that roulette strategies are useless. You can use some of these strategies to improve your probability of having a winning strategy, if that’s your aim. The Martingale System is perfect for this, in fact. You just need the bankroll to withstand it.
You can also use a let it ride strategy to parlay your roulette winnings into a larger win than you’d probably see on a slot machine anytime during your casino visit. You’ll fail far more often than not, but you’ll still have a better probability of hitting a jackpot than you would playing slots.
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