If you had to name the 5 most iconic casino games off the top of your head, roulette would certainly be on that list. Roulette touches upon everything a casino excels at. Firstly, it is a social game that is great with friends (although not for online roulettes). Secondly, online roulette is very easy to pick up and learn. But most importantly, Roulette is a game to test how far your luck, tips & tricks can take you. But we can tell you roulette tips & tricks that can be helpful.
What can be more metaphorically heavy than an actual spinning wheel which can change the course of your fate? Seemingly, though, there is no strategy you can apply to win roulette. Many often refer to it as the most ‘unbeatable’ casino game. And there is some truth in that sentiment. Roulette is a game of chance, after all. Nevertheless, there are indeed some things you can do to nudge your chances towards victory, although only by a little. There cannot be a surefire guide to winning roulette. Some general roulette tips & tricks and a few do’s and don’ts.
Understanding House Edge
Roulette as a casino game definitely numbers among the games with top house advantage margins. In case you do not know what a house edge is, here is a refresher. Basically, as businesses, casinos profit from every playable in it. All games are designed to give some leeway to casinos, i.e., the house. The extra advantage that the house gets is its house edge for that game. It can be calculated in a couple of ways, but the easiest is the difference between the percentage of games that a player wins vs. the percentage of games that the casino wins. The casino gets the biggest house edge in slot games, which can go up to 15-20%. In comparison, American Roulette sits at an average of 5.26%. It seems comparatively tame, but over 5% is actually huge.
If a Russian roulette game had even a 5% chance of triggering the bullet, you would not want to play that game – because the cost of opportunity is too high. But surely, a Russian roulette game is a bad example because you do not stake your life in roulette, right? You do not, but Russian roulette is a game where you always lose in the long haul.
The best way to explain this house edge is with the roulette rules. American roulette rules are pretty straightforward. The roulette table wheel has 38 numbers on it. There are the numbers 0-36, so 18 of them even, and 18 of them odd. Moreover, 18 of these are red, and the rest are black. The other two numbers are 0 and 00, both coloured green. But here is the big catch: the 0 and 00 do not count as even or odd, neither as large nor small. These are some of the big factors behind the broad house edge.
American roulette tables have mathematically engineered their payout chart to always leave out profit for the house, no matter what. So take a single number payout, for example. It is a 35 to 1 bet. So if you bet on all the numbers, i.e., 1-36, and the greens, you would be losing 37 units for a 35 unit win. Mathematically, that leaves you at an expected Rs. 5 loss per Rs. 100 bet, rather than any profit. You will find every other bet to be worse than a break-even proposition. Betting on even numbers? The ball can land on an odd OR a green bar, and vice versa. When you think about it, no amount of roulette strategy can help you beat that high house edge completely.
Playing On Single Zero Roulette Wheels
If you have read thus far, you will realize that the 0 and 00’s, i.e., the green numbers, are the key to its big house edge. Were those removed, a roulette table would be a break-even proposition. That is to say, evens/odds and blacks/reds would all have a 50% expected success rate on landing the ball. But fortunately for you, American roulette is not the only type of roulette out there. European roulettes differ from it just by virtue of not having two green numbers. Instead, they have only 0. That would look like one less bar to you, but the actual difference is huge.
Because of one less green number, European roulettes have half the house edge at 2.70%. In any given bet, this almost halves your expected loss. For example, on average, you lose only Rs. 0.027 on rows, splits, and straight-up bets per dollar on average, compared to the Rs. 0.053 on the regular roulette wheel. Now, not to get ahead of ourselves: this is still roulette. You still lose money long-term. But if you want to somewhat increase your short-term chances, this is the way to go. So one of the foremost roulette tips & tricks to win is: play at a single zero roulette wheel.
Using Roulette Betting Systems
There are numerous betting systems in roulette. Simply put, it is a system of adjusting your bet throughout the course of a set of rolls, depending on how the game is going. These are not roulette tricks. The fundamental problem with these is that they cannot terminate the house edge. So they are essentially ‘go big or go home’ schemes. For example, the Martingale system is one of the most popular systems. It tells you to double your bet upon every loss. The implication is that the chance to get a winning hit goes up if you keep your bet consistent. In other words, this actually tells you to chase your losses. The roulette table has a completely random distribution on its hits. Chasing losses will get you nowhere. So the bottom line is: try not to rely too much on betting systems.
Clocking Roulette Wheels And Looking for Biases
Mathematically, roulette has 0% predictability. Every roll is independent. One roll of the wheel has no consequence on the next roll. Therefore, trying to predict the outcome is a wild goose chase. To repeat our point from before, a pure random distribution does not adjust itself if the same outcome keeps recurring. But all this is in the realm of mathematics. Is a roulette table 100% random? Sure, but only when perfectly maintained. In reality, the actual machinery goes through wear and tear in its years of use. And even dealers tend to have their own bias sometimes. ‘Clocking roulette wheels’ simply means to spot these irregularities. It is done through a long stakeout of a wheel where you check whether one number or cluster of results appear more than they statistically should.
In some cases, roulette wheels do have these irregularities. But even then, a roulette wheel is still more than 99% unpredictable. Moreover, you cannot clock a live dealer or online roulette wheel.
Conclusion
To be completely blunt, it is impossible to ‘beat’ roulette. By design, there is no certainty of a favourable result. People can and do win big sometimes, but only momentarily. If you keep grinding roulette tables regularly, you are bound to lose money. So enjoy roulette tips for what it is: a fun, hands-off, and casual casino classic. Think of the bet as payment for the entertainment, and if you win, that is the bonus gift.
