A Primer on Roulette: Why Are You Playing This Game?

Roulette: Why do you play this game?

These articles will contain instructions, guides, tips, and cautions. However, this is not how this article reads. This will be the literary equivalent for one of those less-sophisticated traffic safety films. Why? Simple. Roulette is played all over the world, even by the elite players of the most exclusive European casinos. Players lose money in a game that is almost impossible to win, even among the richest players in the most exclusive European casinos. I’m not going to show you any tricks. I will explain how the game works, and show you why you shouldn’t win. And if your brain is sane, you will never win.

These are the rules: Have a look!

Roulette is not something you can play. The “dealer”, or so they say, sets the ball a spinning and it continues. The game is on the bet. The game’s outcome is entirely determinat.

Bets:

Inside. Inside bets focus on a particular pocket or group of pockets. They are more likely to win but have lower odds. They are:

Straight: You can only bet on one bank.

Split: Place a bet on a pair or inside pockets

Street: You can bet on three pockets in a straight line. To signify your bet, a marker will be placed at one pocket’s edge.

Corner: You can bet on a 4-square layout. The marker is placed at an intersection.

Six Line: A bet placed on two streets adjoining each other, with the market located at the intersection where they intersect.

Trio: Bet on the point between 0,1 and 2, or at 00.2, 3.

Outside. Place your outside bets based on categories and set of pockets. They are more likely to win but have lower payouts. They are:

1–18: The eighteen first numbers on the steering wheel.

19–36 : The second eighteenth numbers on the steering wheel.

Black or red? Which color will you see on the wheel?

Even or Odd is a wager on an even or odd number.

Dozens: 1–12, 13–24, 25–36

Columns: All 12 numbers for each of the three vertical lines. Example: 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23, 26, 29, 32, 35

Any bet may be declared as winning by the dealer at any time. If the dealer does this, the bet is deemed to be lost. This aspect of casino poker is not the same for every casino.

You know now how to wager on roulette. Now, I’ll tell you why you shouldn’t ever play the game.

Why You Can’t Win? A Tragedie in Three Parts

Odds

The 1.111 to 1 odds of winning in roulette are the best. It is on Half bets (like Red or Odd) that you will get the best odds of winning in roulette. They pay a staggering 1 to 1. Even money. Let’s examine something with a better payout. 2–1. The dozens. What are the odds? 2–1. Nonsense. These odds are actually 2.167–1. Even though it might seem like a small amount, this difference will make you ill long-term. This incremental but disproportionate upward increase in odds holds true as we progress in payout. Why? There are many possible reasons. They don’t need rig the game, the work is done for them already.

Expected Negative Value

When you place a betting on something, you can use math calculations to predict what the outcome will be. You can then calculate the Expected Value of a $1.00 Bet. Some bets are positive, while others have a negative outcome. If there is no external control, strategy or psychological maneuvering, and card counting are not available, then your gains could be negative. For a $1.00 wager on roulette, the expected value of each bet except Trio is $00.53. Trio has a value of -$00.79. These numbers are not exciting.

Reset Button Rolls

You’ve just won a huge bet. You feel euphoric and everything seems to be going your favor. Wrong. The next roll has exactly the same results as the one before. Why? Because you have zero control over roulette. There are no cards to count and nothing can change over time. You must keep playing until you lose. What does this all remind us of? A slot machine. Except that everyone is more stylish. You are losing more money.

Now I know what your saying. “People make their money playing Roulette!” Let’s take a look.

One for The Books

The Past

I can tell you from my personal experience with at least one of them that the great roulette payouts have been made in one way. Old tables were poorly designed. As the night went on, the wheels began to show bias towards certain outcomes. While one board might not have enough bias for someone to make money, it is impossible for one person to determine the bias at all the tables. Solution? Solution? The problem was finally discovered by casinos and they spent large sums of money in correcting it. Modern boards can be of either one or two types. The boards can be set up to reset or without bias.

The Present

Two factors affect modern roulette wins. Blind luck in incomprehensible amounts, or systems that are essentially dependent of a player’s reliance upon the computational utility and Chaos Theory. Most math-savvy people consider this a bad idea. Of course, there’s always the Martingale method and its offspring. But that strategy is not as effective as loss minimization. This is also a bad idea. A team of skilled gamblers can defeat a wheel, and this is in fact the truth. Roulette odds are not good enough for this kind of play.

The Moral of the story

Roulette is the most sophisticated slot machine. It is a game that feels real, but it doesn’t. There is no real playing. There is no winning. There is the luck and the reality. My usual lightheartedness might be missing, but I do my best to keep you from making the same mistake as so many. Roulette is quite different to slot machines in many ways. You will lose significantly more money by playing it. This is a bad idea. Combining this with dealer control makes the game a losing game from beginning until end. Being in control is the only way to win at gambling. End of discussion. Roulette can’t be controlled. What is the logical conclusion from all this? Roulette has no winning strategy. What if there’s no winning way in a game? No. We do not. We don’t. The roulette game