Win with Roulette

Unlike a lot of other casino games, roulette doesn’t offer much variety in terms of the house edge on each bet. In fact, nearly every roulette bet gives the house either a 2.63% edge (European wheel) or 5.26% advantage (American wheel). So does this mean you should randomly make bets based on how you feel? Absolutely not! You should choose roulette bets very carefully, and doing this starts with understanding the different roulette wagers and their win frequency.

While most roulette bets offer the same casino house edge, they are vastly different in terms of how often they win. For example, a single number bet only wins 2.63% of the time in American roulette while a bet on red wins 47.34% of the time. As you can see, the red bet has a much higher win frequency. You should know the win probability of every casino wager you make so that you aren’t placing risky bets on a prayer. With that in mind, here are the win percentages for American roulette wagers:

• Red or Black - 47.34% winner, pays 1:1
• Odd or Even - 47.34% winner, pays 1:1
• High (19 to 36) or Low (1 to 18) - 47.34% winner, pays 1:1
• Dozen Bets (1 to 12, 13 to 24, 25 to 36) - 31.58% winner, pays 2:1
• Six Line (6 numbers) - 15.79% winner, pays 5:1
• 5 Numbers - 13.16% winner, pays 6:1
• Corner (4 numbers) - 10.53% winner, pays 8:1
• Street (3 numbers) - 7.89% winner, pays 11:1
• Split (2 numbers) - 5.26% winner, pays 17:1
• Single Number - 2.63% winner, pays 35:1

Sometimes it’s fun to make riskier bets that have a smaller chance of winning such as the split or street casino bet. But as you’ll find out, you should only make these wagers if your bankroll is large enough.

Once you understand roulette win frequency, the next step to choosing roulette bets is looking at your casino bankroll. The obvious reason why you need to do this is because you don’t want to make a bunch of low win frequency bets if you’ve only got an $80 bankroll to work with. Actually, you should probably stay away from the roulette tables if you only have $80 - even with $5 roulette.

In any case, the smaller your bankroll is, the more you need to stick with high win frequency bets. Using the sad-sack $80 casino bankroll example, you only want to make red/black, high/low or odd/even bets during a roulette session because these wagers give you the best chance to win and play longer. However, if you have an $800 bankroll, you could branch out and make some lower win frequency bets too.

Of course, you also need to consider the stakes you’re playing, and the amount of time you want to be on the roulette tables before making bets.

While you could just wing it and start making roulette bets based on win frequency and bankroll size, it’s a good idea to factor in the stakes and how much time you’ll be playing casino games. The amount of time you want to play could be comprised of one marathon session, or broken up into chunks over several casino sessions. For instance, you could play two hours one day, one hour the next day and two more hours on the third day for a total of five hours.

In addition to deciding how long you’ll play roulette with a certain bankroll, it’s also a good idea to think about what stakes you’ll play too. Now you might not stick with the stakes you play 100% of the time, but it’s helpful if you have a general idea such as say $10 stakes. If you take the time to come up with all of this information, you can create an intelligent roulette betting plan designed to budget your bankroll.

Obviously you don’t want to look like a huge nerd in the casino with your predetermined roulette betting plan. However, you also don’t want to be the degenerate who blows their bankroll within minutes of entering the casino. So in the spirit of avoiding the latter, let’s go over how you can come up with a betting plan using the previous information.

To set up an example, let’s say that you want to play roulette for ten hours with an $800 bankroll. Along with this, let’s also say that the wheel you’re playing on spins 60 times per hour. Assuming you bet once on every spin, you’d be making 600 bets in this session (60 spins * 10 hours). If you made high frequency bets over the course of the session on an American casino roulette wheel, you would theoretically spend $315.60 (600 bets * 0.0526 * $10).

If you played right in line with the house edge, you’d only pay $315.60 to play 10 hours at the table. This of course gives you some leeway to make other bets besides red/black, odd/even and high/low because you don’t have to worry as much about your bankroll. You can even make more expensive bets than the $10 wagers since you have a lot of room to work with.

Of course, as we all know, roulette doesn’t play out exactly like the house edge suggests. Sometimes you go on huge winning streaks and win massive amounts of money, which is why we all play. Other times you’ll suffer big losing streaks, so you need to be careful when calculating your roulette betting plan.

If you bumped your bets up to $20 in the same figure above, you would be spending $631.20 on average. This is too close to your original $800 bankroll, which means you wouldn’t have nearly as much room to make lower frequency casino bets and/or higher stakes wagers in the 10 hour session. So bear in mind that the more low frequency bets you want to make, the more leeway you’ll need between the betting plan calculations and your actual bankroll.