Roulette for Dummies
Improving your odds in roulette is only possible in a few ways, but in
this little "Roulette for Dummies" piece, I'll try to improve your game in a
few simple moves. Let me get a couple of roulette notes out of the way
first, though.
Casino Gambling for Dummies
If you're looking for one of those "Dummies Guides" to Roulette, I'm not sure one exists. The closest you'll find is Casino Gambling for Dummies. This book covers the basics of roulette, and since roulette isn't a complicated game, that should be enough.
Roulette Explained
Next,
roulette players should avoid books with titles like "Secrets of Winning
Roulette", "Gamble to Win Roulette", and "Get the Edge at Roulette". These
books are simple trash and will tell you nothing about getting better at
roulette or learning how to beat the game. There simply is no betting method
that's going to beat the house edge, which is well over 5% in American
Roulette.
The most egregious promise about beating roulette I've come across recently was "The Roulette Formula: How to Predict the Exact Number" by Kimo Li. To quote someone else, that's errant nonsense. Unless Mr. Li is teaching you to unlock the powers of psychic precognition, he's not going to teach you as system for how to predict the next number on the roulette wheel. That's crazy. Just a little less astounding is "American Roulette: How I Turned the Odds Upside", though Richard Marcus at least claims he had to cheat to win. Still, the strange coincidences you have to believe makes this book more fiction than fact.
Roulette Facts
Let's get back to the facts of roulette gambling: the casino has a 5.2% house edge when you play American roulette at their gambling house. That's a huge advantage, statistically, when you consider that games like Blackjack and Video Poker tend often are under 1%. Five-percent means that, on average, you'll lose $5 for every $100 you bet when playing American Roulette.
There will be times you'll get lucky and beat the odds. You might catch a number of breaks and walk out of the casino with a substantial gain from the roulette wheel, which is why anyone still plays the game. But the casino stays open because they have a mathematical edge and, at least as far as roulette goes, there's not a whole lot you can do to alter the advantage. Whenever you win, you got lucky. It has nothing to do with a betting system or predicting where the ball is going to land based on where it's been landing recently, because each spin is separate of every other spin in roulette.
Betting Systems for Roulette
No betting system is going to weight the odds in your favor, because no matter what number you bet on, there's no bet that assures you're going to win more than you lose. You get 35-to-1 odds, but the chances of hitting any one number are 37-to-1. Not one of the books mentioned above can tell you a number or a roulette bet that changes, because every single roulette bet pays out less than the odds of you hitting on your bet. It's simple math.
Learn about the odds in roulette. Learn about concepts like money management, bankrolls, betting limits, and the risk of ruin. Those might help you limit the damage when you get really unlucky. But don't assume there is some special betting system for beating roulette, because if you do, you're a chump.
Find European Roulette
The best you can hope for is to find a game of European Roulette in an American casino. There are a few casinos in Atlantic City which offer European roulette. The elimination of the "00" mark cuts the house edge in half, down to a more equitable 2.6%. Notice that you're still going to get worse odds than Blackjack or the VP machines. The trade-off is you don't have to worry about strategy and perfect play. You simply bet.
Online Roulette
One great thing about Internet Roulette is that most online casinos, including those which cater mainly to U.S. players, offer European Roulette. If so, give that game a try and offset the odds by about 2.6% of your theoretical $100.
Getting Comps at Roulette
Another way to lower the house edge is to sign up for casino comps, whether you are playing at a live casino or electronic casino online. In either case, casinos tend to give customers giveaways in food, rooms, or free bonus money. By taking full advantage of player comps, you lower the house edge further than it would be otherwise.
Casinos are in the business of staying open, so they usually are going to spend a lot more time figuring out the math than the players or customers are. That means you'll seldom find casino games where the player has an advantage--though it's not entirely unheard-of in limited situations. These are rare and temporary. Remember, casinos are large and impressive, and obviously make a lot of money. They don't do that by running roulette games you can beat--unless you get lucky.
That's liberating in a way, because you can sit back, relax, and enjoy playing roulette. Roulette is one of the easier games to learn in the casino and, like the slot machines, you don't have to wrack your brains reading the other player's tells and counting cards and figuring out perfect play. Roulette really can be played by dummies, which is one reason (being a bit of a dummy myself) I like it so much.
