Roulette Strategy
Roulette strategy is limited, but I want to go over the basic strategy
tips that should help you enjoy roulette better and perhaps even save you a
little money. The first money saving tip is to avoid buying roulette
strategy books, because you're wasting your money. All the strategy tips for
roulette you'll ever want can be found for free online, since roulette
strategy can be summed up in a few sentences.
European Roulette Strategy Versus American Roulette Strategy
First, always play European roulette, if you have the choice. European roulette offers better odds and is a better game for gamblers. Besides the online casinos, which offer both games usually, you can find single-zero roulette wheels at most casinos on the Las Vegas Strip and in Atlantic City. Foxwoods Casino also offers European roulette.
One reason people might prefer American roulette is that most of those casinos have them in the high-limit rooms. If that's the case, gamblers at lower limits might still be forced to play American roulette in U.S. casinos.
Online,
always play the European roulette games. You'll probably see this advice on
every roulette page I post on this site, but it's important that new
roulette gamblers understand the difference in the two. There's not a lot of
roulette strategy, but that's one roulette tip which should save players
money. But let's get on to the other supposed roulette betting strategies
and online roulette tips.
Roulette Wheel Tracking Strategy
About the live casino environments, you'll find certain roulette authors and self-proclaimed experts claim that you can beat roulette with a technique called "wheel tracking". The suggestion is that roulette wheels are naturally going to be unbalanced weight-wise, so that one side is going to be the heavy side and one side the light side. Since the heavy side is going to set heavy, the roulette ball is likelier to come to rest on the heavy side.
By tracking the hits according to the sides of the roulette wheel, an expert roulette wheel tracker can bet on the likelier numbers to hit and shave points off their house edge--or even get the expected value in their favor.
Roulette Strategies - Unbalanced Wheels
That might have been true in the past, especially in the distant past, when equipment wasn't kept up as well and testing wasn't as rigorous as it now it. But with the huge amount of money on the line and the rigorous testing done on all roulette machines, whether in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Foxwoods Casino, or any of a hundred other Native American casinos found across the land, the unbalanced roulette wheel is a thing of the past.
You can find better propositions in a casino than traveling from casino to casino, hoping and praying you'll find an unbalanced wheel, and then playing enough to confirm your suspicions. With all the trouble that takes, you could learn optimal play on video poker or blackjack, and use good strategy to beat those games (or come close). People play roulette because it's easy, relaxing, and doesn't force you to study the game a lot. If you want all that mess, there are much better propositions in the casino.
Advanced Roulette by John Patrick - A 55-minute roulette DVD video sold by Amazon that claims to give you the "roulette strategies that have stood the test of time". This is utter nonsense, and John Patrick makes a living peddling utter nonsense. He's got books that tell you how to beat the slot machines, too, if you want another indication he's a con man. The fact is, there are no roulette strategies that have stood the test of time, unless you want to open your own casino and run roulette games where you have a 5.26% house edge.
Gamble to Win Roulette by R.D. Ellison - This roulette book may be even worse. The author actually argues his system, which supposedly "reverses the casino's edge", is better played on an American roulette wheel (94.74% player payback expectation) instead of a European wheel (97.37% expectation). That's just crazy.
Get the Edge at Roulette by Christopher Pawlick - Pawlicki offers advice on finding deep pocket wheels which are easier to track, along with finding biased wheels, and "sector slicing" to make quicker predictions. At least this book claims there are mechanical reasons that increase your odds, as opposed to some betting system that reverse the house edge (I still can't get over that). But this overlooks one thing--the casino management knows a lot more about their machines than casual (or not-so casual) observation will tell you. I'll give him credit--he does explain in all this that the house edge is going to get you in the long run.
Those are the three top entries on Amazon when you type in "roulette strategy" at the moment. I wanted to give you examples of what I'm talking about. I'm still waiting for John Patrick's book on "Advanced Lottery Winning" or perhaps "Getting the Edge at Keno". Those are the only books that would be more preposterous.
If you're looking to beat the casino or get an edge in casino gambling, there are just so many games that are better propositions. Enjoy roulette for what it is, but there are no roulette betting strategies that win, so never think you're going to find some means for beating the casino at roulette.
