Roullete is one of the most popular games in the casino and has offered glamour, mystery, and excitement to many a gambler since the 17th century. While it may seem simple at first, roulette has a surprising depth of strategy and can yield high rewards for players who master the game.

The Roulette wheel consists of a static bowl-like disc slightly convex in shape with thirty-six metal compartments (called canoes by roulette croupiers) that alternate between red and black, and are numbered nonconsecutively from 1 to 36. On European wheels a 0 and 00 are two green compartments that carry the sign of 0. A ball, rolled by the dealer into the spindle of the wheelhead, bounces around the circumference of the wheel and into any of the compartments in which it lands.

A player places his or her chips on the table and waits for the croupier to announce, “No more bets.” Then he or she drops the ball into the spinning wheel and watches it as it bumps around and settles in a pocket marked with the player’s chosen number. If the bet is correct, the player collects the winnings from the croupier.

There are a variety of bets in roulette, and each has its own odds of winning. Outside bets, which place your chips on a group of numbers rather than specific ones, tend to have lower house edges and offer more modest payouts.

When you arrive at a Roulette table, the dealer gives each player a color of roulette chips to distinguish him or her from the other players. The chips have no value away from the table and are only exchanged for normal casino chips after you cash in. When the dealer clears the table between decisions, you tell her how much you want your chips to be worth and she parcels them out to you.

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