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How Does a Roulette Wheel Work
In roulette, the object of the game is to guess what pocket on the wheel a small ball will land in, and bet on that pocket. The way a roulette wheel works, and consequently the landing of the ball, depends both on the spinning and the layout of the wheel and on the roll of the ball.
A roulette wheel has either 37 or 38 pockets, numbered randomly from 0 to 36 and coloured black or red. The 0 pocket is always coloured green, and the rest of the pockets alternate in colour, with the number 1, starting the alternating pattern always being red. Most American roulette wheels also have a 00 pocket, which is green. These are not common in Europe.
The table beside the wheel is laid out with squares for each pocket on the wheel, and players bet by placing chips on the square corresponding to the pocket they think the ball will land in. Once all bets are down, the croupier spins the wheel and sends the ball rolling around the outer edge of the wheel in the opposite direction to the spinning. As the ball loses momentum, it eventually falls into a pocket on the wheel.
The betting in roulette falls into two classes: outside and inside bets. All bets are placed against the house. Inside betting is a prediction that the ball will land on a particular number. There are a large number of variations in this kind of betting, and the payoff varies based on the bet. The highest payoff, 35 to 1, comes when you bet on a single number. Spreading a bet over more numbers lowers the payoff odds, but can increase your chances of winning. In outside betting, you don’t bet on specific numbers. Instead, you bet on red or black, odd or even, high or low number, and so on. This kind of betting has much higher odds of winning, but in turn it also has lower payout, either 1 to 1 or 2 to 1, depending on the bet.
The important thing to be sure of in roulette is that the wheel works on chance. There is no way to control where the ball will land, and so betting needs to be strategic. Building skill in this game comes with knowing how to bet and developing tactics for betting that have high chances of winning. A roulette wheel is highly unpredictable, and it is perhaps this element of total chance that makes roulette such a popular casino game all over the world.
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