Take a chance on iconic casino game

By Mark Lasser

(First of two parts)

I’ve been getting beat up pretty bad lately in poker, so this week so I decided to shake things up a bit and write about one of the oldest casino games, roulette.

I play roulette once in a while, but I’ve never been a huge player so I dipped into my bookcase and found a book called “Secrets of Winning Roulette,” by Marten Jensen. Jensen is a well-known gambling author so he has serious credibility. I can recommend the book and it’s available on Amazon and directly from the publisher, Cardoza publishing.

Roulette may be the most iconic casino game, period. From the James Bond films to “Indecent Proposal” to the great scene in “Casablanca,” where we see a rigged or gaffed wheel, seeing the game on film instantly tells us we’re in a casino.

The game itself is at least 200 years old and is now found in two basic manifestations. In most of Europe the wheel is divided into 18 black spaces, 18 red spaces and a single green zero. In most of the United States, and I think everywhere in Colorado, the wheel has an additional green double zero. When one bets on the outside (red or black, odd or even, first half or second half), the green zeros count as losses and this gives the casino its edge. The big deal of going from single to double zeros is a change in the casino edge from 2.7% to 5.26%. So if you can find a single-zero roulette wheel, it’s one of the better games in the casino. Most Vegas casinos only have single-zero wheels in the high roller areas or in the Baccarat room. Here’s a link that lists some of the casinos around the world offering single-zero roulette. http://www.gambling-systems.com/single-zero.html.

Roulette is basically a guessing game, which is why it’s not very intimidating to new players. There isn’t a ton of etiquette to be concerned with, but do take note of the following. Regular casino chips don’t play on the roulette table since many players may choose to play the same numbers and the dealer wouldn’t know which bet belonged to each gambler. When you sit down at the table, you buy in and the dealer will give you stacks of a specific color chip that will be unique to your bets.

You can choose to place the bets yourself, or if you need to get a chip where you can’t reach, ask the dealer to place it for you. Bets can be placed even after the ball has been spun, but not after the dealer wipes their hand over the betting area and states, “No more bets.” Placing a bet after that is called past posting and will not count. If you do this habitually, you’ll be asked to leave the table, since it’s one way some players (not you, of course) can cheat the game.

Bets are divided into what are called inside bets and outside bets. The inside bets are all the individual numbers. You can bet on one number at a time or series of numbers. If you want two numbers next to each other, put the chips on the line between the two numbers. For three numbers (called a street bet), place the chips on the outside border of the three numbers. For four numbers, place chips on a corner between four numbers. The outside bets will generally have a larger minimum bet than the inside bets. Often the bet minimum is $5. These bets are just less than half the table and include the dozens (first, second, third), the columns, colors (red/black), even/odd and low/high halves.

After you’ve placed your bet and the ball drops, the dealer will place a marker on the number that came up and will first collect the losing bets and then will payoff the winners. Don’t start placing new bets for the next round until after they’ve picked up the marker. If another player already put chips where you want to bet, don’t panic, just place yours on top of theirs. Remember, this is why everyone has different colored chips.

Oh, one more piece of etiquette. Don’t leave with the colored chips. You can’t use them in any other game and the cashier won’t take them. The roulette dealer needs those for the next player so “color them up” in exchange for regular chips when you’re done playing at any given table.

The payoffs on roulette are based on the bet, but all of these bets have the same house edge. For example, single numbers pay 35 to 1, dozens pay 2 to 1, red or black pay even money. Regardless, the house edge is 5.26%. Of course these aren’t the actual odds or the casino couldn’t make any money. There are actually 38 spots on the wheel so “true odds” would pay 37 to 1. The difference is the vig.

Now some of you may be thinking, wait a second, shouldn’t they be paying 36 to 1 for the inside individual numbers and 3 to 1 for the dozens? Good question. The answer lies in the wording. It’s the difference of describing a payoff as this “to” that versus this “for” that. Some casinos will use the word “for” instead of “to” because it makes them look more generous, but this is just a psychological trick since the number being paid “for” will be one unit higher than the number being paid “to.” Paying 3 for 1 is the same as paying 2 to 1. The difference is whether or not we count the initial bet in the payoff or not. Make sense?

In the second part of this series we’ll get into both simple and some complicated betting systems and I’ll give a description of a few ways Jensen says the game can be beaten.

Mark B. Lasser is Denver writer and international poker player. He regularly plays in Colorado, Arizona, California, Missouri and Nevada. You can hear him talk about gambling and casinos every Friday at 5 PM on KEZW AM 1430. Readers can send questions and comments to him at ColoradoPokerMark@comcast.net.