How Do You Read a Roulette Wheel?

Roulette is a casino game named after the French word meaning little wheel. In the game, players may choose to place bets on either a single number, various groupings of numbers, the colors red or black, whether the number is odd or even, or if the numbers are high (19–36) or low (1–18).

To determine the winning number and color, a croupier spins a wheel in one direction, then spins a ball in the other direction around a tilted circular track running around the outer edge of the wheel. The ball eventually loses momentum and falls onto the wheel and into one of 37 (in French/European roulette) or 38 (in American roulette) colored and numbered pockets on the wheel.

The first form of roulette was devised in 18th century France. Many historians believe Blaise Pascal introduced a primitive form of roulette in the 17th century in his search for a perpetual motion machine.

The game has been played in its present form since as early as 1796 in Paris. An early description of the roulette game in its current form is found in a French novel La Roulette, ou le Jour by Jaques Lablee, which describes a roulette wheel in the Palais Royal in Paris in 1796. The description included details such as:.

There are two handles to spin the wheel, one handle for each direction. The wheel is spun by first spinning one handle clockwise to get it going, then giving it a good spin counter-clockwise with both hands held together. The ball is thrown into the air. it rebounds. hits different parts of the wheel. finally comes to rest lodged between two metal ridges near the center of the wheel on one side or other. sometimes it stops near enough to where it started so that you can win your money back plus what you put down originally; more often however it will come up on some number between 1 and 36. sometimes red and sometimes black.

Winning at roulette depends on pure luck. There is no real strategy that can help you win consistently. However, there are some things you can do to improve your chances of winning. First, always choose European roulette over American roulette because European roulette has only one zero pocket while American roulette has two zero pockets (0 and 00). This gives European roulette a better chance of winning since there are fewer pockets for the ball to fall into. Second, avoid making risky bets like betting on single numbers because your chances of winning are very low (less than 3%) with these types of bets.

Stick to making outside bets like betting on red or black, odd or even, high or low numbers because your chances of winning are much higher with these types of bets (48.6% for red/black, 46.37% for odd/even, and 47.37% for high/low).