How to Win at Roulette

Roulette is the most recognisable house game of all time, and it’s easy to see why. It’s a stylish and sophisticated game that’s been around since the 18th century, played by both aristocrats and commoners alike. It’s also a game that requires little to no explanation to start playing. If you’re thinking of having a spin at a roulette table, and you’re not already a seasoned veteran, then you’re in luck: we’ve put together a collection of tips on how to win at roulette.

Let’s get started!

Know the betting structure

This may seem obvious, but a surprising number of regular roulette players aren’t familiar with all the different types of bet they can make. We won’t go into full detail about them all, but you should know that there are two categories that all bets fall into: inside bets and outside bets. The former are long-odds bets placed inside the number grid of the table, made on either a single or a small group of numbers. The latter are short-odds bets placed in the boxes outside the grid that cover a large group of numbers, such as red/black or high/low.

For all betting types go to our roulette rules page.

Play European roulette

Roulette comes in two flavours: European and American. The only difference between the two is the addition of the 00 number in the American version of the game. However, bets are still paid out at the same ratio, so the extra number just increases the house edge. For this reason, you should always go for European roulette rather than American.

Make short-odds bets

If all you care about is winning, it makes sense to go for the low-risk bets like low/high, red/black or even/odd. Now, of course, you won’t get paid out as much when you do win, but you’ll win much more often. By mitigating risk, you’ll reduce your chances of losing a lot in a single session and will generally be able to play much longer.

Don’t bet too much on a single round

This is closely related to the last point. Simply put, you should only bet what you can afford. If you like to go for the long-odds bets such as singles or splits, then you should bet less doing so. A good technique is to decide beforehand on what your single bet size should look like, then multiply accordingly. So, say you sit down with $1,000 and decide on a $10 single bet size, then you can bet $20 on doubles, $40 on corners and so on. This will help minimize variance.

Use a pre-defined strategy

Believe it or not, there are established betting systems you can use to help you get the most out of your sessions. These strategies will give you much more control over variance than just betting randomly. Here are three of the most popular betting strategies used by players to win at roulette:

Red/black

Red/black strategy is a strategy that involves betting only on red or black colors. There are different red/black strategies, depending on the bet sizes and dynamics. Martingale and D’Alembert strategies are the most common and famous ones.

Martingale

Originating in 18th-century France, this highly popular strategy uses exponentially larger bet sizes to mitigate previous losses. You start by picking a colour and an initial bet size. Every time you lose, you double the bet size. You keep on doing this until you win, at which point you will have made back all the money you lost on previous bets. You then repeat the process starting from your initial bet size. While this strategy can show good winnings, the downside is that it requires a large bankroll.

D’Alembert

The D’Alembert strategy is a low-variance alternative to the martingale. Instead of increasing the bet size exponentially after losing, you increase it by a fixed amount. So, for example, say you start out with a bet size of $10, you could increase it by $2 every time you lose. This way, you don’t run the risk of suffering catastrophic losses if you have an unlucky streak as you would with the martingale.

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