Added: May 27, 2016
Roulette is easily the most glamorous brick and mortar casino game and therefore popular with online casino players. This article provides some tips for players starting out on online roulette.
There are three common online roulette versions and the first lesson is to know which to avoid. American Roulette has 0 and 00 on the wheel and this means that there are two wheel positions that cause almost all bets to lose. The average return to player on American Roulette is less than 95% and this online roulette variant should be avoided. European Roulette and French Roulette are played with only 0 on the wheel and offer an average return of over 97%. On even money bets French Roulette does one better. If 0 is called half your bet is returned. Hence if you are playing the even money bets go for French Roulette, otherwise European Roulette is better. The numbers on the layout are also marked red and black, which is not the case in French Roulette.
There are a number of bets on offer in European Roulette. All the bets have identical average returns and hence cannot be distinguished using this indicator. At one end is a single number bet that wins only if that one number out of 37 numbers is called. Such an outcome will not occur frequently, but it pays 35 to 1. At the other end are bets that cover 18 out of 37 numbers, like red/black, even/odd and first 18/last 18. These will pay about half the times but only even money. The trick is to strike a balance between the two and there are many ways to do so.
The simplest is to place an intermediate bet say on a set of six numbers falling on two consecutive rows on the layout. This will win about 16% of the time and pay 5 to 1. If you want to chase the 35 to 1 payout, you should hedge the bet. Split the bet in two equal parts and place one bet on an even money option and one on a single number. If both bets win then it is great. If only the single number bet wins, then the loss of the even money bet does not matter. If only the even money bet wins then you end up quits on the combination. You lose if both bets lose. This scheme does not increase your average return. It only creates a mid-level volatility that is not too aggressive or too conservative.
