The Best Bet on a Roulette Table

Is there a particular bet on the roulette table that has better chances of winning than others? That depends on your perspective and the roulette strategy you apply, but in most cases all the roulette bets are essentially the same. Specifically they are all subject to the house edge.

The Odds of Bets on the Roulette Table

The page about how to play roulette explains the various types of bets and their respective odds. Pay particular attention to the house edge for each type of bet and you will notice that the house edge is the same for all bets. As the pace in the link also explains, the house edge is essentially unfair payouts offered by the casino. The principle is very simple although often misunderstood. It has nothing to do with the green zero.

How Different Bets Affects Results

If you bet on 30 individual numbers, the chances are that you will profit on most of your spins. The problem is when you eventually lose, you lose big.

Apply this principle to betting on an individual number such as 32. You statistically will win one every 37 spins on the European single zero wheel. For most players, play will be particularly boring because wins will infrequently occur. Now consider a red or black bet, you expect to win approximately 50% of the time (actually slightly less than 50%). The more frequent wins is generally more appealing for the average player, but the two types of bets are still subject to the house edge of -2.7%. That means if two different players making the different types of bets both wagered $100, the expected return, or loss in this case, is exactly the same.

So for the average roulette strategy, the different types of bets only controls how frequently a win or loss will occur.

But there are exceptions to this rule, and again it depends on the roulette betting system you are applying.

Bets and Odds with Advantage Play

Advantage play is the term given to professional roulette system methods. They refer to any legitimately effective system that gives the player the advantage. These are the kinds of systems that can and have won millions in modern casinos. Typically they use roulette physics to predict the winning number. Advantage play can be applied on either European or American roulette wheels exactly the same way, although the edge is slightly less on American wheels because of the added pocket and resulting less fair payout.

The one thing that all advantage play systems have in common is that they use inside bets. These are table bets on individual numbers, which represent specific sectors or areas of the physical roulette wheel. An example would be 0,32 and 15 which are all neighbouring numbers on the roulette wheel.

If you are using a professional system, and these are definitively the best type of roulette bet, and in fact the only profitable roulette bet. This is because the professional systems attempted to understand the physics of why the roulette ball lands where it does, to predict future spins and ultimately the winning number.

For example, a professional player may use visual ballistics or a roulette computer device. These ultimately determine the speed of the wheel rotor and ball to predict where the ball will fall. While it may not possible to predict the winning number with 100% accuracy, perfect accuracy is not needed to overcome the house edge. In fact only a very small increase in prediction accuracy is all that is needed to predict the winning number and place a winning bet.

Placing Bets on the Table

Again using the example of a roulette computer, this device uses the timings of the roulette wheel and ball to make predictions. This is done while the ball is still spinning, and before the dealer calls no more bets. This is a critical time in which the player has to make some quick bets on the table. The player may only have 4 to 5 seconds, or even less, before the dealer calls no more bets. In most cases, the player only needs to make one bet on an individual number in the predicted region of the wheel.

Bets Before the Ball is Released

In common conditions it is also possible to predict spin outcomes before the ball is even released. It is not possible in all circumstances, but enough for it to be a practical and viable income source for today’s roulette players. Such an approach may be considered a banned roulette system although not illegal, because they do not at all interfere with the outcome of roulette spins.

Types of Roulette Bets

The two main types of roulette bets are the inside bets and outside bets. See the roulette bets page for a detailed explanation of the odds, chip locations and payouts