Bookmaker Reviews

The choice of roulette table can make a huge difference to your chances of winning. Make sure you know the difference.

Choosing the right sort of table used to be difficult when youre playing in real life physical casinos, but if you play roulette online theres no excuse. If a casino or its terms dont look right then move on to find one that does.

You only have to visit Vegas or Monte Carlo to see the money there is in roulette, these fantastic casinos were built on gambling and to be more precise – the house edge. The advantage in the game of roulette is provided very simply by the the tables that we play on. Mathematics isnt the most exciting subject for everyone but when you look at what it can achieve it suddenly develops a little more allure.

The mighty Las Vegas was in fact built on probablity, the probability that you will lose more than the house. You should look at every gambling game with an eye on the probability – if only to control how you actually gamble. Roulette is never going to be the professional gamblers choice as there are many other games with better odds – if we disregard the possibility of wheel bias or anything untoward – the one thing you need with roulette is luck.

Saying that though, which table you choose makes a huge difference to the luck you need – there are really two main tables youll find in most casinos.

The French (or also known as European) Roulette Table

The single most important fact about this roulette wheel is the fact that it has a single zero. This is primarily the house edge – all your 50/50 bets on red/black or odd/even are biased towards the house because of this number. The zero didnt actually exist on the very first roulette wheels until some bright spark in Monte Carlo decided they werent making enough – the extra digit adds a house advantage of 2.7% if all else is equal.

American Roulette Table

In America the French wheel was originally used but casinos then decided that the house advantage wasnt quite large enough (probably checked the real estate prices in Las Vegas). So they added the extra 00 slot which pretty much doubles the house edge. The distribution of the numbers and colors on both wheels are distributed in different ways but both so that there is an equal chance of red/black and odd/even combinations. To completely minimise the house edge also try and find a casino that operates the La Partage or En Prison rule This rule means that you only lose 50% of your even money wagers if the ball land on zero – another significant statistical advantage. The difference is simple really – if you have a choice always play on a European table – the house edge is much smaller and you have a much better chance of Lady Luck shining on you. This is even more important if you play one of the many systems that focus on outside bets like the martingale betting system.