Basic Roulette Strategy

Before understanding roulette strategy, you must first understand what the house advantage is in roulette. The house advantage for all roulette bets is 5.26 percent, with the exception of the five-number bet, where the house edge is 7.29 percent. What that means is that for every $100 you wager, you’ll get back $94.74 on average-and only $92.71 if you stick to five-number bets. Look at this as the casino’s tax.

The house advantage comes from the use of the 0 and 00 (both being green numbers, the color of money). If these two numbers weren’t on the roulette wheel, there would be no house advantage. All bets would be paid off at their true odds, that is, based on the ratio of the number of times one event will occur to the number of times another event will occur. For example, if there were no 0 or 00, players betting on red or black or odd or even numbers would have a 50 percent chance of winning. But with the 0 and 00, the actual chance of a red or a black or an odd or an even number is reduced to 47.37 percent.

So by paying one to one, when your odds of winning are 47.37 percent rather than 50 percent, the casino is making 2.63 percent off your wagers over time by not paying on true odds. Since the casinos are in business to make a profit, they need this house advantage. In other words, every once in a while, 0 or 00 will come up and all bets except the ones that include these numbers will be losers. If you want to improve your chances of winning, it’s better to play games and make wagers that have the least house advantage. Roulette is not one of them, but it’s easy and fun to play.

It’s important to remember that the house advantage is an average over a long period of time. Sometimes you’ll win more than you wager and other times you’ll walk away with less. As mentioned, there’s one bet where the house advantage is not 5.26 percent: the five-number bet, which gives the house a whopping 7.29 percent advantage, is the worst bet in roulette.