When you play roulette, whether online or at a physical casino or in a live dealer format, your fate depends on just one thing; the resting spot of the pill – also known as the ball – on the wheel. No matter how you bet on the game, your loss or win completely turns on the location of that ball on that wheel.
Because there are only so many possibilities for that location, the vast majority of roulette bets have fixed odds. That means you can determine exactly what the likelihood of your bet paying off is before you place it.
It’s a simple matter of comparing the number of ways you can lose your bet to the number of ways you can win. To calculate those odds, you need to understand the rules of the game and the requirements for the bet you want to make.
All the Possibilities on a Roulette Wheel
When you want to figure roulette odds, you first need to understand the roulette wheel layout. This changes slightly depending on whether you’re playing American or European roulette.
A European roulette wheel has 37 slots in total for the pill to rest in when the wheel stops spinning. Each slot consists of a number from 0 to 36.
On such wheels, the numbers from 1 to 36 alternate in color between black and red. The zero slot is green.
American roulette wheels add another green slot, which is the double zero. Besides that, the wheel is the same as in European.
The pill can only occupy one slot when the wheel stops spinning, so only one number will be the winning number each time. At the same time, you can bet on the result of each spin in more than one way.
Roulette Bets Include Diverse Options
When you’re playing roulette, you can try to simply predict which number the pill will occupy on the next spin if you like. This is called a straight bet. However, there are many different roulette bets you can make.
Options include the Split, where you pick two adjacent numbers on the table and you win if the pill lands on either. Another type of bet is the Low bet, where you are staking your wager to the pill landing on a number no lower than 1 but also no higher than 18.
Once you know how the bets work, figuring out your odds becomes easy. We can use some of these simple bets as examples.
Calculating Roulette Odds and Payouts
When you are ready to do your math, one thing that is important to keep in mind is the house edge in roulette. That is to say, the actual probability of an outcome on the wheel and what your bet will pay out may not be the same because the casino has its interest in the game regardless of the outcome.
To calculate true odds, you simply compare the number of ways that an outcome can occur to the total number of possibilities. As an example, we’ll consider the true odds of a straight bet winning.
Because that bet involves the pill landing on a specific number, there is only one way for that to happen. On a European roulette wheel, there are 37 possible outcomes in this regard.
So, the true odds of winning a straight bet in European roulette are 1 in 37. In American roulette, the true odds would be 1 in 38 because of the extra slot on the wheel.
However, you’re probably not going to get a 37 to 1 or 38 to 1 payout if you hit this wager. The vast majority of casinos pay out a winning straight bet in roulette at 35 to 1 instead.
If you’re wondering how the casinos get to that number, that’s because they configure payouts differently. Instead of comparing the number of ways to win against all possibilities, they compare the number of ways to win to the number of ways to lose.
Then, they remove the green slot(s) to account for their house edge. So, 37 to 1 becomes 35 to 1. In essence, if you bet $10 and guessed right, you would get a payout of $360.
Another example is the split bet. You have two ways to win against 37 or 38 possible outcomes, making your true odds 2 in 37 or 1 in 19 (2 in 38 reduced).
Your payout, however, will be 17 to 1. There are some bets that do pay true odds, like a Low or High bet. For either of these bets, you get your stake back if you win.
If you would rather not do this math in your head, online roulette calculators can be a great aid. It’s also common to find charts with roulette odds and payouts in land-based casinos.
Now that you know how to figure odds and payouts, it’s important to know how to use this information. Your bankroll and your appetite for risk can determine your course of action.
Betting on Roulette the Smart Way at BetMGM
When you’ve figured out your odds and payout, the next step is to use that information to decide which wager is best for you. That’s going to depend on your budget and how much risk you want to take on.
The longer the odds, the more likely you are to lose a bet. The adverse is also true. So, if you want to play conservatively, stick to the bets with the shortest odds.
This is also a good strategy if you want to build your bankroll. On the other hand, if you’ve had a run of good luck and you have some wiggle room in your budget, you might want to consider placing some riskier bets with that surplus to see if you can make it grow even further.
The important things are to stick to your budget and avoid the gambler’s fallacy. This is when you fall prey to the false belief that if a certain result hasn’t happened in a while, it must be due to happen soon.
In roulette, each spin is completely independent. Each possible outcome has the same likelihood on each spin of the wheel no matter what happened before.
You can’t reliably predict where the roulette ball will land, so it’s best to stick to the proven math of probability. Another surefire move is discovering why BetMGM is the best casino for online roulette players.
You’ll find a great selection of roulette games to play at BetMGM like:
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Just as you can’t beat the odds in roulette but you can take advantage of them with some luck, it’s impossible to top the experience that BetMGM offers to roulette players. Understanding the odds on the wheel makes your experience better as well.
