Online Roulette Types and Roulette Odds
No other game captures the thrill of the casino like Roulette. For years it has been synonymous with winning big money around the world. With the move of casinos online that hasn’t changed. Millions of people every day fire up their computers and log on to play roulette games that they hope will bring them untold riches or lay down some free chips and have fun with no money on the line. However you like to play, you’ll be spoilt for choice at the various online casino sites.
Choosing where to plant your flag and start playing is a tricky business. There are hundreds of big casinos floating around the internet, all of which seem to have something positive to offer. The easiest and most effective way to check the quality of an online casino is to read the reviews available on this site. Browse through our in depth coverage of all the major roulette rooms to see which of them takes your fancy.
A site’s selection of different roulette games is also worth considering. American and European Roulette differ in the total of number of pockets used on the wheel, so make sure your preferred version is available at the casino you choose. If you’re the adventurous sort, you might want to try out some more complex variations. Most sites will list all available games on their website, so you can check for any exotic alternatives before you sign up.
You may well be dying to play roulette at this point, but there’s still more to be considered when it comes to choosing the right casino. Arguably the most important factor is the quality of the site’s bonus offers. Even if you’re only planning on using the play money tables, the time may come when you want to migrate to the real money area and you’re unlikely to spend time switching sites. The most basic kind of bonus is the sign-up match offer. These will take your initial deposit amount and give you an extra boost, equal to a certain percentage (usually 100%).
That money isn’t yours to take away immediately; you need to clear it. It’s important to note that some sites will not give you the free money until you have completed the clearance process, while others will give you the whole lump sum right away, but not let you withdraw it until you’ve wagered a certain amount. Be sure to check our reviews for any bonuses you are considering.
Live Dealer Roulette
If you’re looking for a true casino experience in your very own home, then it doesn’t get any better than live dealer roulette! You place your bets using the same software as for any other online roulette game, but there’s a huge twist. Where the animated roulette wheel would normally be, there is instead a perfectly integrated live video stream of a real wheel and even a beautiful dealer getting things spinning! The only downside is that this is the very latest in online casino gaming and, as such, welcome bonuses are sadly not yet set up for live dealer roulette.
The transition from software to live video is seamless, with your dealer taking the bets, spinning the wheel and then logging where it lands so you can collect your winnings. You can even chat with her while you play! The real wheel allays any doubts you may have had about the fairness of online gambling, as there is no longer a computer running behind the scenes but rather the landing of the roulette ball is left solely in the hands of lady luck, just like in the good old days. Live dealer roulette is an awesome leap forwards both in technology and online casino fun, and is definitely worth checking out.
American Roulette
Despite favouring the house, the American wheel remains a prevalent roulette variant, primarily due to it being the wheel of choice in Las Vegas, the gaming capital of the world. However, its prominence has lessened with the advent of the Internet and the growing popularity of online gaming. Below we will examine how the American wheel came to be!
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American Roulette History
When roulette came to the fledgling United States by way of New Orleans, it was an established game popular throughout Europe. The single “0” wheel introduced by Francois and Louis Blanc was now the standard wheel, and it was unusual to see a 38-pocket wheel, one with both the “0” and “00”, and thus increased house odds. The very notion of a third house pocket would have seemed absurd to those European gamblers at the time.
However, this new gaming market in a young United States did not have the same expectations, and in many cases, the clientele had never had intimate contact with the game. Therefore, greedy operators where able to add a third house pocket with little to no fuss. The third pocket was essentially another zero, but they called it the American eagle due to the image used to decorate it. House odds on this wheel were 7.69% as opposed to 5.26% on the European wheel and 2.70% on the French wheel.
This was not the only change made by the new American operators. In Europe, casinos played both the European and French wheels at a leisurely pace, 36 spins per hour. America, on the other hand, had already developed an impatient aspect to its personality. Therefore, the gaming house sped up the speed of the wheel. This change met the demands of the clientele while also allowing the gaming houses to generate more revenue.
This style remained popular because there was no other choice. However, as online gaming expanded, it became clear that even US players preferred the French and European wheels. Many online gaming houses still offer an American wheel because many roulette players like to have the option of changing up their luck. Gamers should note that the American wheel is never the right choice purely in terms of probability.
European Roulette
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European Roulette History
French scientist and mathematician Blaise Pascal inadvertently introduced the first roulette wheel in 1655 while attempting to build a perpetual motion machine. The French recognised the gaming potential of this device immediately. Throughout the 18th century, they used it to gamble and play various games, but it was not until Paris in 1796 that roulette, meaning little wheel, appeared in its modern form.
During the 19th century, roulette spread like wildfire throughout Europe, in part because gambling went unchecked by government. Not only did roulette become one of the most popular casino games throughout Europe, it became instantly recognisable and an aspect of the times pop culture. Competition among gaming houses vying for roulette business was fierce.
François and Louis Blanc were Frenchmen operating a gaming house in Hamburg, a German casino spa town. The twins had spent time in prison in their home country for stock fraud. They had been failures there and not well respected. However, they were finding success in Germany, and in order to distinguish themselves further, they introduced the single 0 roulette wheel. Up until this point, roulette wheels had two house pockets (0 and 00), 38 pockets in all, and were very much like the wheels in use today in Las Vegas. Those traditional European wheels had a 5.26% house odds.
The single 0 wheel with 37 total pockets introduced by Louis and François Blanc had house odds of only 2.60%. The new wheel was, of course, very alluring to clientele that recognised the lower house odds. The competition, who believed it a recipe for failure, was not so quick to adapt. The Blanc brothers became very established and very wealthy by the time they did. Soon the single 0 would become the standard casino wheel, and later, people would call it the European or French wheel to distinguish it from the American variant.
As their wheel became the prominent one, François and Louis Blanc became prominent 19th century figures renowned for the game of roulette. Legends and fantastic stories sprang up around their successes. One popular tale purported that the brothers had signed a pact with the devil in order to achieve the secrets of the wheel. Bolstering this tale was the fact that the numbers on a roulette wheel sum to 666. However, this was true of the traditional wheel as well as the Blanc wheel.
Soon after the Blanc brothers introduced the new wheel, France outlawed gambling, and Germany soon followed. These restrictions did not deter François Blanc, however. Instead, he moved his operation to Monte Carlo, where he built the first of the areas many gaming houses. It was here in Monte Carlo that roulette would become the King of Casino Games.
Beat Roulette
The simple truth is that, in the long run, roulette is fixed in the favor of the casino. This isn’t a wild conspiracy theory, or a page devoted to ramblings about how we can never know if the Random Number Generator used by online casinos is accurate, rather it’s quite the opposite. We have complete faith in the RNG but know that the green 0 on the roulette wheel tips the balance slightly in favor of the casino, which will come as no surprise to most of you. We do, however, think you can beat roulette online in the short run.
There are many betting systems out there which claim to beat roulette, but the fact is that every one of them is mathematically flawed; they’re either shown to work over a very lucky sample of spins or are just preying on the hopeful who don’t quite understand how the game works. We dislike that kind of trickery and acknowledge that built into the nature of roulette is the fact that the casino comes out ahead. That all said, there remains two ways to beat roulette.
The first, and less probable of the two, is to get lucky and score a big win. While many of you will scoff at this, it can certainly happen and, as a testament to that fact, this page is filled with recent winners from online casinos who went on that lucky streak and have now almost certainly come out ahead.
The second is a way to beat roulette which works because, while losing is built into roulette, the winning money comes from outside of the game itself. Online casino bonuses are essentially free money deposited into a player’s account in addition to their deposit, and this money is your ticket to beating roulette. Casinos are expecting you to stick around and lose the bonus money, but you can instead withdraw it and move on to the next casino – and next bonus – to come out a winner.
While we’re not suggesting you hit and run a string of online casinos, and indeed most have wagering requirements to prevent you from doing this, by playing at a number of different online casinos for only as long as you have to before moving on to the next, you can collect a whole lot of bonus money and thereby beat roulette online.
Live roulette is, of course, identically designed to favor the casino over the player, and so wagering on roulette in a live casino is a losing proposition. Unlike their online counterparts, live roulette wheels undergo wear and tear from their days of spinning and can sometimes develop imperfections which cause them to stop more frequently in one place. While rare, if you are lucky enough to happen upon such a wheel this is basically the only way to beat roulette in a brick and mortar casino. Online wheels don’t suffer from these imperfections for obvious reasons, but online casinos do offer bonuses, which are a much more reliable method of picking up cash.
Basically proving the effectiveness of using online casino bonuses to beat roulette, many sites out there don’t allow roulette wagers to be made with bonus dollars. We’ve hunted down the online casinos that still do, so check out the various bonuses and their wagering requirements on this site, forget the flawed betting systems you might find elsewhere, and start beating roulette!