This article first appeared in the Jul/Aug 2010 issue of World Gaming magazine.
There are different types of roulette wheel – the European wheel, the American wheel and Macau’s very own hybrid wheel. We’ll talk about these three wheels in a later article but before you pick your wheel you need to know the betting options of the game. Almost all betting options are common to all roulette wheels.
The first thing that you should know about roulette betting is that you receive the same value on any bet regardless of where you place your chips. The house edge on Macau’s single zero roulette is 2.7 percent for any bet. I’ll be telling you about many different bets that pay a wide range of odds but roulette is not like some other games like craps or baccarat where some bets are technically better than others. However, there is a wide range of roulette betting options. There are bets for players who like to slowly grind out their results and at the other end of spectrum there are long shot bets which can see you turn a small investment into a spectacular windfall.
Single zero roulette wheels consist of 37 numbers. 36 of those 37 numbers have a characteristic as red or black (18 of each), high or low (again, 18 of each) and odd or even (you guessed it, 18 of each). High and low are sometimes simply known as ‘1 to 18′ and ’19 to 36’. All six of these bets pay even money. The 37th number is the zero and we’ll talk about that at the end of the article.
There are also three groups of 12 numbers called dozens (1 to 12, 13 to 24, and 25 to 36) and three columns which run vertically up the length of the layout. These bets all pay 2/1.
There are 11 six-line bets which range from 1 to 6 through to 31 to 36. A six line bet covers two adjacent rows (also known as streets) on the layout. Winning six-line bets pay 5/1.
Corner bets cover a square of four numbers for example 1, 2, 4 and 5 or 17, 18, 20 and 21. You place your bet at the corner where the four numbers meet. Corners pay 8/1.
A street is a horizontal row such as 1, 2 and 3 or 13, 14 and 15. The last street on the bottom row of the layout is 34, 35 and 36. Winning street bets pay 11/1.
When you bet on a split you are taking two numbers that join each other. For example there are four split bets that include the number 8: the 5/8 split, the 7/8 split, the 8/9 split and the 8/11 split. Splits are paid at 17/1.
Finally you can bet straight up on any given number which pays a whopping 35/1.
The only thing we haven’t mentioned is the final 37th number of the wheel: the dreaded green-coloured zero. This number isn’t red, black, big, small, odd or even. The zero offers the casino their edge on the game. While zero does kill all even money, column and dozen bets, you can bet on it using straight ups, splits, and an oddly shaped bet that looks like a corner on the layout but pays out like a street (covering three numbers 0, 1 and 2 or three numbers 0, 2 and 3). You can even bet on the 0, 1, 2 and 3 by betting on what feels like a six-line on the layout, but pays like a corner. Because of the possibility of these bets that cover zero, the spinning of a zero doesn’t necessarily mean an instant loss for all bets on the layout.
A common feature of roulette in Europe is the so-called ‘racetrack’. This is a section of the layout in the shape of a racetrack with all the numbers in the order they appear on the wheel. This makes it much easier to cover certain segments of the wheel, something that most experienced roulette players like to do. Racetracks on roulette tables are not a feature of Macau roulette, but can be found on some electronic versions of the game in Macau. We here at World Gaming would love to see racetracks become common on roulette layouts through Macau, as they add an exciting dimension to the game.
