It is illegal for persons under the age of 18 to gamble in Britain.
Roulette is a very popular Casino game. You bet on numbers, or combinations of colours, with the hope that the ball lands on one of your numbers.
You are only playing for yourself, and do not need to wait for any other Player to take their turn.
The basic layout of a roulette table is shown below.
Do not touch the wheel or ball. These are for the Croupier only.
If you want to play on a roulette table, the first thing you need to do is change some money into chips. You can either "Buy a Colour" (this colour can only be used by you) by placing your money on the table and calling "colour please", or you can "Buy Chips" of denominations consisting of 1`s, 5`s, 10`s, 20`s, and 50`s which relate to £1, £2, £5, £10, and £50 by calling for example "5`s please". Do not try to hand your money to the Croupier, instead place your money somewhere in front of you once you have the Croupier`s attention and call for the money to be changed.
The value of the colour chips will be marked somewhere on the table on a plaque. When you originally buy your colour, you may ask for them to be greater in value than the table shows. They must be a multiple of the original, e.g. 25p standard colour, so you may ask for 50p, 75p etc. It is preferable to avoid awkward values such as 75p, as this becomes difficult for the Croupier to calculate your winnings.
You must now wait for the Croupier to call "place your bets". Once called you may place your chips on the table. You do not have to put all of your chips on in one go. If you have a colour, it is generally the rule that they will last for several turns of the wheel.
Betting on Numbers
There are several different bets that you may place on numbers and are set as follows.
Any single number (Straight Up) pays 35-1
Any two numbers (Split) pays 17-1
Any three numbers (Street) pays 11-1
Any four Numbers (Corner) pays 8-1
Any six numbers (six lines) pays 5-1
The following diagram shows these various bet positions on the table.
The kinds of bet you can place start on the right hand side and are marked in light blue.
For a single number just place your chips in the centre of the box containing that number. Shown on the diagram placed over number 1.
For two numbers place your chips on the line between the two numbers. Shown in the diagram between 7 and 8.
For three numbers you can only bet on lines of 1,2,3 or 4,5,6 or 7,8,9 etc. Place your bet on the double yellow line e.g. alongside number 15.
For four numbers place your wager on the Cross between the four numbers you want. This is shown with the wager placed in the middle of 19, 20, 22, 23 in the diagram
For six numbers place your wager on the double yellow line between two numbers. e.g. numbers 27 and 30 as in the diagram.
You may also place a bet on sets of 12 numbers in either the 2-1 boxes (which covers numbers in the column e.g 1,4,7,10 etc...) or by betting on 1-12, 13-24, or 25-36. All of these bets pay 2-1.
Betting on Even Chances
The final bets you may place are on even money chances. They are marked on the table as Odd or Even, High or Low (1-18, and 19-36) or as the coloured diamonds which represent Red or Black.
One special rule that you should be aware of is if Zero comes up, then the even money bets lose half of their stake, and all other bets lose the total stake. This means if you had £5 placed on red and Zero was rolled, then you would now have £2.50 now placed on Red ready for the next spin of the wheel. You do not have to leave that money on and may take it off.
Tips to Prevent Bankruptcy
One of the best recommendations I can make before playing Roulette, is to just stand at a table and watch the flow of play. By viewing other people playing you should be able to pick good betting strategies, and avoid any of their bad betting strategies.
As with all casino games it is best to set yourself a maximum that you can lose and stop when you reach that point. Too often I have seen people take more, and more money out of their wallets and purses only to lose it all.
Gambling is for fun and recreation. It is not to make a living