Roulette is the most popular casino game online. How do we know? We don’t have hard facts and figures on this but we do have the evidence of the game’s placement on the front page of every casino site.
And that now means on the front of the live casino site too.
Live casino games are great fun. The games you love with the added bonus of a real casino atmosphere and some real human interaction.
However, it’s hard to get a demo mode on a game which relies on a member of staff being available – and paid – at all times.
So you need to know what to do when you play live online roulette.
So let’s take you through everything you need to know!
Where the hell am I?! The roulette table layout
The beauty of a live casino is that it looks exactly like the real thing because it is basically the real thing.
Not all casinos are standard though, so you’ll find little variations here and there, but this guide will get you started.
First of all, there will be a wheel! This will be staffed by a croupier.
The croupier is going to start the wheel spinning and then drop the ball into it. When the ball comes to a rest, the croupier will call out who has won and pay their bets; then rake up the chips from the losing bets.
Because this is live, they’ll also place bets for you. Live tables may need more than one member of staff to keep track of everything, though some casinos use a real wheel with a virtual table, a hybrid of a fully live game and a simulator.
Where’s the money!
You’ll need to keep an eye on where your money goes. And it goes on the table.
Where you’ll find the whole betting array laid out for you in a physical form.
This will include a square for every number on the wheel.
But, before you can really get into that, you need to know:
What’s My Game?
Roulette comes in a variety of variants. Some of these are stylistic – high-speed games, party games, auto games – but there are three popular variants that you’ll see in most casinos:
- European Roulette, with 37 slots (0 to 36), and a house edge of 2.7%.
- American Roulette, with 38 slots (two zeroes to 36), and a house edge of 5.26%.
- French Roulette, with a wheel like European roulette, and some extra betting rules.
Back to the Table
So this is the betting layout for most European roulette tables.
A red and black chequerboard of all the numbers on the wheel with a zero at one end.
The 36 numbers are listed in 3 rows, and you can place a bet at the end of each one, at odds of 2/1.
Under this, you should see three segments equating to the three dozens on the reel.
Under this are the three 50/50 bets: 1/18, even numbers, and red/black, odd numbers, and 18/36.
On an American wheel, you should see a similar line-up. However, at the end of the 36 numbers on the left, there is a 0 and a 00 option.
In a French table, there are some other bets, including Neighbours of Zero (Voisins du zero), taking in a run on the wheel.
Jeu zéro or zero game sets a bet around the zero. Le tiers du cylindre (A third) is another based on the physical makeup of the wheel, taking in 12 numbers.
Orphelins or orphans is an eight number bet.
More commonly you will see, on all roulette tables, a number of ways of selecting groups of numbers.
A Straight Bet is a single number bet.
A split places a chip on the line between two numbers and selects both with odds of 17/1.
A street is three numbers at 11/1.
A corner is four numbers, at 8/1.
These bets are all called “inside bets” because they’re placed on the “inside” part of the table.
The outside bets are those big choices: red/black, odd or even, that are marked outside the main set of numbers on the betting table.
What’s My Limit?
You must play roulette safely.
That includes making sure that the site you want to use is licensed by the UK Gambling Commission BEFORE YOU SIGN UP AND CERTAINLY BEFORE YOU DEPOSIT ANY MONEY.
You also need to make sure you’re playing safely financially.
The expense of live games means that lower betting limits are often higher than on simulator games. To get up to really high betting levels you may need to play at a casino site for some time to earn your way up a loyalty scheme ladder.
This can be expensive.
Set limits for your session before you start that never exceed the money you can afford – and plan – to spend. You might enjoy your game better if you also limit your individual bets to a proportion of your overall game fund. This will help to keep you safe and give you longer playing time.
Have I played This Game Before?
We’ve given you a beginner’s guide to roulette, but nothing beats actually experiencing it. While you can’t often play live games in demo mode you can do that with the simulator games that are usually filed as “table games” in an online casino website.
Am I here for the right reason?
We’ve mentioned safe play a couple of times already, and we’ll mention it again.
Live casino games have brought a new element to online casino play – personal interaction. You shouldn’t use any perceived relationship with a member of online casino staff as a reason to play any particular roulette game, and you shouldn’t make decisions on your spending based on these perceptions. And you should always treat the staff with the utmost respect.
Play games you enjoy and that you can afford to play and look out for more guides on live casino play and other roulette games from us.
