Roulette is a classic casino game and you’ll find it in most casinos that feature table games. It’s easy enough for beginners to play and offers a wide variety of betting options that will appeal to experienced players.

The game starts when the croupier spins the wheel and rolls a small ball in the opposite direction, around a tilted circular track that runs around the outside edge of the wheel. Players make their bets on the number, section or color and are rewarded depending on the odds of winning their bet.

There are several rules to the game of Roullete that help prevent cheating and unfair advantage. The first is that all bets must stop placing when the dealer announces ‘No more bets!’ This is to prevent anyone from trying to place a bet at just the moment when the wheel is about to come to a stop and the ball is about to drop. The other rule is that a player cannot change their bet once it has been placed, again to avoid any sort of unfair advantage.

If a bet wins it is paid out by the croupier who parcels out the chips according to the winning number. For example, a straight bet on number 1 costs 17 chips and pays out 392 chips. Unlike other casino games the numbers are not marked on the table. There are a few interesting symmetries on the roulette wheel that you should be aware of.

On European roulette wheels, the thirty-six compartments are painted alternately red and black and are numbered non-consecutively from one to 36. On American wheels there are two green compartments that carry the signs 0 and 00.

The odds of hitting a specific number are 1 in 37. The payout on a straight bet is 35-1, but the house edge is (37-(35+1))/37 or 2.7%. Roulette is a popular game in Europe and it’s one of the games that draws big crowds to Monte Carlo, but in America it has a smaller following than other games such as slot machines, video poker, blackjack and craps.