Roulette is one of the most popular table games enjoyed at both land-based casinos all over the world. While some people think the odds of winning roulette or the winnings themselves are not as attractive as some other games, there have been some massive collects combining strategy and luck throughout history.
- Read reviews, compare customer ratings, see screenshots, and learn more about Big Win Casino - Free Casino Roulette. Download Big Win Casino - Free Casino Roulette and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
- Remember to stay realistic about the long odds on this popular game of chance. Approach roulette with the sober realization that, with a house advantage of 5.26 percent on the American wheel, roulette is among the worst bets in a casino. Despite the odds, you can still use some simple strategies to stretch your roulette.
Nearly every 'system' advocates quitting about the time the table stake or daily stake is doubled. If you come to the casino with $200, your goal is to enjoy yourself at the roulette tables and perhaps leave with $400. However, for these purposes let's consider playing to win.
Best roulette casino sites for international players
Below we have re-lived some of the most exciting wins imaginable and, who knows, if you are lucky enough to strike a big win at the Roulette table, perhaps we could be writing about you in the future.
The man who broke Monte Carlo
Charles De Ville Wells is often regarded as being one of the greatest roulette cheaters of all time, and is well-known for being the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo back in 1891.
Whilst the term ‘breaking the bank' at a casino doesn't mean bankrupting it, it does mean winning every chip on the table which is an astonishing feat.
His story is hard to fathom, having taken £400 pounds from different investors at a time which he claimed was to fund a musical jump rope – but instead Wells pocketed the cash and set out to have some fun at the Casinos along the French Rivera.
Wells headed to the Roulette tables and remarkably played the game clean, collecting over 1 million francs during a monster 11-hour gambling marathon.
His exploits saw him become globally famous and he even inspired a song sung by Charles Coborn titled ‘The Man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo'.
Wells' luck did eventually catch up with him, losing all his winnings in the Casino de-Monte Carlo, while he was also arrested several times and served eight years behind bars for fraud.
Wells died in Paris in 1922, penniless, but what a run he'd had.
Philip Green gets richer
The rich get richer!
Retail billionaire Philip Green, who owns fashion outlet Arcadia, is often regarded as one of the most erratic gamblers of all time.
In 2004, Green visited the Les Ambassadeurs in Mayfair, winning more than £2,000,000 playing roulette during one session on one night. He followed his winning escapade up by winning a further £1,000,000 during subsequent betting sessions.
His win was enough to trigger a profit warning by the casino, with Green saying of his lucky run 'I had a fantastic night at the tables'. Now that's an understatement.
Green is said to be a fan of playing a mixed system of even-money bets such as red-black alongside straight up bets on particular numbers.
Sean Connery and the number 17
Animal kingdom online game. The original James Bond and a roulette champion – jealous?
Sean Connery, the original James Bond, appears on our list – but not for his character's trademark game, Baccarat. In 1963, Connery visited the Casino de la Valee in Saint Vincent, Italy, where he stepped up to the Roulette table to place five bets on the number 17.
The first two bets lost. However, Connery got lucky on the third spin, with the number coming up at odds of 37 to 1. Rather than walking away a winner, Connery placed all his winnings back on number 17 and, against all odds, he won again.
Unbelievably, Connery risked all his winnings once again, putting all his cash on 17 for a fifth and final time. Once again, the number came up, with Connery leaving the table $27,000 in front.
The win seems even bigger when considering the odds of the Roulette wheel landing on number 17 three times in a row are more than 50,000 to 1.
Mike Ashley – 1.3 million in 15 minutes
Perhaps gaining inspiration from Connery was billionaire Mike Ashley, who also cleaned up betting on the number 17 back in 2008. The high-rolling gambler, the owner of the Newcastle United Football Club, was ranked as Britain's 54th richest man at the time.
Ashley headed to the exclusive Fifty London casino in Mayfair, where he placed a series of bets totaling £480,000 on his lucky number, 17. He walked away from the table just 15 minutes later with a staggering £1.3 million.
Ashley placed a complex bet known as a complete bet which means he bet on every successful combination including the number 17 itself – i.e. the ball falling on an odd number, betting on black, and betting it would fall on a number between one and 18.
Notoriously shy, it is reported that following his win, Ashley stood up and calmly said to the croupier 'That'll do me, thanks very much,' before collecting his winnings and walking away to the sounds of cheering from other punters.
Ashley Revell – your whole life on red
How many of you would bet your life savings on red?
The story of Ashley Revell started one night over drinks at a pub with his mates. In their drunken state, one friend mentioned the idea of betting everything on a single spin of the roulette wheel. The next day, despite the conversation having taken place while he was inebriated, the idea was set in Revell's mind.
The 32-year-old sold all of his possessions including his BMW car, a Rolex watch and golf clubs, as well as all of his personal and sentimental items. During his quest, a television crew from the UK heard about his plan and created a mini series called Double or Nothing, while Revell was also sponsored to change his name to 'Ashley Blue Square Revell' by a UK online bookmaker.
Once tallied, Revell made the flight to Las Vegas with £76,840. Stepping into the Plaza Hotel and Casino, Revell still had no idea whether to bet on red or black, only making his decision to go with red when the ball began to spin.
The ball eventually landed on number 7 – a red number – with Revell doubling his money to £153,680.
He used his money to take a motorcycle trip around Europe. Whilst on his trip, Revell met a woman in Holland who he took back to England with him and married. He is now a father of two with quite a story to tell the kids.
Roulette – in movies, on TV, and in literature, it's often depicted as glamorous, exciting, and ridiculously lucrative for whichever character is playing. While winning big at the spinning wheel seems like a fantasy reserved for James Bond and other fictional high rollers, it is possible to minimize risk and win big at the same time by knowing the best roulette bets. It all comes down to the numbers, and how you want to play them.
In American Roulette there are 38 numbers – 1 through 36, a single zero, and a double zero. Besides the latter two, half the numbers are red, half are black, half are even, and half are odd. The 0 and 00 are green and obviously not even or odd. Betting on those will earn you a payout of 35:1 – but more on all that later.
Now that we've got the bare bones of the Roulette wheel and the felt laid out, let's flesh out only some of the best roulette bets you have to choose from.
Roulette Bet 1 : Red/Black, Evens/Odds, 1-18/19-36
No other game on the casino floor gives players the chance of close to 50/50 odds on a single bet. With the red/black, evens/odds, or 1-18/19-36 bets, you're giving yourself the chance of hitting almost half the options on the Roulette wheel – the 0 and 00 aren't counted – which gives you a pretty nice chance of winning. Granted, that means that the payout ratio is lower (1:1, bet $10 win $10) but by the numbers, it's one of the safest and best roulette bets you can go with when playing the wheel.
Payouts for this can be surprisingly rewarding if you're willing to risk more money on each bet. Take Ashley Revell – he once bet $136,000 on a single spin of the Roulette wheel. If throwing down that sum of money on a single bet doesn't sound impressive or at least make you sweat a little, know that the sum was the entirety of Revell's life savings and the entire event was televised. So if Revell won, he'd double his money and evoke envy and admiration from his spectators; if he lost, he'd lose everything and earn deserved pity.
Revell laid all his loot on red, and the wheel delivered – the ball landed on the red 7, and Revell walked away having doubled his life savings. However, we can't honestly recommend betting your entire net worth on a single spin of the wheel since we wouldn't exactly characterize that as successfully minimizing risk.
Roulette Bet 2 : Columns
If a 1:1 payout isn't exciting enough to motivate you to lay down some chips, you can slightly up the ante and the payout to 2:1 by betting on the columns. By going with this second best roulette bet, you're bringing your option of numbers down to a little under a third, but betting on a column still covers a significant chunk of the felt while doubling your winnings – a $10 bet will win you $20.
Columns don't contain consecutive numbers – for example, the first column has 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25, 28, and 31 – and the number of red and black numbers differs between each column, a fact that we'll cover in a moment. And remember, the 0 and 00 aren't included in any of the columns because they're special and too good for all the other numbers.
Roulette Bet 3: Black and third column/Red and second column
This third best roulette bet was specifically designed for people who like to hedge their roulette bets, or at least attempt to. The Roulette board is an interesting creature and when studied thoroughly, it may help you score big bucks. On the third column of the board, there are 8 red numbers and 4 black, whereas the second column is reversed, holding 8 black numbers and 4 red.
You, the savvy Roulette player, can take advantage of this layout for some slow but steady gains. If you bet on the red-rich third column and double your bet on the black ($10 on the third column, $20 on the black), you give yourself a solid chance of breaking even or making gains.
Here's why: the third column contains more red numbers than any other column, giving yourself a good chunk of red on the wheel. At the same time, you're betting on black, which gives you a little under half the wheel. The third column has a payout of 2:1, and the black has a payout of 1:1, so your column bet should be half the black bet to break even. This is because if a red number shows up on the third column, you win double your bet, but lose your black bet, which is the same amount – it's considered a push, since you're even. It's the same when a black number comes up: you win your black bet, but lose your column bet. But when a black number on the third column comes up, you pull ahead. This system of betting minimizes the risk while giving you a solid chance of steadily padding your bankroll.
The same thing applies to the combination bet of red and the second column – red gives you just under half the numbers, and the second column has 8 black numbers. Be patient, and this roulette bet could help you earn big gains.
Roulette Bet 4: Straight up
If you care way more about the payout than you do about minimizing risk, your best option is to go with the straight roulette bet. This involves betting on a single number and hoping that Lady Luck is on your side. The risk is extremely high, but the payout – 35:1, $350 for a $10 bet – is pretty freakin' sweet. Plus, this is the only category that includes the 0 and 00 tiles.
If you've got a bankroll of $350, you could technically go through 35 $10 bets in a row before you're out of the game. And if you win once, you're up $350. The chances of you hitting the exact number you're going for is about 2.7% or 1 in 37, but what's a big reward without bigger risk?
Roulette Bet 5 : Split bet
If you want to go big but the straight bet gives you the cold sweats, you can still go for a higher reward with a lower risk and choose the split bet instead. This involves placing chips on any two numbers that are next to one another on the felt. This can be either horizontal or vertical placement, and to place the bet you put a chip on the line between the two numbers.
The payout of 17 to 1 is lower than the straight bet, but the chances of hitting your numbers are 1 in 18, which is way better than the 1 in 37 the straight roulette bet offers.
The 5 best roulette bets summarized:
- Red/Black, Evens/Odds, 1-18/19-36
- Columns
- Black and third column/Red and second column
- Straight up
- Split bet
Put these winning roulette bets to the test
Best Strategy To Win Roulette
So you've read and digested all the best roulette online real money bets we've laid out here, and now you want to put them to the test. Great! Try these roulette bets at our online casino real money usa and see how they work out for you, or come up with your own winning combination bets and let us know how it goes!
