Roulette: A Game of Chance

There are a large number of gambling games offered in casinos. Most of these gambling games are games of pure chance; ones where players do not need to employ strategy or subterfuge while playing. In these kinds of games, the only choice a gamer generally has to make is how much to bet on, and what to bet on.

This generally makes most gambling games fairly easy; on the player's part, very little effort is actually expended. On the other hand, outside of crossing their fingers and praying to whatever deity they might worship, or cheating, a player cannot actually do anything that would help improve their chances of winning. There is very little decision-making involved. The only thing a gamer may do in a gambling game of pure chance; is place their bet. Time would eventually reveal whether or not the bet they made was the right one.

One excellent example of a game of chance would be roulette. Roulette is a game that involves using a small wheel with numbered pockets. There are thirty-six red and black pockets in a poker wheel, numbered from one to thirty-six. In addition to those thirty-six pockets, American roulette wheels also have two green pockets that are marked with the numbers zero, and double zero. European roulette wheels, on the other hand, only have one green pocket numbered zero.

A croupier spins the roulette wheel in one direction, and then spins a small, white ball on a raised track on the wheel in the opposite direction. Momentum eventually slows the ball down and it drops into one of the numbered pockets on the wheel. Individuals who have bet on that particular number win a payout that, minus the casino's house edge, is commensurate to the odds against winning for the particular type of bet that they have used. This means that on an American roulette wheel, if a player makes a straight bet on a single number, for example, their odds against winning would be thirty-seven to one, and the payout they will receive will be thirty-five dollars to every dollar that a player has bet.

Regardless of what kind of bet a player makes, in a game like roulette, the only person that they have to interact with is the croupier. There may be several other gamers on that same roulette table, and some of them may even have made the same bet, but a person playing roulette does not necessarily have to interact with these other gamers.