Some people may have heard of mini roulette at one point or another. This is actually a relatively a new variation of roulette found both at land based casinos and on the internet. Basically it uses many of the same rules of regular roulette, except there are one third less numbers in play. The numbers range from the single zero in the green slot along with 1 through 12 alternating between red and black.

Players can still do the same outside bets such as betting on black or red and they can still bet on a single number. Many people think this game will improve your odds but it’s mostly an illusion. Even though a number will come up more often, you will not be paid as much. Also, the green zero takes up a much larger percentage of the actual wheel because there are fewer numbers. Which means the house has a much larger edge on a mini roulette wheel.

The game is still fun to play and it is a change from the usual, but the odds are not as high. There is an extreme advantage to playing this game over any other game though and this depends on the casino you are playing at. Some casinos will have an unlimited table limit with this game, meaning you can effectively implement the Martingale betting system without having to worry about being capped by the table limit if you lose too many times in a row. Also, VIPs can bet massive amounts of money and literally go “all in” and bet everything. This benefit is extremely convenient for those who can afford it.

Remember though, the house edge is a very large 7.70% because of the fewer numbers in play, even with a single zero. In fact, this game has a house edge nearly 3 times as large as the European roulette and about 50% larger than American roulette. This is actually a pretty bad game in terms of odds, even though it is fun. It depends on the player though, if they find that an unlimited table betting limit has greater benefits than the poor odds, then this would be the game for them since not many casino games have no table limits.

Last night I hit up the casino again. It was sort of an interesting night because they had a major raffle ticket contest going on. One guy won a $20,000 brand new pontoon boat and another guy won a snowmobile. These are both surely some awesome prizes but I would personally try and sell any of these and settle for just the cash instead!

Other than that, it was just slot machines, a little bit of roulette and some blackjack for once. There was also a loud drunk guy that had to be removed from the casino unfortunately for banging on the slot machine in the row behind me. Apparently he accused the slot machine of stealing money from him and apparently the casino accused him of being drunk and out of his mind lol.

As for the roulette, the central theme of this blog, not much interesting happened here as well. I went to the table with $100 and walked away with about $30. One of the lessons in gambling and a great tip is to walk away when your night is not going well. If your hot, you are hot. If you are not, then you are not… Otherwise I would have just walked out with $100 lose instead of $30.

Someone asked about this on a discussion forum so I figured I would write a little bit about this. There is sometimes a special rule that players will be allowed to take advantage of. This rule applies to both American and European roulette in some casinos. Note that not all casinos will allow players to use this and you will usually notice the En Prison rule at big casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, especially if you are playing on a single zero wheel.

Ok, basically if you are betting on red or black, and the ball lands on a green slot, the dealer will give you the option to use the En Prison rule. Now this only applies when you are betting on black or red, and then the ball lands on the single zero or double zero (if your roulette wheel has the 00 slot).

For example, if you bet $100 on black and the wheel lands on a zero, the first option is to surrender half of your bet or lose $50. The other option is to chose to go into prison “En Prison”. If you choose to go in prison, the dealer will place an “En Prison” marker over your bet and you leave your $100 on the table and the dealer spins the wheel once more.

The goal is to not have the ball land on the green zeros or the red slots since your original bet was black. If the ball lands on single or double zero again, you lose the bet. You will also lose the bet if the ball lands on red. If it does not land on any zeros and it lands on black, then you go out of prison and you break even. When using the En Prison rule, you can never win. Basically you lose your entire bet or your break even.

The game itself has been around for hundreds of years so it did have some interesting times in becoming popular. In fact, it was told that this game originated from a scientist during a physics experiment and then became a form of entertainment for the monasteries before hitting up to the casinos. One thing that always stuck with the game was the entertainment, even before money and gambling became involved.

This game is fun to play when you are around many people because they can all play at the same time. In the casinos, you will usually find a large crowd around the wheel with the table covered in various chips. This game, along with craps, is considered a social type of game since people gather around a single table as opposed to having a slot machine all to yourself. Also, it usually takes a few minutes for each spin in a land based casino so players can chill out and have drinks while socializing with their friends or other people around the table while the croupier (roulette dealers) places bets and spins the wheel.

Besides the excitement of the game along with cheering on the spinning wheel, the game is incredibly easy to play. Basically players just need to bet on a single number or pick a color and bet on it. Some of the bets are as easy as betting on whether a coin will be flipped heads or tails. The actual odds are nearly identical as well. Again, this game is much more exciting than flipping a coin and why the game is widely accepted as a fun and popular game. Anyone can jump right into the action, even if you are playing online as well.

Probably the number one tip I can give is to always check what game you are playing. Roulette has a few variations of the game, each with different odds. The good game is French and European roulette. These have single zero tables and wheels with only one green slot. The American wheel has two green slots: a single zero and a double zero “00”. This extra green slot throws the odds off and gives the casino a much bigger edge on every single bet. So my best tip is to play at a roulette table with a single zero. The house edge or profit margin on the American variation is 5.26%, which is much higher than the 2.70% edge on a European wheel for instance.

Tip 2 is an important tip deals with betting systems like the Martingale for example. Practice these systems online using a free roulette table like the free flash games we have on this site. That way you can get the system down good and learn how to do them properly. If you use the system wrongly, you will not be able to manage your risk and bankroll as efficiently.

Tip 3 is to always bet on outside bets such as the red/black, odd/even, hi/lo or something with low payout odds. You will win $1 for every $1 but you win more frequently. The house edge is also smaller on these bets so you won’t lose as much in the long run.

Tip 4 is to observe any patterns going on. For instance, some casinos display the numbers and colors that the ball lands on for the previous spins. If you notice a lot of black numbers coming up for example, then you should know that eventually the red ones should come up soon since it is highly unlikely that they will keep coming up. For instance, imagine flipping a coin 20 times and getting heads on every flip. Eventually you will get tails in the long term.

Tip 5 involves watching the numbers that are appearing after each spin. You need to watch closely for a long period of time in order to discover some kind of bias in the roulette wheel, such as a flaw in it’s engineering. Some people can figure this out in their head but most of the time you need a computer to input and save all the numbers. In the old days and still in older casinos with old equipment, there are biased wheels that would let the ball land on certain numbers more frequently than others, usually due to a slight unbalance or the wheel leaning in a certain direction. If you can figure out the bias, even a slight one, you should bet on the biased numbers and you might be able to beat the tiny 2.70% house edge.

A biased roulette wheel is one that is off balanced and favors certain numbers over others. Theoretically every roulette wheel is biased in some way or another and some are more biased than others. This is just a matter of physics because no wheel can be absolutely perfect with ideal balance. Anything from wear and tear or microscopic weight differences can cause a wheel to go unbalanced. Even the small engineering flaws can cause it to not spin in a way that would give every spot on the wheel complete randomness.

For practical purposes, casinos have high quality roulette equipment that is as fair as possible. In the past though, casinos had old lower quality wheels that did not spin perfectly. Basically a wheel could be leaning over in one position and because of this, the ball spinning around would land on certain numbers more often than others. If someone was able to figure out what numbers these were, they could make a ton of money from the casino and this actually did happen at some point. In one case, a gambler actually broke the casino!

A biased wheel can be found by using computer software to find a pattern. Every time the ball is spun in the wheel, the number that it lands on gets recorded into the computer. After so many iterations, one can find what numbers the ball lands on more often. In fact, many companies that manufacture the roulette wheels need to use these computers to test out a wheel before it goes to the casino to ensure that there is a large margin of fairness and that there is no major bias in the numbers.

Cheaters can use the same technology to find patterns. It may not be useful to use this software on a brand new wheel, but it can be beneficial if one was to use this software on an old wheel that has seen a lot of use over many years. An old wheel is likely going to have some bias to it due to age and these are the ones that cheaters tend to go after. They can use the software to find the biased numbers and then bet on those numbers because their odds are better than the rest of the numbers. The computer can sometimes calculate the odds as well and depending on what variation of the roulette game you are playing, a lot of money can be won if those odds exceed the house edge or the odds that the casino normally has against everyone playing.

Note that a casino is a business and they need these odds in order to make a profit to stay in business. Every casino game has odds in favor of the casino unless you can find a vulnerability in the game. Dice control in craps is a way to beat the house in craps. Card counting is another method used to beat the house in blackjack. Finding a biased wheel is actually the way to beat the house in roulette.

Interestingly enough, you might find it obvious that you could not find a biased wheel by playing at an online casino but it is possible! You would have to find an online casino with live dealers with an actual roulette wheel otherwise the virtual software version of roulette uses a random number generator (RNG) to select numbers to perfect fairness. Live dealers usually have a real roulette wheel on a web camera where you could use your computer software to find the bias of the wheel over the internet. One of the deterrents is routinely switching out wheels with other random wheels, even at land-based casinos.

The drawback of using biased wheel software is it normally takes at least 5000 numbers to be inputted into the computer to find a pattern. If you have every played roulette in a casino, you know that sometimes you can only get 40 to 100 spins per hour so it would essentially takes days to find a pattern. More importantly, we are not recommending that anyone actually bring this software into a casino because it is illegal. You could risk getting thrown out of a casino and possibly serving jail time. This is just an interesting article for those who were interested.

You may have all heard about American roulette, French and European roulette but Russian roulette is sort of unique game that people have heard about but never knew what it was. Actually, Russian roulette has nothing to do with your ordinary casino games or spinning a ball around a wheel and making bets on a table. In fact, it does relate to spinning a bullet around in a revolver though.

As the name suggests, this game was invented by the Russians in the 19th century. Many say that it was brought up by prison guards in Russia. It was stated in some stories that the guards would play this game with the prisoners. Other stories suggest that the game was invented by the Russian army where soldiers would play the game as a way to show off their toughness, bravery and to impress people. Of course it was a stupid way for them to do this. Though, these are just guesses on when the game was made since no one really knows for sure or that the cowboys of the wild west invented it.

In the late 1800’s, the Russian army had standard double action revolvers called Nagants. Revolvers of course were required for this game, particularly any revolver with six shots in it. A soldier would put a single bullet in the chamber and spin it around, then put the gun to their heads and pull the trigger. If nothing happens, the gun is handed off to the opponent who pulls the trigger on their head. There is a 16.7% chance that the bullet is in any of the six slots in the bullet chamber, meaning that’s the chance that you would be shot.

Some would consider this an extreme form of gambling. In one case, two wealthy men would play this suicidal game and wager everything they have. Whoever gets shot would lose the game and probably die. The winner would take everything the loser possessed including their home, money and land.

This may seem so unbelievable to be true but people have actually played this game and died. Famous people like William Shockley, who helped invent the transistor and won a Noble Prize in Physics was said to play Russian roulette solo by himself. Some say that Johnny Ace, a blues musician killed himself playing solo Russian roulette. Though the KEY to the game is to use a spinning revolver. Some people have died trying to play this game with a semi-automatic pistol without ever thinking that the odds are 100% that a bullet will be shot when the trigger is pulled…