The Royal Flushes Roulette Experiment

15 June 2023

By Royal Flushes

CINDY: We are coming to the end of our real-life “have a go at it” roulette experiment. We’ve each played 100 hours of roulette over the past few months, maybe two to three two-hour sessions a day for that period of time. That’s four to six hours of play per day. (Yes, yes, we go to the casinos a lot!)

ABBY: This article will be a review of the game itself. Not every nook and cranny but a good enough approximation of what options players have and what type of edge the casino has. The upcoming two articles, one from my point of view as a red or black player but first then Cindy’s view as a straight-up bettor on the numbers player.

CINDY: It is possible that roulette is the oldest casino game, created by Blaise Pascal, the great mathematician and scientist, who was working on a perpetual motion machine. He didn’t get that but he did figure out how to make a good gambling game out of a wheel that has been in a kind-of perpetual motion in the houses of Lady Luck for centuries now.

ABBY: There are two types of roulette games that can be found in casinos. One is the American game that has two zeroes (0, 00) with the numbers 1-36. That means there are 38 pockets for the ball to fall into which then becomes the winning number and color, etc. The second game is often called the European game which has numbers 1-36 with only one zero (0).

CINDY: In the American game you have a one in 38 chance to win.

ABBY: In the European game, you have a one in 37 chance to win.

CINDY: That’s going straight up on a number. The casino will pay back 35 to one on a number that wins.

ABBY: That means the house edge on the double-zero game is 5.26 percent while the house edge on the single-zero wheel is 2.7 percent.

CINDY: The casinos where we played all had the American double-zero game. You do not find the European game very much in American casinos and when you do the minimums are higher to make up for the fact that the European game has a smaller house edge.

ABBY: There are many different kinds of bets you can make at roulette. You can make groupings directly on the board. You place your chips on the lines between and/or outside the numbers to cover more than one number.

CINDY: You can play proposition bets such as the columns, the dozens, and the even-money bets of red/black, odd/even, or high/low. The columns and dozens will pay two to one. Each column and obviously each dozen gives you 12 numbers that you are hoping will win. So on the American wheel, you have 12 chances to win but you have 26 chances to lose.

ABBY: The even-money bets pay off at even money; they are not bets that are 50/50 in wins and losses. The player wins 18 times and loses 20 times because the 0 and 00 are losses.

CINDY: I will bet straight-up on the numbers. The tables we played at had $10 minimums. I was allowed to bet on a maximum of two numbers. In longer losing streaks I did go to two numbers. I found that hard not to. I did have some long losing streaks. After all, you only have one chance to hit on 38 spins! Losing streaks are par for the course.

ABBY: I bet on the even-money bet of red/black. I could go up to $20 if I wanted to. Sometimes I did. Not often but sometimes. Just in case you have never played or looked at a roulette game, each number is either a black or red with the 0 and 00 being green.

CINDY: Next week, we will go over my performance at roulette.

ABBY: And the week after that, we will go over my performance at the game.