No 1 in Gambling

Petits-Chevaux, French for "little horses", is a gambling game played with a mechanical device consisting of a board perforated with a number of concentric circular slits, in which revolve, each independently on its own axis, figures of jockeys on horseback, distinguished by numbers or colors.

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The Big Six wheel is a gambling game based on a large vertical spinning wheel, similar to the wheel used on the television game show Wheel of Fortune. (The wheel used on the show is mounted horizontally, however.) The wheel is divided into sections, separated by spokes or pins. The wheel is spun by a dealer, and the winning section is indicated by a pointer mounted on a flexible piece of rubber or leather, which also rubs against the pins to impart friction and slow the wheel down.

Bettors wager on what number or symbol appears in the winning section, and are paid at odds that are based on the distribution of that symbol on the wheel. Most wheels have 54 sections. The numbers or symbols used differ according to the variation of the game.

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Albert Einstein is reputed to have stated, "You cannot beat a roulette table unless you steal money from it."

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Traditional roulette wheel sectors

There are a number of series in roulette that have special names attached to them. These are placed by betting a set amount per series (or multiples of that amount). They are based on the way in which certain numbers lie next to each other on the roulette wheel. Not all casinos offer these bets.

Voisins ("Neighbors")

This is a name for the numbers which lie between 22 and 25 on the wheel including 22 and 25 themselves. The series is 22,18,29,7,28,12,35,3,26,0,32,15,19,4,21,2,25 (on a single zero wheel).

9 chips or multiples thereof are bet.

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The house average or house edge is the amount the player loses relative to a bet, on average. If a player bets on a single number in the American game there is a probability of 1/38 that the player receives 36 times the bet (35 times the bet plus the return of the bet itself), so the player ends up, on average, losing 5.26% on each bet:

( (probability * payout) / bet ) - 1 = expected value as fraction of bet

For example, betting $10 on a single number on an American wheel:

( ((1/38) * 360) / 10 ) - 1 = -0.0526

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Board depiction (American Roulette)

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1800s engraving French Roulette

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Early roulette table, ca. 1800

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