Roulette Games
Roulette games are easy to find online, and that statement holds true whether you want to play just for fun or for real money. Most online roulette games are almost exactly the same—the images might be sized and positioned differently, but one picture of an animated roulette table looks much the same as any other animated roulette table. The rules for these games don’t vary, either, except for the difference between European roulette games and American roulette games. This page covers where to find and how to download free roulette games, and it explains the differences in rules between European roulette games and American roulette games.
Free Roulette Games
Most free roulette games on the Internet are made available by online casinos who are trying to entice players to their casinos. There’s nothing wrong with taking advantage of the free roulette games at various casinos—in fact, it’s a good idea, because it gives you an opportunity to evaluate the software to decide whether or not you’ll enjoy playing for real money on it.
Some gambling information sites also offer free roulette games of their own design. These are usually less polished and feature fewer graphics and sound effects than the games produce by Internet casino companies. But if you want to avoid the sometimes-irritating sales pitch that is sure to pop up from time to time while playing free roulette at an online casino, you can have a lot of fun playing these other free games.
What good are free roulette games though? Isn’t playing a gambling game for play chips an exercise in futility? Sure, you’ll never lose any money playing free roulette games, but you’ll never win any money playing free roulette games, either. If I’m going to gamble, I want to put some money on the line, and I want the opportunity to win some money.
These free roulette games are good for one purpose. If you’re considering trying a betting system, put it into practice on some free roulette games for a while before using that betting system to bet real money roulette games. Every time I write an article about roulette betting systems, I point out the logical and mathematical fallacies in most roulette betting strategies, but there are still people out there who insist on believing in such systems. For those people, I suggest seeing how much play money you can win using such a system, but don’t get cocky if you get lucky on the free games. Some people think that the free games provided by online casinos are rigged in favor of the player, so as to encourage them to make a deposit and play for real money.
Download Roulette Games
Many online roulette games are no download games; they’re played using either Flash or Java. But most of the time, you’ll want to download roulette games. The graphics and sound effects on the games that you download are always going to be dramatically better than what you’ll see from the no-download versions. Since roulette, by its very nature, is a game that you’re playing for fun, not to win money in the long run, anything you can do to maximize that fun is worth doing.
American Roulette Games
An American roulette game features a roulette wheel with 38 pockets. Eighteen of those pockets are black, and eighteen of the pockets are red. Two of the pockets are green, the zero and the double zero. Eighteen of the pockets are designated with an even number, and eighteen of the pockets are designated with an odd number. Again, two of the pockets aren’t designated as either, because they have a zero or a double zero in them.
The zeros are the pockets that provide the casino with its mathematical edge. An even-money bet, like a roulette bet on black or on even, is an even money proposition over the long run, IF there’s a 50% chance of winning. The two green pockets reduce the chances of winning from 50% to 47.37%.
The house edge on almost all American roulette game bets is 5.26%. One bet on the American roulette table offers even worse odds than this, and it’s called “first five” bet. It’s a bet on the ball landing on one of the following five numbers: 0, 00, 1, 2, 3. That bet provides the house with an edge of 7.89%.
European Roulette Games
By contrast, European roulette games only have 37 pockets on the wheel, and only one of those pockets has a zero designation. That one green pocket is enough to ensure that the casino still has a mathematical advantage, but the casino’s advantage is significantly less. That 47.37% chance of winning an even bet in an American roulette game becomes 48.65% in a European roulette game.
Some, but not all, European roulette games also offer an option called en prison to players who have made an even-money bet and lost. In some versions, the player gets half of his bet back if it lands in the zero pocket. In other versions, the players can put his bet “in prison,” which means that if the player wins on the next spin, he gets his original bet back.
The house edge on a standard European roulette game is 2.7%. European roulette games with the en prison rule in effect offer a house edge of 1.35%, making it one of the better bets in the casino.