Frequently Asked Questions about Roulette

Last update: November 15, 2005

Many questions I get on roulette ask about predicting future spins based on previous spins. If that is the nature of your question please see my FAQ on the Gambler's Fallacy.

What do you think of the idea of betting two columns in roulette? This offers almost a 2/3 chance of winning. This seems like such a simple way to beat roulette or am I missing something?

By betting on two columns you cover 24 of the 38 numbers. So the odds of winning are 24/38=63.16%, and the odds of losing are 14/38=36.84%. If you bet $1 on each column you stand to win $1 and stand to lose $2. So the expected gain by two column bets is 63.16%*$1 - 36.84%*$2 = -$.1053. In other words you stand to lose about 10 and a half cents. The house edge is .1053/2=5.26%, the same as it is for any combination of bets in roulette that do not include the dreaded five number combo (0/00/1/2/3).

Is there any pattern to the order of the numbers on the roulette wheel? They seem random to me.

Yes. If you take most numbers and add the two neighboring numbers the sum will be 37 or 39. There are some exceptions, like zero, double zero, the numbers touching either of the zeros, 7, 8, and 10. The idea is that if you take any chunk of consecutive numbers the sum should be roughly the same as any other chunk of equal size.

Also see questions & answers about roulette from my Ask the Wizard column

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