Roulette Glossary: Everything You Need to Know

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Jack Harris
by Jack Harris

While the game of online roulette is fairly simple when you start playing it, there are dozens of terms that you might see thrown around all the time. You might see them in articles about the game, you might read them when you are looking at strategies, and you might your people talking about them the next time you are sitting at a physical roulette table. Of course, if you don’t understand these terms it can be very difficult to figure out what is going on and that is why it is important to recognize the most common and significant terms before you start playing.

Roulette Glossary

American Roulette

This refers to a version of the game which is most commonly played throughout America. In this version, you get 38 pockets on the wheel, numbered one through 36 and you also get a zero alongside a double zero – 00.

Bet on the layout

This refers to placing a bet anywhere on the numbers part of the table.

Biased wheel

This refers to a wheel where not all of the numbers are equally likely to win. There are plenty of stories of players who have one large payout in roulette because they exploit the biased wheel and they bet on those numbers which are most likely to win. This can almost never happen when playing roulette online at a real money casino.

Block betting

This is when you place a bet on a specific set of numbers in one section of the wheel as a group. This is one type of online roulette strategy that many advanced players use.

Roulette Glossary - Roulette TermsCall bets

These are bets made when you speak out loud and you don’t place any physical chips on the table. Most casinos don’t allow this because of course security dictates that they have some sort of hand gesture on the security cameras to verify that the bet was actually made on the off chance that something goes wrong and that person later claims they never made the bet and therefore they don’t have to pay the casino any money.

Column bets

This refers to when you place a bet on any of the three available columns of numbers. You can choose to bet on a single column. The payout, if you should win, is two to one.

Croupier

This is the casino employee who is responsible for handling the roulette table. This is the formal term and obviously the most accurate but you can get away with simply referring to them as the dealer.

00

The space that is found on the roulette wheel in the American roulette wheel games is called the 00.

Dozen bets

As the name suggests, this is when you place a bet on one of the three different groups of 12 numbers. You can choose to place a bet on the groupings of numbers one through 12 or the groupings of numbers 13 through 24, or finally, the groupings of numbers 25 through 36. If you win the payout is 2 to 1.

European Roulette

This is a version, throughout Europe and Asia and in this game, there is only a single zero, not the 00. Having the single zero actually lowers the house edge.

French bets

There are bets made while playing French roulette which refers to sequences of numbers in roulette that are located in proximity to one another on the roulette wheel. The bets are offered in addition to those found in European or American roulette.

House edge

This is the mathematical advantage that the casino, or the house, has over every player. This edge is referred to as a percentage and that percentage refers to how much of each bet placed in the casino keeps long-term. So, on a single zero Roulette wheel, the house edge is 2.70%. Out of every $100 that players bet, the house keeps $2.7. 

InRoulette Glossary - Terminologyside bets

Inside bets are those placed on the inner section of the roulette layout. When you see the screen you will see where all the numbers are printed and from that screen, you are able to place inside bets on the intersection, and these bets only apply to individual numbers or small groups of numbers.

Marker

The marker is the device used by the dealer to mark which number won at the end of each spin. Players are not allowed to place new bets for the upcoming spin until that marker has been removed from the table.

Mini Roulette

This is a different version of roulette that can only be found in certain casinos. When you play this game there is a smaller wheel that only has the numbers zero through 12. You can learn about roulette online with this version.

Outside bets

The opposite of inside bets, outside bets are those placed on the outside part of the roulette table. They generally cover a much larger section of the wheel and they pay out at lower odds.

Pockets

These are the parts of the roulette wheel where the ball will fall. Each pocket has a specific number. Half of the pockets are red in colour and the other half is black. The zero and double zero are green.

Six Line

This refers to a bet which covers two adjacent rows of numbers on your layout which means that six numbers in total are covered. The payout for this is typically 5 to 1 odds.

 

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