Although roulette may be bet with standard casino chips, each roulette table also sells special chips that are different from the casino's regular chips. These roulette chips, also known as wheel chips, come in six different colors. They are always sold in groups of twenty, called stacks. You can buy roulette chips either with cash or with regular casino chips.
When you purchase your chips, you are assigned a color that no other player may use until you leave the game. This system is designed to avoid uncertainty over the ownership of bets. At a crowded table with chips piled all over the layout, it would be easy for confusion to arise over whose bet was whose when payoff time came. Roulette chips have no monetary value printed on them. When you purchase them, you must tell the croupier what you wish to have your chips valued at. This may be any amount from the table minimum, the dealer will not bother to mark the value.
The only record of what your roulette chips are worth is at the table at which you are playing. That is why players are not allowed to leave the roulette table with wheel chips in their possession. If you should star to do so, the croupier will stop you. This is for your own good. If you were to attempt to cash in these chips at the cashier's cage, they would have no idea how much money you were entitled to. The croupier will convert your wheel chips to regular casino chips when you finish playing. Remember, if you should accidentally leave the table unnoticed with your chips, the casino will refuses to redeem them for cash. Those wheel chips can make expensive souvenirs.
The roulette layout lists all thirty-eight numbers that appear on the wheel. These are listed in numerical order, whit the 0 and 00 side by side on top and the remaining thirty-six numbers appearing in twelve rows of three, creating three columns of numbers. The numbers appear on the layout in the same color as they appear on the wheel; the numbers are equally divided between red and black except for the 0 and 00, which are green. In addition, there is a series of boxes on one side of the numbers and at one end to accommodate specific wagers.
In this country, roulette is usually conducted by one dealer, although at a busy table a second dealer will be assigned to help. In casino parlance, the primary dealer is called the wheel roller, while his assistant is called the check racker. The Wheel roller conducts the entire game, selling chips to players, spinning the wheel and the ball, announcing the winning number, and taking and paying bets. The check racker assists by counting out chips for the payoffs and sorting the losing chips by color into stacks of twenty. In this country, most roulette dealers are blackjack dealers who double on the wheel. The roulette is most often found in the blackjack pit, sealing off one of the ends. In Europe, where roulette is a much bigger game, the roulette croupiers are specialties in that game.
Wagers
If you are going to play roulette, it is vital that you familiarize yourself with the various bets available at the game and particularly with the correct payoff on each one. Dealers do make errors on these payoffs form time to time. If you don't know how much you have coming to you, you have no way of protecting yourself in such a situation. It is alos extremely important that you understand the correct way to make each bet on the layout. A placement of your chips an inch off from where they should have been can mean that you end up making a wager completely different from the one you intended. Roulette wagers are divided into two broad categories: inside bets and outside bets. The inside bets are those that are made on the numbered central portion of the layout. Every time you wager on a single number or on a combination of two, three, four, five or six numbers. You are making an inside bet.
The outside bets are those that are made in the boxes on the periphery of the layout. These wagers can be further subdivided into those that pay 2 to 1 odds and that pay ever money. All outside bets lose whenever 0 or 00 comes up.
