It’s hard for me to justify playing roulette in the casino. Every single bet you can make on a standard, American roulette table (OK, except for the weird 0-00-1-2-3 bet) carries the same house edge, 5.26%, which is terrible. But because all but one bet you can make carries the same house edge, and the results of each bet are based on the completely random result from a spin of the wheel, that also means that there is no skill in this game. You can’t be “good” at roulette; if you do well, you’re just lucky.
The terrible house edge comes from the fact that they calculate the payout for each bet by first assuming there’s only 36 spaces on the wheel, and then calculating what a fair payout for that would be. But since there’s actually 38 spaces on an American roulette wheel, the house ends up with an edge. If you make a bet that covers n spaces of the wheel (e.g. betting on black covers 18, betting on the first 12 covers 12, etc.), then your probability of winning is n/38, but the casino will only pay you 36/n – 1 times your bet, even though you should be getting 38/n – 1 times your bet, if the casino were being fair. But it’s a casino, so of course it’s not being fair. So the expected value for any bet (other than the weird 0-00-1-2-3 bet mentioned above, which has a lower expected value) is (36/n – 1) x n/38 – (1 – n/38) = 36/38 – 1 = -2/38 = -1/19, or -0.0526 times your bet.
But I think it attracts people because the game is simple to understand. And maybe the fact that you don’t really need to think about things, since the results are based purely on chance, is also a draw. I think, though, that the casinos have the potential to profit even more from this game. Although I usually don’t advocate anything where casinos might make even more money than they already are, I feel like there’s a lot of untapped potential. The usual way for a casino to make even more money from a game is adding in side bets that have an even bigger house edge than normal bets. The insurance bet in blackjack is one that has become standard. And those little “fortune bonuses” and the like in pai gow poker are also a side bet with a bigger house edge.
So how to do this with roulette? Many casinos have already added a little display of the past few spins of the roulette wheel. The information is completely worthless. Since each spin of the wheel is independent of any other, you can’t predict the next result from past results. I’m not sure why they added this little display, since trying to make a prediction for the next spin of the wheel doesn’t improve or worsen the end result for either party. I suppose it gives the illusion of predictability to some players, and maybe that causes them to stay longer at the tables. Anyway, back to the side bets. Since they already track the past few results, they could add some side bets related to sequences of results that (of course) pay out less than they should. Examples:
- Two in a row. The odds of getting two of the same number in a row are 37 to 1 against, just the same as picking an individual number. So the casino can pay out like 25 to 1 for this and make a profit.
- Three in a row. The odds of getting three of the same number in a row are 1443 to 1 against, so the casino can pay out like 500 to 1 for this, giving people the chance to win $2500 for a measly $5 bet. But they should be getting paid $7215 for that bet.
- Straight. Getting an increasing sequence like 5-6-7 or 28-29-30 seems unlikely. If you disallow 0s and 00s in these straights, and also disallow wrapping around the ends like 35-36-1 just like in poker, there’s 34 possible straights out of 54872 possible three-number sequences. So the odds are 27419 to 17 against, or about 1613 to 1. So the casino can offer about 500 to 1 on this too, like getting three of the same number in a row.
The game as it is now has no way of betting on sequences of results. Maybe this is too complicated. Maybe it’s too hard to keep track of a bunch of players’ bets over multiple spins. But I think it would add an interesting new dimension to the game, where you wouldn’t necessarily clear the entire slate between spins.