If you're about to play roulette for the first time or want to get back to the drawing board and eliminate the mistakes causing you to lose money, you've come to the right place.
Read this quick guide by people who have been playing roulette A LOT, and take their advice.
These are the eight mistakes you might be making, and you should stop immediately.
You Should Play Live Roulette, NOT RNG Roulette
The number one mistake by a beginner roulette player is playing RNG roulette or land-based roulette.
The latter is more or less ok, depending on where you play.
It's the RNG roulette that should be avoided at all costs. You want a live dealer - in a real casino or online - to spin the wheel and the ball.
First of all, it's more natural. You want to play the game of real chance, not a game where a computer program determines if you win or lose thousands.
Second of all, live dealer roulette has innovations that make the game better than it ever was. You don't get win multipliers in RNG roulette or land-based roulette, do you?
Not playing the top Live Roulette games.
Even the players who play live roulette often limit themselves to what they're used to - which would be the traditional roulette games with nothing extra on top.
While that's perfectly fine if it's a matter of choice, it is not acceptable if it's a matter of ignorance.
Some games, such as Gold Bar Roulette, Double Ball Roulette, Lightning Roulette or Quantum Roulette, are top-rated for a reason. Gold Bar Roulette, in particular, gives you control over where and how you'll use your win multipliers. That's the latest evolution of roulette as a game, and you should take advantage of it. Or, at the very least, try it out.
Note: these roulette games can have worse RTP than traditional games.
Using a progressive betting system
Each roulette spin is independent, so trying to tame this wildly unpredictable game using a progressive betting system - especially an aggressive one like Martingale - can have catastrophic results.
Even if it does appear to be working for a while, the inevitable losing streak will ruin your bankroll.
The roulette mathematics are far too complex to be beaten by Martingale or any other system.
Any attempt to beat roulette using a system will fail. How do we know? Well, because there hasn't yet been an instance where one worked.
Thinking you're due for a win
Roulette tables are the most common place where gamblers' fallacy thrives. In no other game are the players so convinced that an event is due as they are in roulette, especially on a Red/Black bet.
Players look at recent results and, without thinking, assume that Red is due if Black showed up a few times in a row. If, for example, Black showed up five times in a row, then it's more likely Red is due. This is incorrect.
Each roulette spin is individual and independent of all other spins that came before or will come after. It does eventually even out in the long run but over an infinite number of spins. A streak of 10 Reds is, in fact, no more or less likely than a perfect alternating streak of Red-Black, or any other combination of results.
You Don't Understand the math.
If you're playing standard European roulette with a single zero and are placing even-money bets such as Red/Black, your chance to win is 48.65%, no more, no less. On every single spin. The overall house edge of your bet is 2.70%. That means the most likely outcome of your playing session is that you'll get back 97.30 for every 100 you wager.
If you do better than that, you're lucky. If you do worse, you are either unlucky or using a poor strategy or money management. Most players manage to lose big despite being expected to lose only 2.70% of their money.
If you're playing even-money bets on French Roulette, you're expected to lose only 1.35% of your money. And you shouldn't do much worse than that.
This is a fundamental way of explaining that you need to understand the math behind the game to know what to expect.
It gets much more complex when you include other bets, especially in win multiplier games. There must be a basic understanding of roulette math and the law of probability.
Only playing on Red and Blackjack.
While Red and Black are the most natural of all roulette bets, they are not the only bets worth playing. Roulette is more than just a coin flip game with a zero.
Players who genuinely enjoy the roulette game also play on numbers and called bets like Orphelins.
This is the way to play the game. Enjoy everything it offers, and give yourself a chance to win big if the ball lands on your number. Don't weasel away into the coin flip security of Red/Black. Have fun instead.
Some players choose to cover a large portion of the wheel with their bets, or a specific section, to make the win more certain. Then, you might even place a few single-number bets, just for fun, to give yourself a chance of winning big. This is even more true if you're playing a game with win multipliers.
Not using money management.
In any gambling game, from sports betting to slots, you must have a framework you're operating on. It's crucial to set an overall budget and negative and positive goals. You stop when you either lose too much or win the desired amount. Meanwhile, you place bets according to the bet amount and the strategy you decided on before you start playing.
Players who don't use money management in gambling will inevitably lose money, at the very least, and are also very prone to the dangers of betting more and more to recoup losses.
Not knowing when and how to stop.
Gambling has cycles of winning and losing. You either have luck and start winning a lot, or you have bad luck and can't win anything.
If possible, it would be great to stop when you're ahead and have money in your pocket that you took from the casino.
Likewise, it's important not to chase losses and place huge bets to win your money back. It's way better to stop and cut your losses.