There is very little you can do to improve your odds in roulette. On a double-zero wheel, the house edge will always be at least 5.26 percent. On a single-zero wheel, it will always be about 2.7 percent.

The House Edge

The reason you can't change the house edge is because roulette is just about as random a game as you can find. Unlike blackjack, for example, where each card dealt changes the makeup of the remainder of the deck and you can improve your odds of getting a winning hand by following a specific strategy, roulette spins are not affected by anything that happened earlier at the table. Roulette spins are independent of each other, like tosses of a coin. When you toss a coin, there's a fifty-fifty chance that it will land heads up; that probability factor is the same every single time, no matter what happened on any previous toss.

Each time a dealer drops a ball onto the roulette wheel, the chances of it ending up on any given number are exactly the same — 36 to 1 on a single-zero wheel and 37 to 1 on a double-zero wheel. You could see a run when the balls lands on, say, 19 five times in a row. But even so, on the sixth spin, the odds of the ball landing on 19 are still 36 to 1 or 37 to 1.

Improving Your Odds

Serious players usually prefer to play outside bets because, although the payouts are smaller, the probability of winning is higher. But the easiest way — and really the only sure-fire one — to improve your odds at roulette is to play European wheels, or single-zero wheels. The single zero drops the house edge to about 2.7 percent on every bet and eliminates the extremely bad (for the player) five-number bet. Payouts are the same on European wheels as they are on double-zero wheels, which makes them even more attractive to the player.

Aside from that, the only other thing that will improve your odds at roulette is playing at casinos that offer the “surrender” rule. It applies only to outside, even-money bets — that is, red/black, high/low, and odd/even. If you have placed one of these bets and the ball lands on 0 or 00, you lose only half your bet. This variation cuts the house edge on these bets in half, to about 2.7 percent. The surrender rule is extremely rare on single-zero wheels, where the house edge is already only 2.7 percent. Before you start playing, ask the dealer whether the house offers the surrender rule.

There are quite a lot of books and Web sites that claim to have workable systems for winning at roulette. The truth is, roulette is a game of chance, not of skill, so no system can guarantee a winning outcome. This sheer randomness is part of what makes roulette stimulating and enjoyable. Sit down at the table with that in mind, and you'll be able to revel in the elegance and relaxation of the game that made Monte Carlo famous.