Roullete is the French word for “little wheel”. It’s a casino game involving a spinning numbered wheel and bets on individual numbers, various groupings of numbers, the color red or black, or whether the number is odd or even. The payout varies according to the type of bet placed and the winning number.

Roulette is a game of chance and luck, but there are strategies that can help you maximize your chances of winning. One such strategy is the Martingale system. This involves increasing your stake amount after every loss, and decreasing it after a win. This strategy can reduce your losses and increase your wins, but it is not foolproof.

The game started out in a primitive form more than 300 years ago, in the 17th century, when physicist Blaise Pascal invented the roulette cylinder in his quest to create a perpetual motion machine. He didn’t intend the roulette wheel to be a gambling game, but it quickly gained popularity in Paris.

Before a spin of the wheel, players place bets on what number they think the ball will land on by laying down chips on a betting mat, the precise location of the chip indicating the bet being made. The bets on six or fewer numbers are called ‘Inside bets’ and those on 12 or more are known as ‘Outside bets’.

The Roulette wheel has a symmetrical pattern of black and red slots, alternately high and low, and the numbers from 1 to 36. On European tables, there is also a green zero, while on American roulette wheels, there is an extra green division marked 00, which gives the house an advantage of 5.26%.

In addition to the symmetry of the numbers, there are other symmetries that can be exploited by players. For example, the second dozen on a European wheel contains no numbers between 13 and 24, so bets on this area pay 2-1. Another symmetry is the distribution of the numbers on the wheel: all the low red and black numbers are on one side, while the high red and low black numbers are on the other.