Roullete, or Roulette as it is more commonly known in the United States, is a casino game that involves spinning a wheel with numbered pockets and deciding whether to bet on individual numbers, groupings of numbers, or colors (red or black). The game can be very addictive, so it is important to play responsibly and limit your losses. The best way to do this is to set time and money limits for yourself, and leave the table when you have reached them. This is especially true when playing online because it’s so easy to lose track of how much you’re spending.

The history of this popular casino game begins more than 300 years ago, at the end of the 17th century, when French mathematician Blaise Pascal patented the roulette cylinder. He was originally attempting to create a perpetual motion machine, but the roulette wheel’s unpredictable results took him by surprise.

In its basic form, a roulette wheel has 38 pockets, with 18 red and 18 black ones and one or two green ones, depending on the version of the game. The green pockets give the house an edge over bettors, making the odds of winning a straight bet 35:1 or less.

A croupier spins the wheel, and then a ball is rolled into it. The pocket in which the ball lands determines the winning number. The croupier then removes the losing chips from the table, pays out the winning bets according to the payout table and starts another round of betting.

If you’re new to roulette, you’ll find that the rules are relatively simple. You place your bets by laying down chips on a betting mat, which has the different types of bets marked clearly with their names. Then the croupier spins the wheel and rolls the ball into one of the pockets, which is determined by the color or number on the chip.

The most common type of bet is the dozens, in which you place chips on the first, second or third dozen. The odds for this bet are 2-1, and it is generally recommended to play the European version of the game because it has a lower house edge than the American version. Some online casinos even offer a variant of the game with a “la partage” rule, which reduces the house edge to just 1.3%. This is an excellent alternative to the standard European roulette, and it’s well worth trying if you can find it.