Whenever you go to a casino, you’re confronted by a wealth of different kinds of games on offer. You certainly are if the casino is at all worth visiting. Littered across the entire floor are slot machines for those who prefer games that are cheap to play (but can quickly become very expensive over the night if they’re not careful – “just another dollar” said 500 times may not feel like $500 but it still is) and there, on the sides, are all sorts of table games for more discerning gamblers. Some casinos may even have VIP areas and poker halls, and most have craps tables and Big Six Wheels as a central attraction.
One of the most popular locations on a casino floor, though, is around the roulette table. Roulette, as most people know, is a game of pure chance whereby patrons of the casino place one or many different kinds of bets on the roulette table, whereafter the famous roulette wheel is spun and that silver ball is placed on it, going round and round until it finally lands on a number that will determine your overall winnings, if any.
It’s really simple, but it’s also really popular. Why is it, though? Your chances of winning big on it are small, you don’t get in on the action of it like you do in card games like poker and blackjack, and it is based entirely on pure chance?
There are, as it turns out, quite a few reasons why so many people love the game. Here are some of the most notable of them.
The Appeal of the Wheel
The biggest attraction of roulette, by far, is the roulette wheel itself. It’s such a ubiquitous symbol of a casino that it almost feels sacrilegious not to check it out when you hit the casino. Somewhere between the swirling sound of the ball going round and round, the slowly decelerating click, click click sound of the wheel as it slows to a crawl and then stops, mixes beautifully with the simple but catchy visuals of this famous black, red and green wheel. It’s simply tons of fun to watch.
The Creation of Tension
The biggest appeal of gambling – far more, in fact, than any actual winnings – is the thrill you get as you wait with bated breath to find out if you beat the house. It’s a perfect dopamine rush that’s so powerful that some people literally get addicted to it. In terms of creating this sort of “pleasurable tension”, though, almost no game beats roulette. Watching the ball go round and round and round on the spinning wheel is fun in and of itself for many people, but its biggest appeal is the way the tension mounts as the wheel spins over and over and over again, until it finally slows down more and more and more, until, at long last, the winning number is revealed. It’s really the thrill of gambling at its most pure.
A Simple Way to Double Your Money
Roulette is home to arguably the best bet in the house: on red or black or on odds and evens. Though the inclusion of the green 0 (and in United States tables, the double 00) means that you don’t have a fifty percent chance to win, but a 46% to 48% – the infamous house advantage – chance to double your money is one of the surest bets on the casino floor. It’s also an easy way to lose all your money in one foul swoop, of course, but it’s a bet unlike any other on the casino floor.
A Wide Variety of Bets
The double-or-nothing style bet is only one of many kinds of bets you can make in roulette. It’s hard to think of a casino game with a wider variety of betting options on offer than roulette. You can bet on a row, a corner, a single number, on the 0 or the 00, on red, on black, on odds, on evens, and several other more complicated bets. Each bet has its advantages and disadvantages. Some have high chances of winning but very low payouts; some have very low chances of winning, but very, very high payouts. And you don’t even need to just make one bet at a time. You can make a wide selection of bets with each spin. There’s zero strategy in the game of roulette itself, but there certainly is in working out which bet, or which series of bets, works best for you.
It’s Quite the Social Scene
One of the most fundamental appeals of roulette, especially over something like video poker or slot machines is that it’s a very social game. People sitting together at a table for a while might strike up conversations even friendships, while at the same time, it’s the ideal spot on the casino floor – along with craps – to take a date, as the atmosphere is usually convivial, fun and more than a little glitzy around the roulette table. It gives the game a whole other dimension to most other casino games and becomes a fun night out as much as it is a gambling game.
So there you have it. Other casino games have certain advantages over roulette, but it’s still very easy to see why it’s the preferred choice of so many casino patrons – especially more casual ones looking for a fun night out as much as anything else.
