Roulette is a game with a long and rich past, having been played in stuffy land casino, originally only in the French Riviera, Monaco and the most exclusive casinos in the West End of London. As usually happens, when the Americans discovered roulette in the nineteen forties and fifties and “took it home” like every other great European sport and institution they had to alter it to suit their playing style, and add a little “razzmatazz.” They found that there is not a lot that you can do with roulette, but they still did something. They added an extra zero, which failed to make the game any more exciting. What it did do was to alter the odds considerably against the player and much more in favour of the house. Of course, Americans who are known for their patriotism favoured the American version which had to be better, and gradually the casino operators discreetly began to withdraw the European version, and before the penny dropped. And so the situation remained the same for more than fifty years, until online gaming began to appear on the scene, making for an alternative for American players, at least for those states where online gaming is legal.

For European players who discovered the tremendous advantages of playing online, there seemed to be no argument that the traditional European version would be the one that they would go for. That was until a few players began to figure out that playing on the American version had its advantages and that the double zero option could not only be neutralized but even turned to the player’s advantage if the covered their bets properly. What these players took into account is that landing on a zero or even a double zero pays the same odds as hitting any of the 36 numbers on the table. All that experienced and calculating online roulette players needed to do was calculate how much they would be required to cover if one of the two zeros comes up when the roulette wheel finishes its spin and work out their odds accordingly. Players who win consistently at online roulette have long since realised that the 35-1 odds that they can get if they hit a single number flatter to deceive, and they only have a real chance of winning consistently of winning if they “cover the table”. That can often entail laying out five hundred chips to win just twenty five.

Playing with this strategy means that no single number is more of a threat than any other, and the double zero should hold no more fear for a thinking player. One of the biggest problems that a player who wanted to cover the table in a land casino was the time limits that the croupiers placed between each spin. Online players don’t have this problem, as they can place their bets one time only, and let them stay in place for the duration of the session, and even go for a cup of tea in the middle. Changed days indeed.