You can't gain a complete understanding of what roulette strategy is all about until you have a firm grasp of the principles that govern the game, and those principles are certainly based in mathematics.
One of the differences between roulette as it is played in the "brick and mortar" casino and roulette in the virtual
online casino environment is that in the physical casino, there could conceivably be biases in the wheel itself. If that is indeed the case, it can't be said that everything is completely random, because it might produce a shift in odds, albeit a slight one, toward one event happening over others.
Some people have said the same thing about
online casino roulette, of course, because anything might be possible in a computer program, but an important consideration is that there is something called the random number generator (RNG) involved with games as is it designed within the online casino software. The goal in using the RNG is to have a completely random selection of numbers in any casino game that it is applied to, and for purposes of this discussion, that also applies to roulette.
Of course if you are looking for a fair and equitable game you've got to agree that "random" is exactly the way it should be; in other words, each number on the wheel should have the same chance of being chosen as any other.
Don't get the wrong idea of what is "random," however.
In the American version of roulette, which is the one where you've got the numbers 1 through 36, in addition to the zero and double zero (as opposed to the European game, which has only the zero), the chances of any number coming out are one in 38.
However, that does not mean that if you made 38 spins of the wheel, each of the numbers would turn up exactly once. That would actually be quite an orderly process, which is the antithesis of something that is "random."
Roulette is a game where the "law of independent trials" certainly applies. That means the chance for a number to be selected is the same on every spin. In other words, if a 14 is selected on a spin, the odds of it coming up as an independent event the next time are exactly the same, which are one out of 38.
This is all a good thing to understand, because the last thing you want to do is start thinking about the so-called "law of averages," which contends that if a number comes up on one spin, like a 14, that would, mathematically, reduce the chances for it to come up the next time.
So is there such thing as a number that is coming "due"? If you've been in a casino, and observed other players, you have undoubtedly heard that one. Well, you can always keep track of the numbers with a pad and pencil, if you are in the brick and mortar casino environment or with the electronic "tote board" if you are in the online game, but it's not going to change the fact that the
roulette wheel does not have memory. It does not say to itself, "Well, the number 25 hasn't come up for a while - maybe it's about time for it."
So if you are operating under the assumption that the wheel will get to a single number soon enough, you don't want to be caught holding your breath. You could wind up blue in the face.
