If you look at a roulette table, some numbers alternate between red and black. But at certain points, it shifts, such as between 9 and 10, as well as 18 and 19. One player wonders why;
Why aren’t the colors on a roulette wheel alternated on the whole board in one pattern? It changes patterns: 1-10 go red-black-red-black… then it switches to black-red-black-red for 11-18 and switches again.
Christine K.
It’s a fun question, and one we’ve casually noticed but hadn’t given much thought to it until you asked, but the answer is also pretty straightforward. If the numbers alternated red and black without shifting at any point, it would effectively make all the odd numbers one color, and all the even numbers one color.
So, there’s three points where the pattern reverses. It happens after number 10, 18 and 28. By making these shifts, it spreads the black and red spaces over both odd and even numbers, ensuring that it’s a different bet when betting red or black vs. betting odd or even.
Casinos love to offer multiple ways to bet on something, and so having red and black vs. odd and even is a creative way to offer what’s ultimately a nearly 50/50 bet on the table, and allow players to play multiple of those bets at once.
The same goes with the first 12/middle 12/last 12 vs. the three column bets – each of those are betting on nearly one-third of the numbers, but offer different ways to go about doing it.
Of course, regardless of which of any of these you bet, the house edge is identical, because the payouts are based on 36 numbers, but a roulette wheel can have between 37 and 39 numbers depending on how many 0s there are. In the long run your expected payback is identical.
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