A certain part of every gambling aficionados brain is devoted to the fantasy of being a really accomplished roulette player. Its a sexy mental image to cling to: strutting confidently into some swank casino on the French Riviera, placing obscenely dangerous bets on the spin of the wheel and coming up winners time and again. Who wouldnt want to live out that kind of scenario?

Sadly, those scenarios are more often found in James Bond films than in real life. Roulette is a tricky and often tremendously punishing game of chance. Yet it continues to cast a powerful spell, as it always has. Derived from the French word for "small wheel, roulette has a rich history and the style of game play has undergone remarkably few changes since its invention.

A croupier spins a wheel that has 37 or 38 separately numbered pockets where the ball must land. The main pockets are numbered from 1 to 36 and alternate between red and black, with number 1 being red. There is a green pocket numbered 0. Roulette wheels in the United States contain an additional compartment marked 00, also green. Whoever added the double-zero slot much have figured the French are just wimps.

If a player bets on a single number and wins, the payout is 35 to 1. The bet itself is returned, so in total it is multiplied by 36. A player has the freedom to bet on numbers, combinations, ranges, odds/evens and colors.

American roulette uses so-called non-value chips, meaning that all chips belonging to the same player are of the same value determined at the time of the purchase and the player cashes in the chips at the roulette table. European roulette uses standard casino chips of differing values as bets, which can make the game more confusing for both the croupier and the players. Thats the old world for you.

As you embark on your secret mission toward success in the cruel world of the spinning roulette wheel, you may want to keep in mind the following tips:

1.) The house average or house edge is the amount the player loses relative to a bet, on average. If a player bets on a single number there is a probability of 1/38 that the player receives 36 times the bet (35 times the bet plus the return of the bet itself), so the player ends up, on average, losing 5.26% on each bet

2.) The hold is the total amount that the house wins from a player. While the house might have an edge of 5.26%, if a player keeps playing until his or her bankroll is exhausted, the house will enjoy a hold of 100%.

3.) Tiers (French for the third) refers to the numbers which lie on the opposite side of the wheel between 27 and 33, including 27 and 33 themselves

4.) Voisins (which means Neighbors) is a name for the numbers which lie between 22 and 25 on the wheel, including 22 and 25 themselves.

5.) Orphelins (yup, Orphans) are numbers make up the two areas of the wheel outside the Tiers and Voisins. They contain a total of eight numbers, the Orphans comprising 17, 34, 6 and the Orphelins being 1, 20, 14, 31, 9.