Roulette's Street Bet

In roulette, a Street bet is when a person bets on three numbers that are arranged beside each other horizontally on the roulette table. One example of a Street is when someone wagers that the roulette ball will fall into the pockets numbered twenty-eight, twenty-nine, or thirty. Depending on the layout of the roulette table, the casino employee -also called a croupier or a dealer- will place the chips at the edge of the line that borders either the leftmost, or the rightmost number in the "street."

A Street is an example of an inside bet, which includes roulette bets where a person bets on individual numbers, or on a few numbers, grouped together according to their positioning on the roulette table. A roulette wheel possesses thirty-six pockets that are numbered one to thirty-six, and are arranged on the wheel in and alternating sequence of red and black. Aside from these pockets, the American roulette wheel also has two green pockets that are numbered double zero, and zero. The European roulette wheel, on the other hand, only has one green pocket, numbered zero; giving the European roulette wheel a total of thirty-seven pockets, and the American roulette wheel a total of thirty-eight.

The numbers on a roulette wheel do not necessarily follow a numerical order, but when these numbers are arranged on the roulette table, these numbers are arranged in three columns of twelve, in order. The roulette table is used so that the dealer can make sure that bets and the amounts that have been wagered are kept organized, so that mistakes are kept at a minimum.

With a Street bet using an American roulette wheel, a person's odds against winning are 11.667 to one. In any casino game, the establishment possesses a house edge -or the shift in odds and payout that the casino keeps in relation to how much a player might win, so that the casino is able to maintain financial equilibrium. It is necessary -or at least highly financially advisable- for casinos to maintain a sort of house edge, or house average against their players. This can best be illustrated in roulette by the green pocket or pockets that every roulette wheel has. Often, in calculating the payout for a particular kind of bet, the green pockets are not factored in. Despite that though, they still count as odds against a person winning a game. This means that the payout for a Street bet is eleven dollars to every one dollar that a person wagers when they use this bet in a game of roulette.