Roulette is, at heart, a simple game. So trust French casino-dwellers to develop some rather more intricate ways in which ♠ to play. If you're given the chance to play a French-style roulette table, then you should, as this will probably ♠ give you access to the punter-friendly En Prison/La Partage rules. Combine these with a single zero layout (unlike double-zero American-style ♠ tables), and the house edge falls to around 1.4%. However, if you are taking a spin on a true French ♠ table, you'll find much that's, erm, foreign. And most of this will be due to the existence of bet types ♠ like Voisins du Zero, Tiers du Cylindre, and Orphelins.

Whereas most roulette tables (in land casinos) assign coloured chips to the ♠ players, so that winning bets can be easily identified, the chips on French tables differ only in the numerical amounts ♠ they have printed on them. With nothing to distinguish one player from another, it becomes important not to have too ♠ many chips on the board at the same time. The need for space partly inspired the invention of an additional ♠ grid, called the 'Racetrack'. This oval-shaped section sits to the side of the main play area. it features all of ♠ the same numbers - 0 to 36 - but within a different layout. Its point is to act as an ♠ extension to the main grid, and to encourage some of the players to switch to exotic 'French Bets'. These French ♠ bets were traditionally referred to as 'Call Bets' or 'Announced Bets', as they were too specialist to be featured on ♠ the main tables, and players had to call out when they wanted to play them.

So what exactly are these bets, ♠ and what do they consist of?

The Ins and Outs of Call Bets

If you look at the main wheel for roulette, ♠ you'll see that it can be broken down into two large slices, along with a couple of smaller segments sitting ♠ between them in the middle. Each of these sections contains a set of numbers that make up one of the ♠ following bets: