Roulette bets can pay handsomely. Pick the right number and your $5 bet, at odds of 35-1, is worth $175. But coming up with a winner takes tremendous powers of intuition, or blind luck. Neither lends itself to a sound betting strategy.

Serious players - the few who actually exist - like to bet "zones" of numbers, that is, groups or columns, rather than a single number, and hope the winning number falls within their zone. The most popular zones are the first, second or third 12 numbers, or a column of 12 numbers.

Also popular, perhaps because of the increased action, is betting red or black. A word of encouragement for color bettors: Lord Jersey once won 17 consecutive, maximum bets on black while playing in Monte Carlo, or so the story goes, and retired to the English countryside and never gambled again in his life.