High stakes casino players may not typically be associated with roulette – poker and blackjack are more obvious options – but there are plenty of roulette fans with more money to play with than the average joe.
Playing roulette for large amounts of money per game is a very risky business; since the game is based purely on luck and is over in moments, you are potentially losing a lot of money very quickly if the numbers go against you.
Players without a solid staking strategy can find themselves broke before they have even got started when betting big, so true high rollers will always have some sort of financial plan in place when it comes to how they use their substantial bank roll.
The games themselves can be structured in different ways, so the way someone likes to play will dictate the sort of game they should choose. Some high limits roulette games have table limits that aren’t too far away from the max bet, which is no good if you like to cover a lot of the table, for example.
Let’s find out what sort of money it is possible to play with, and why anyone might want to throw such massive sums at the roulette table in the first place.
High Stakes Online Roulette
The interesting thing about playing roulette online is that the difference between the minimum bet and the maximum bet for each bet type can be staggeringly wide.
What one player does on a roulette table does not affect anybody else, so a player betting a few pounds a spin could sit next to a player betting a few hundred pounds a spin and the outcome for both players would be the same. There is less reason then to try and keep high staking and low staking players on separate tables.
Online there is even less reason to consider this aspect and no limit to the number of people each game can accommodate, so even though there are tables aimed at more affluent customers, most tables try and attract as wide a player base as possible.
You should generally expect to see a difference between RNG based games a live casino games, but all games will have a smaller maximum bet for inside bets than for outside bets. This is because outside bets don’t have large payouts, whereas inside bets can pay out as much as 35:1 for a straight up, which would be very costly for the casino on high stakes.
However, do not confuse the maximum bet with the maximum table limit:
- Maximum bet – The largest amount you can stake on a specific type of bet, such as a column, a street, or a split.
- Table limit – The largest amount you can stake per game in total, on any number of different bets.
Let’s look at Playtech’s Premium Roulette game as an example. It has a table limit of £25,000, but the individual maximum bets are as follows:
Bet Type | Payout | Max Bet |
---|---|---|
Straight Up | 35:1 | £200 |
Split | 17:1 | £400 |
Street | 11:1 | £600 |
Corner | 8:1 | £800 |
Line | 5:1 | £1,200 |
Column/Dozen | 2:1 | £2,500 |
Red/Black, Odd/Even, High/Low | 1:1 | £5,000 |
These all change according to the payout, which is also detailed in the table above. You can see that the higher the payout for a successful bet, the lower the maximum bet will be.
So a player could use any combination of the bets above, but they must not have any more than £25,000 worth of chips on the table in any one game.
Why Do Roulette Tables Have an Upper Table Limit?
There isn’t a table on the planet that doesn’t have a maximum betting limit. This is in place to protect all involved, but mostly to protect the casino.
A single lucky bet of £1,000,000 at 35:1, for example, could deal a devastating financial blow to the casino on the losing end, and two of them in a row could bankrupt them. At that sort of money, even a simple win on black at 1:1 would cause management a headache.
More than this though, upper limits are there to foil the Martingale system which you can read about here. We won’t repeat the same information on this page, but the basic principle is that the player doubles their bet each time they lose. In this way, when they eventually win they will make back all they have lost plus one betting unit.
Without an upper limit this system could beat the casino, or at the very least stop them making any money.
The house edge on roulette is small anyway, so casinos use table limits to protect themselves and manage their risk.
Online Roulette Games With High Table Limits
A few of the games out there that allow the biggest stakes, both on inside bets and outside bets, are listed below with their highest and lowest maximum bets plus the overall table limit alongside:
Game | Developer | Game Type | Max Bet Range | Table Limit |
---|---|---|---|---|
Prestige Roulette | Playtech | Live Casino | £500-£10,000 | £250,000 |
Premium European Roulette | Playtech | RNG | £400-£1,800 | £50,000 |
Auto VIP Roulette | Authentic Gaming | Live Casino | £250-£2,500 | £20,000 |
William Hill Mayfair Roulette | Blueprint Gaming | RNG | £1,000-£6,000 | £15,000 |
London Roulette | Evolution Gaming | Live Casino | £250-£5,000 | £10,000 |
Salon Prive’ Roulette | Evolution Gaming | Live Casino | £100-£10,000 | ? |
Evolution don’t always make their table limit easy to find, and since you can’t even enter their Salon Prive room unless you have at least £10,000 in your account we weren’t able to get access – safe to say the upper limit will be in the hundreds of thousands for that one.
Another thing to note is that some games can have different table limits depending on the casino site they are on. The bigger the casino you use the more likely they can accommodate higher table limits.
To be honest, if you want to gamble large amounts like this, you should probably use a long established big name casino anyway, for your own peace of mind.
Why Play High Stakes Roulette Online?
No doubt playing high stakes roulette in a physical casino comes with plenty of benefits as the casino plies you with food, drinks and attention, but playing for large amounts online has one thing for sure that a real casino cannot beat.
Personal security.
No one is going to know what you are doing when betting online, so you won’t need to worry about being mugged or followed home by someone who has just watched you betting tens of thousands of pounds.
In some live casinos you can not only play alone and in private, but they will also accommodate requests should you have them. Perhaps you have a favourite dealer for example.
Fans of the martingale system could also use a high stakes game to give themselves room to recover while playing at the lower end of the game’s staking limits – providing they have a big enough bankroll to stay the course.
Anyone who could be considered rich might also get more enjoyment from risking more money, as a £20 bet to a millionaire probably wouldn’t get the heart pounding, but a £20,000 bet might.
The other obvious benefit is that you can make a lot of money very quickly if your luck is in, but then, you need to have a lot of money in the first place to do this, otherwise you are likely gambling your life savings like Ashley Revell did, and even though he won and got away with it, this is not recommended.
Much better to use a staking strategy or system, wherein you break your available money into betting units and forget the monetary value. If you want a longer play session then break your bank roll into more units, if you want more of a rollercoaster ride the use a smaller number.
£10,000 broken down into 100 betting units would be £100 per unit, for example, whereas the same amount broken down into 500 betting units would be £20 per unit. Figure out how you like to play, and break your bank roll down accordingly to give yourself the best possible chance of staying in the game and not busting out too early.