Roulette is one of the best games in the casino and whether you play online roulette, roulette at a “real” casino or even mobile roulette, the mix of a low house edge, exciting yet simple gameplay and the opportunity to win big are hard to beat. Many roulette beginners, and even experienced players, question whether it’s worth taking a note of the previous spins and that’s exactly what we’re considering in this article. Effectively we’re asking, do previous spins have any impact on future outcomes?

In some bricks and mortar casinos recent spins are displayed at each table, whilst other casinos may offer players a notepad and pencil with which to record previous numbers. If you’re playing online roulette the past 10 or so spins will be shown alongside the wheel at most online casinos.

This fascination with the previous numbers would imply, to a complete novice, that the wheel in some way has a memory or bias and that what has gone before does indeed affect what is yet to come. If, however, this was the case, would not the casinos go bankrupt and roulette professionals make a killing? Despite all the show of recording past numbers, the simple fact is that it doesn’t matter what the last five, 10 or even 1,000 spins have produced. With each new spin the probabilities are “reset” and every number, color or group of numbers has exactly the same chance of coming up as it did on the previous spin and, in fact, on all previous spins ever!

10 reds in a row can come up and the chances of the next spin being red are exactly the same – just lower than 50%. The number zero may have not hit for 100 spins but its chances of coming up on the next spin remain one in 37 or one in 38 depending on whether you are playing a single or double zero roulette table. You might not have seen a zero all night but that doesn’t mean one is “due” or that one is more likely than before. Similarly if number 20 drops in three spins in a row, there is nothing to say it won’t come up yet again next time round.

Wheel bias, either through mechanical deficiency or, in online roulette, through the failings of the random number generator, is theoretically possible. However, in reality any such tendencies are highly unlikely, verging on impossible. Moreover, to be aware of them you would need to monitor millions of spins, not just the last 10.

So, forget your pencil, ignore the online record of recent spins because the wheel doesn’t care what happened before – and neither should you.