There has been a big movement in the past few years towards tournament-style events in online casinos. The whole point is to give players an extra way to scratch that competitive itch by going up against other players instead of always facing the house. Since you're going to be facing other players, the strategies involved can be somewhat different than when you're just playing against the house. This is particularly important for roulette play because people are used to the ideas that all bets on roulette have the same payout rate. We want to show you that this isn't the case in tournament play.

The type of event you're in will affect the type of strategic options you have in any given situation, but the most common type of roulette tournament has you playing against other people on the same spins trying to run up your total as much as possible in order to stay ahead of the pack. In these types of events, you're going to need to take a good look at your bet sizes in relation to the stack sizes of your opponents if you want to make good long-term decisions.

Here's a good example. Suppose you are the chip leader with 150 percent of the chips of the player in second place. It doesn't make sense for you to make huge bets with a lot of volatility at this point because winning won't give you a higher place. In fact, this is almost a reverse freeroll situation because you don't gain much in terms of place if you win, and you could fall several spots if you lose. This is what you want to look out for, and making these kinds of decisions will give you an advantage over your opponents.

A similar example happens when you're on the lower end of the field. Suppose you are in last place with 10 people left in the tournament, and the top five are paid a prize. You know that you're going to have to really get your stack up if you want to have a chance at getting paid because placing in 10th is just as bad as placing in 6th because they both get no payout. In this situation, your best option is to make a Hail Mary play and bet your entire stack or half of your stack on long shots that give you a chance to jump to the middle of the pack.