Roulette Tournaments or Tourneys, much like Slots Tournaments, have evolved from poker tournaments. Instead of playing roulette against the house, you play roulette against other players. The player with the highest balance in his or her tournament bank roll at the end of the tournament wins the top prize (which is normally of the order of £2-10,000 or something, depending on the casino and the tournament). There are also normally runners up prizes for the next 10 places or so.
Best Online Casinos for Roulette Tournaments
Casino Club
Casino Club has daily roulette tournaments on French and European Roulette. Just click on the "Daily Tournaments" information box when you get to their home page (bottom right).
Bet 365 Roulette Tourneys
Bet 365 hosts a weekly roulette tourney called "Spinner Winner". Just click on the yellow banner that says "VIEW PROMOTIONS" when you get to their home page. The prize pool is normally €5000.How roulette tournaments work in more detail.
The tournament is basically an incentive to get roulette players playing at the casino. You get to test the games out for a low price (or for free in a freeroll), while still having a chance of winning a big payout. The casino gets to showcase its roulette games and builds up its customer list.
In roulette tournaments, you pit your roulette technique against other players on a leaderboard. Normally tournament play sits outside of real play in the casino lobby: you´ll have a special tournament chips to play with, and a tournament bankroll with which you assess your performance against other players.
You´ll need to sign up of course and head to the tournament section of the casino lobby to find out when the tourneys start and how to enter. Normally, you pay an entry fee (or "Buy-In") for which you will get a number of roulette rounds and casino chips with which to make your bets. If you run out of chips or game rounds, you cannot continue, unless the tournament allows re-buys. In this case, you´ll be able to buy more chips and continue playing. Tournaments that allow rebuys generally have higher jackpot prizes of course, as there is more money in play.
Normally, once you have registered for an individual tournament you cannot re-register. You´ll be able to check your score vs the other players on the leaderboard as you play- normally these score boards give you your position and the top 5 to 10 players.
You can stop competing at any stage during the tournament. They normally have a set time period (say start Sunday midnight, finish Tuesday midnight). Remember this is the Internet, so make sure you check the time zone that the tournament is running from and work out your local time. If it is a UK run website, the time will be UK time obviously, but the time may also be CET (Central European Time), Eastern Time, Central Time, Mountain Time or Pacific Time (in North America).
Roulette Tournament Jargon
As with most things to do with gambling, there is a fair amount of jargon involved in the world of tournaments. Here are the main terms:
In this section you find details about terms that you run across in the tournament lobby and while playing tournament games.
| Prize Pool | The total amount that will be shared among the tourney winners. | |
| Entry Fee | How much you pay to enter. Normally this is spilt into money that goes into the prize pool and funds that go to the casino. Also called Buy In. | |
| Minimim rounds | You must play at least this no. of round to qualify to win part of the prize pool | |
| Maximum rounds | The maximum number of rounds you can play | |
| Free Roll | A roulette freeroll is a tournament with no entry fee or buy in | |
| Re-Buy | An additional purchase of casino chips and/or rounds so that you can continue to play in the tourney. |