BANK.
This term is commonly used to describe the money that is on the table. The old song or the saying about “breaking the bank at Monte Carlo” refers to winning all of the chips that are on the roulette table at that time. What it does not mean is winning everything that the casino has or bankrupting the casino.
Being an ex-croupier, I have seen the “bank” broken many times during my working life. Back in the old days, the casino used to close any game that ran out of chips. Any player who was playing were either forced to move to another table or leave the casino.
BALL (Roulette Ball)
This is quite self explanatory and is the round spherical object that is propelled around the wheel by the croupier. Roulette balls can be made of numerous different substances. It is still believed by many people that they are made of ivory…….they are not. Ivory balls were in existence in olden times but newer materials like acetal and teflon became available that didn’t go out of shape through repeated use.
BALLSTOPS.
This is just one of several names for the diamond shaped deflectors that inhabit a roulette wheel. There are usually eight of them in a standard wheel and their job is to randomise the result of the spin. Other names for these metal deflectors are “ball deflectors” and “canoes”.
It is often lost on nearly all roulette players the strategic importance of ball-stops and how they “randomise” the result. The facts are that randomisation is very difficult to attain fully but that is a different story.
BALLTRACK
This is the area of a roulette wheel in which the ball spins. The ball will always fall from the ball track at the same speed and this is certainly one part of the wheel that can exhibit bias due to repetitive wear and tear. The ball track unlike other parts of the wheel is in use for every single spin.
