The rules of European roulette
Thirty-seven pockets, one zero, and a table where you can back a single number or half the layout at once. Here is what you need to play a spin, and what every bet pays.
The wheel
European roulette has 37 pockets: the numbers 1 to 36 and the zero. Eighteen numbers are red, eighteen are black, the zero is green. It is the only pocket that belongs to no colour, to neither odd nor even, to neither half of the board — and that is where the whole of the casino's edge comes from.
The numbers do not run in order around the wheel. They are laid out so that a red almost always follows a black, and a low number sits beside a high one: the two halves of the layout are shuffled all the way round the rim. That arrangement is what gives rise to the called bets, wagers that follow the wheel rather than the table.
The layout
The layout holds two families of bets. Inside bets go on the numbers themselves, or on the lines that separate them: a chip on a border plays every pocket it touches. Outside bets go in the boxes around the edge and cover large groups at once.
| Bet | Where | Numbers | Pays | Chances |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Straight up | on a number | 1 | 35 to 1 | 1 in 37 |
| Split | on the line between two numbers | 2 | 17 to 1 | 2 in 37 |
| Street | at the end of a row | 3 | 11 to 1 | 3 in 37 |
| Corner | where four squares meet | 4 | 8 to 1 | 4 in 37 |
| Six line | at the end of two rows | 6 | 5 to 1 | 6 in 37 |
| Dozen | 1st, 2nd, 3rd | 12 | 2 to 1 | 12 in 37 |
| Column | at the foot of a column | 12 | 2 to 1 | 12 in 37 |
| Red or black | even money | 18 | 1 to 1 | 18 in 37 |
| Odd or even | even money | 18 | 1 to 1 | 18 in 37 |
| Low (1-18), high (19-36) | even money | 18 | 1 to 1 | 18 in 37 |
"35 to 1" means the dealer puts 35 chips beside yours, and yours comes back: one winning chip straight up returns 36. The zero belongs to no even-money bet, no dozen and no column; as far as the game is concerned it is neither odd nor even.
How a spin goes
- Players put their chips down while the wheel is already turning.
- The dealer sends the ball round against the wheel and calls no more bets: the layout is frozen.
- The ball comes off the track, hits the deflectors, rattles across the frets and drops into a pocket.
- The dealer calls the number, takes the losing bets and pays the winning ones. Winning chips stay on the layout: it is up to the player to pick them up or leave them there.
The house edge is the same everywhere
A straight-up bet pays 35 to 1 while it comes up once in 37. Over 37 spins at one chip, you stake 37 and take back 36: one is missing. That is 1/37, or 2.70 % of everything staked.
The same sum gives exactly the same answer for every other bet, and that is what makes roulette honest in its own way: no combination is better than another. A corner pays 8 to 1 for 4 chances in 37, a dozen 2 to 1 for 12 in 37 — each time, the zero's share is what goes missing. Spreading bets, stacking them, changing them every spin: none of it moves those 2.70 %.
The one exception is the partage rule, which gives back half of an even-money bet when the zero comes up and takes its edge down to 1.35 %. That is the rule this table plays by.
European, French, American
American roulette adds a pocket, the double zero: 38 of them, and the edge climbs to 2/38, or 5.26 % — very nearly double. At equal rules, a single-zero table is always the better one.
French roulette runs the same wheel as the European game. What sets it apart is the layout, printed in French, and what it does with the zero: partage or prison on the even-money bets.
At this table
The layout takes every bet above, the ones touching the zero included: split 0-1, 0-2, 0-3, street 0-1-2, corner 0-1-2-3. Chips go down by touching a square or a border, and move by dragging them. Everything is play money: the roulette takes no money and asks for no account.