Roulette is the easiest table game to learn and the one where a single choice — which wheel you sit at — matters more than every betting decision combined.
Pick the right wheel first
| Wheel | Pockets | House edge |
|---|---|---|
| European | 37 (0–36) | 2.70% |
| French | 37, with la partage / en prison | 1.35% on even-money bets |
| American | 38 (0–36 plus 00) | 5.26% |
The payouts are identical across all three. The extra pocket on an American wheel changes nothing about what you are paid and everything about how often you are paid. Playing American roulette when a European table is open costs you roughly twice as much per hour, for no benefit whatsoever.
French roulette goes further: la partage returns half your even-money stake when the ball lands on zero, cutting the edge on those bets to 1.35% — the best odds available on any roulette table.
Rule of thumb: never sit at a wheel with two zeros.
Inside bets
Placed on numbers or the lines between them. Higher payouts, lower hit rates.
| Bet | Covers | Pays |
|---|---|---|
| Straight up | 1 number | 35:1 |
| Split | 2 numbers | 17:1 |
| Street | 3 numbers | 11:1 |
| Corner | 4 numbers | 8:1 |
| Six line | 6 numbers | 5:1 |
Note the arithmetic on a straight-up bet: there are 37 pockets on a European wheel, so a fair payout would be 36:1. You are paid 35:1. That single-unit gap is the entire house edge, and it applies identically to every bet type on the table.
Outside bets
Placed around the number grid. Lower payouts, higher hit rates.
| Bet | Covers | Pays |
|---|---|---|
| Red / Black | 18 numbers | 1:1 |
| Odd / Even | 18 numbers | 1:1 |
| High / Low | 18 numbers | 1:1 |
| Dozen | 12 numbers | 2:1 |
| Column | 12 numbers | 2:1 |
Zero is neither red nor black, neither odd nor even. On a standard European wheel it simply loses for all even-money bets — which is why la partage on French tables is worth seeking out.
Called bets
Some tables offer bets named after sections of the wheel rather than the grid — Voisins du Zéro, Tiers du Cylindre, Orphelins, and neighbour bets covering a number plus those adjacent to it on the wheel. These are conveniences for placing multiple chips at once. They carry the same house edge as everything else.
Systems, and why none of them work
Martingale, Fibonacci, D’Alembert, Labouchère — all of them rearrange when you bet and how much, and none of them changes what happens on any individual spin.
Martingale is the clearest illustration. Double after every loss and you recover everything plus one unit when you eventually win. It fails for two concrete reasons: table maximums cap the doubling, and a losing streak of eight is not rare enough to plan around. Starting at $5, an eighth consecutive loss requires a $640 bet to win $5 back, and many tables will not accept it.
The wheel has no memory. Six reds in a row does not make black more likely on the seventh spin. This is the gambler’s fallacy, and roulette is where it does the most damage.
Live dealer roulette
Live tables stream a real wheel with a real croupier. The rules are identical; what changes is pace and cost. A live table runs perhaps 40 spins an hour against several hundred on an RNG table, which means slower losses at the same edge. It also means a continuous video stream — expensive on mobile data.
Check the table limits before joining, and note the betting timer: live tables close betting on a countdown, and a late click is not accepted.
The realistic summary
Roulette is a game with a fixed, unbeatable edge and a genuinely enjoyable structure. Pick a European or French wheel, favour outside bets if you want your balance to last, favour inside bets if you want occasional large payouts, and treat any system that promises consistent profit as false.