- Fact-checked by Josh Miller
- Edited by Diana Westfield
You could scribble how roulette works on the back of a beer mat and still have room for a shopping list. The croupier sends the ball round one way and the wheel the other, and wherever it rattles to a stop decides who gets paid. Everything else, every payout and every system you’ll hear about at the bar, comes back to how many pockets that wheel has. The free CasinoCalcs roulette calculator will price any bet you fancy.
How roulette works on a European wheel
Count the pockets on a European wheel and you’ll get 37, numbers 1 to 36 in red and black with one green zero squeezed in. Any given number turns up about once in 37 spins, assuming the wheel’s honest, which these days it is.
The catch is in the payouts, which pretend the zero isn’t there. Stick a pound on 17, see it come in, and you’re handed £35 plus your chip, £36 in all. Do that 37 times, hitting once as you’d expect, and you’ve put in £37 to get £36 back. That missing pound, 2.70% of what you bet, is the house edge, and the zero is the only reason it exists.
How to play roulette at a casino
At a real table you change cash for roulette chips, which are a colour only you are using, so nobody’s bets get mixed up. Tell the croupier what each chip is worth; at a £1 table, a stack of 20 is £20. Put your chips on the layout while the wheel spins until you hear “no more bets”. The croupier places a marker on the winning number, sweeps away the losing chips and pays the winners, and then the table opens again. Cash your colour chips back into normal chips before you leave the table.
How many numbers on a roulette wheel matters more than any system: 37 on a European wheel, 0 to 36, and 38 on an American one with the extra 00.
American and French roulette
An American wheel adds a second green pocket, the double zero, for 38 in total while payouts stay the same. The edge nearly doubles to 5.26%, which is a strong reason to pick the European table if both are on offer.
French tables use the same single-zero wheel but add a rule called la partage. Bet on red, watch the ball drop into zero, and instead of losing the lot you get half back. On those even-money bets it halves the house’s cut to 1.35%, and nothing else in the room comes close. Compare the two in our French roulette calculator.
What each bet pays
Inside bets go on the numbers themselves:
| Bet | Covers | Pays |
|---|---|---|
| Straight up | one number | 35 to 1 |
| Split | two side by side | 17 to 1 |
| Street | a row of three | 11 to 1 |
| Corner | a block of four | 8 to 1 |
| Six line | two rows | 5 to 1 |
Then there’s the outside of the layout, where the big blocks live. Colour, odd/even and 1-18 versus 19-36 all pay evens; a dozen or a column pays two to one. Red comes up 18 times in 37, so 48.6%, and it’ll feel just like flipping a coin right up until that green pocket swallows your chips.
Here’s something the layout doesn’t advertise: on a single-zero wheel, they all cost you the same 2.70%. Covering half the table or one lonely number only changes how bumpy your evening is, not the price of it. Our roulette odds chart has the full list.
Do roulette systems work?
People have been selling roulette systems for about as long as there’s been roulette. Martingale, Fibonacci, d’Alembert, the lot just shuffles your stake sizes around while the 2.70% sits there untouched. Martingale, the double-after-every-loss one, feels brilliant for a while, with lots of little wins. Then seven or eight blacks turn up in a row, you hit the table maximum or your wallet gives out, and one bad run wipes out the lot. Don’t take our word for it; throw your favourite system at the roulette system tester or the Martingale calculator and leave it running for a few thousand spins.
See the layout on our roulette wheel chart or spin the roulette simulator.
Questions people ask about the wheel
How many numbers are on a roulette wheel?
A European or French wheel has 37 pockets: 1 to 36 and a single green zero. An American wheel has 38, with a double zero as well.
What does green pay in roulette?
A straight bet on 0 pays 35 to 1, the same as any other single number. There’s no special price for green, which is the point: the zero is how the house gets its edge.
Is roulette rigged?
Licensed games aren’t, and is roulette rigged? goes through the evidence in more detail. Online roulette uses a random number generator that’s tested by independent labs, and live wheels are checked for bias. What makes you lose over time is the zero, not a fix. Some crypto casinos use provably fair games, where you can check each result yourself with the provably fair calculator. Unlicensed sites are another matter entirely, which is the best reason to stick to licensed ones.
Wondering whether a betting system helps? Roulette strategy tests the famous ones against the maths.