Roulette Rules Complete — European, French & American

Roulette is one of the easiest casino games to learn: choose where to place your chips, watch the ball settle into a pocket, and collect if you chose correctly. The fundamentals take minutes to absorb. The single most important rule, though, is worth stating upfront — the house’s advantage is built into the zero pocket, and the variant you play (European, French, or American) determines exactly how large that edge is.

How a round of roulette is played

A complete round of roulette follows the same sequence whether you are at a physical table or playing online:

1. The croupier (the casino term for the roulette dealer) announces that the table is open and invites chip placements.
2. Players place chips on the numbered layout. Multiple simultaneous placements are allowed and entirely normal.
3. The croupier spins the wheel in one direction and releases a small ivory or ceramic ball in the opposite direction along the upper rim.
4. As the ball loses momentum, the croupier announces “no more bets.” From this point, no further placements or changes are permitted.
5. The ball drops from the rim, skips across the deflectors, and settles into one of the numbered pockets.
6. The croupier announces the winning number, its colour, and whether it is odd or even. A marker called the dolly is placed on the corresponding number in the layout.
7. Losing chips are swept from the table. Winning bets are paid out in sequence — inside bets first, then outside bets.
8. The dolly is removed and the next round opens.

In online roulette the sequence is identical, compressed into the seconds the software or live dealer takes to execute each step.

European roulette — the standard version

European roulette uses a wheel with 37 numbered pockets: 1 through 36, alternating red and black, plus a single green zero (0). The arrangement of numbers around the wheel is not sequential — it is deliberately ordered so that high and low numbers, and odd and even numbers, alternate as evenly as possible around the rim.

The house edge in European roulette is 2.70%. This figure is derived directly from the single zero: out of 37 possible outcomes on every spin, the house claims one — the zero — which is a losing result for all outside bets and pays nothing on inside bets unless you specifically placed a chip there. This edge applies equally to every bet type on the European layout.

European roulette is the standard form across continental Europe, Asia, Australia, and most online platforms. It is the version to choose whenever you have an option.

French roulette — en prison and la partage

French roulette uses the same 37-pocket, single-zero wheel as the European game. The difference lies in two special rules that apply when the ball lands on zero during an even-money outside bet (red/black, odd/even, or high/low):

La partage (“the sharing”): half the even-money stake is returned immediately and the bet is closed. The player recovers 50% of their original chip placement.

En prison (“in prison”): rather than surrendering the full stake, the player leaves it frozen on the layout for one more spin. If the following spin wins the bet, the original stake is returned in full. If it loses, the entire stake is forfeited.

Both rules reduce the effective house edge on even-money bets from 2.70% to 1.35% — roughly halved. This makes French roulette, when played on even-money positions, the lowest house-edge configuration available in standard casino roulette. Where the option exists, it is the best version of the game for the player.

Not all tables that carry a European wheel also offer French rules. Check the table information or ask the croupier before sitting down.

American roulette — the double-zero wheel

American roulette uses a 38-pocket wheel: numbers 1 through 36, plus a single zero (0) and an additional double zero (00). Both zero pockets are green. The extra pocket is the only material difference in the physical game, but its effect on the odds is significant: the house edge rises to 5.26% — nearly double the European version.

Every spin on an American wheel has 38 possible outcomes. The house claims two of them (0 and 00) as automatic losses for outside bets. No betting system, pattern of play, or table selection can change this built-in disadvantage.

The exception is the five-number bet, also called the basket bet, which covers 0, 00, 1, 2, and 3 in a single placement. This bet carries a house edge of 7.89%, making it the single worst bet on the American layout. There is no equivalent bet on a European or French wheel.

American roulette is the standard form in casinos in the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, and parts of South America. In Europe and Asia, European or French wheels are the norm. If both versions are offered, there is no reason from an odds perspective to choose American.

The wheel layout

The sequence of numbers on a European or French wheel, moving clockwise from zero, is:

0 — 32 — 15 — 19 — 4 — 21 — 2 — 25 — 17 — 34 — 6 — 27 — 13 — 36 — 11 — 30 — 8 — 23 — 10 — 5 — 24 — 16 — 33 — 1 — 20 — 14 — 31 — 9 — 22 — 18 — 29 — 7 — 28 — 12 — 35 — 3 — 26

This arrangement ensures that no two adjacent pockets on the wheel share the same colour, that high and low numbers are distributed without long runs, and that odd and even numbers alternate broadly around the rim. The goal is to make physical bias — where a worn or subtly imperfect wheel produces detectable patterns — as difficult to exploit as possible.

The American wheel uses a different number sequence and does not share the same distributional symmetry.

What the zero pocket means in practice

The zero is neither red nor black, neither odd nor even, and neither high nor low. On every outside bet, a zero result means the house wins (or, under French rules, the player loses half or plays en prison). On inside bets, the zero is simply one of 37 or 38 numbers available to back directly, paying 35:1 like any other straight-up number.

This asymmetry — where outside bets cover only 36 of the 37 numbers, not the zero — is the entire basis of the house edge. Without the zero pocket, roulette would be a break-even game for every bet type. The pocket is also why European roulette (one zero) is always preferable to American roulette (two zeros): the fewer zero pockets, the smaller the gap between payouts and true probability.

Independent spins and the gambler’s fallacy

Each spin of a roulette wheel is physically independent of every spin that preceded it. The ball has no memory. A run of five consecutive red results has no bearing on the probability of the next outcome: the chance of red remains 48.6% on a European wheel, exactly as it was on the very first spin of the day.

The belief that past outcomes influence future ones — that red is “due” after a run of black — is known as the gambler’s fallacy. It is one of the most persistent misconceptions about games of chance, and it is mathematically false. Every spin is a new, independent event. The strategy guide explains what you can actually do to manage the house edge, and what no betting system can achieve.

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For the full range of chip placement options — inside bets, outside bets, and the call bets used in French roulette — see Roulette Bet Types. To read about where roulette came from and how it reached the tables it occupies today, visit History of Roulette. Ready to play? Play European roulette online free, no deposit required.