European roulette has a 2.70% house edge, while French roulette has a 1.35% house advantage. Both games are better than American roulette, which offers a 5.26% house edge. You obviously want to play European or French roulette if they’re available because they give you a better chance to win. In its foundations, it is a simple flat betting system that tries to cover the majority of the roulette table. How to win at roulette? Chance plays a big role in roulette and even high probability bets have less than 50% winning odds. Bets with higher payouts, on the other hand, are much riskier.

All roulette players need to know the odds that they face before making a real money bet. This is why we always advise practising on our free roulette games first to make sure you have got the hang of the different roulette betting options and their payouts.

This is especially true if you are playing at a bricks and mortar casino. Have a test run online before you hit the real tables!

Roulette Odds- Individual Bets

Let’s take a look at the odds of some indidual bets.

On a mobile? The table below is best viewed in landscape- turn your phone or tablet sideways.

* Casinos with French Roulette that play La Partage Rule or En Prison rules.

Roulette Odds: The Basics

As a starting point, you need to understand that different variants of roulette will have different odds. And different bets will also have different odds (one of the reasons why, when we are thinking about European Roulette versus European Roulette, we always advise you to play the latter where possible). This is because American Roulette has a wheel with an additional, ‘double zero’ pocket, which reduces your chances of winning and raises the house edge from 2.6% to 5.2%. If you are able to play on a European wheel (with a single zero groove and a house edge of 2.7%), you should.

Terminology

Roulette Odds American League

Let’s take a look at some of the terminology here, as this often gets confused. When we talk about Roulette Odds, we mean the odds of you winning a particular bet. The roulette odds of you winning a single number bet are much lower than the odds of winning a bet on the red, as you are covering much less of the table. That much is obvious.

We can also talk about your overall roulette odds- more commonly referred to as the payout. This will depend on the house edge. The lower the house edge, the higher your overall odds and vice versa. On a European Roulette wheel the house edge is 2.6% and the payout is 97.4%. In American Roulette, the house edge is double and the payout is reduced to 94.8%.

Regardless of which table you choose to play at, however, make sure you match your betting strategy to your bankroll. If you want to place risky low probability (but high payout) bets like single number bets, you’ll need to have deep enough pockets to ride out the lean times. Playing these bets is like playing a higher volatility slot machine. You’ll get less wins, but they’ll be bigger wins. If you have a smaller bankroll, you’ll need to smooth things out a bit by at least weighting your bets to the higher probability bets like the columns bets and even money bets. After a longer time at the table, the volatility should smooth out anyway- all of these bets have the same payout (or house edge) except for the five number bet in American Roulette which you should avoid. Here’s why.

Roulette Odds American Idol

And Finally….

American Roulette Odds Chart

So there are ways of improving your odds at roulette through the variant that you choose to play, the bet selection (or should we say the bet avoidance in the case of the 5 number bet). Remember, the lower the house edge, the better so try and minimise it!