Roulette: How It Works, Odds and Payouts

Roulette is a table game on a European single-zero wheel with 37 pockets. You place one or more chips on the layout, spin, and every chip on the winning pocket pays. The zero is green, so colour, odd, even, low, high, dozen and column bets all lose when it lands.

Coins are virtual and have no cash value. The winning pocket is drawn on our servers when you spin; the wheel animation is the reveal.

How a round works

1. Tap the table to place chips: a single number, a colour, odd or even, low or high, a dozen, a column, a split between two neighbouring numbers or a corner of four.
2. Add up to 40 different positions before you spin, with as many chips on each as you like.
3. Spin. The ball lands on one of the 37 pockets, each equally likely.
4. Chips on the winning pocket pay the multiplier for their bet type. All other chips lose.

Every bet, its chance and its pay

A bet that covers k of the 37 pockets wins with probability k / 37 and pays 0.97 x 37 / k per coin staked, stake included.

There are 60 possible splits (including the three splits with zero: 0-1, 0-2 and 0-3) and 22 possible corners. Streets, lines and the "first four" bet are not offered. The shared limits for every game are on the odds page.

The zero and the house edge

On a traditional single-zero wheel, a single number pays 35 to 1, so the return is 36x including the stake, and the one zero pocket gives the house 1 in 37, or 2.70%. Cashout Arcade rounds the edge to 3% for every game, so a single number pays 0.97 x 37 = 35.89x. The even-money bets pay 1.99x rather than 2x.

Every position on the table has the same 97% return, which means no bet is "better" than another and no mix of chips can change the long-run average. Splitting your stake across red and a number does not improve it either.

A worked example: how mixed bets are paid

The round multiplier is the chip-weighted return of everything you placed. Say you put 10 coins on Red and 10 coins on number 17 (a black number), 20 coins in total.

The average of the three rows weighted by their chances is (358.9 + 18 x 19.938) / 37 / 20 = 0.97. You have not changed the expected return, only how it is split: one big win with a 1-in-37 chance, a near-break-even result 18 times in 37, and a loss the rest of the time.

If you bet equal chips on Red and Black, every number from 1 to 36 returns 0.9969x of your total stake (shown as 0.99x), and the zero returns nothing. The average is still 97 coins per 100, but nearly all the swing is gone.

Max win and caps

The largest round multiplier is 35.89x, when all your chips are on one winning number. That is far below the 50,000x and 250,000,000-coin limits that apply to every game.

What is the same as other table games

Like Baccarat: How It Works, Odds and Payouts and Craps: How It Works, Odds and Payouts, every bet in Roulette is individually priced to return 97%, so there is no "good" bet to find. The difference from them is how much you can spread your stake: a Roulette layout gives hundreds of ways to arrange chips. The odds maths is in Roulette Odds and Payouts: European Wheel Explained, and Martingale and Betting Systems: Why They Fail explains why doubling after a loss cannot beat a fixed house edge.

Tips that hold up

• No bet is better. Number, colour or corner, all return 97%; the difference is how often you win.
• Past spins are not a signal. Seeing red come up six times in a row does not make black more likely.
• Spreading chips does not beat the zero. The zero is built into every price.
• Betting systems only change the swing. They cannot change the average, and they can raise the amount you need to risk to follow them.

Play with limits

Placing many chips can make it hard to see how much you have staked in total. Check the total before each spin, set a limit, and see Play Safely in Cashout Arcade: Limits and Breaks for tools. Cashout Arcade is for adults aged 18+, uses virtual coins and has no real-money prizes.