July 30, 2026
Roulette Payouts and Odds: What Every Bet Really Returns
What every roulette bet pays and what it should pay: the 2.70% single zero edge, 5.26% on American wheels, 1.35% with la partage, and why no system beats it.
Roulette Payouts and Odds: What Every Bet Really Returns
Roulette is the easiest casino game to play and one of the easiest to misread. The payouts are printed everywhere, the odds almost never are, and the gap between those two numbers is the entire business model. A straight up number pays 35 to 1. There are 37 pockets on a European wheel. Work out what that means and you understand roulette better than most people at the table.
This guide covers what every bet pays, what it should pay, which wheel you are on and why that matters more than anything else you will decide, and what betting systems actually do to your money.
The payout table
Payouts are identical on both wheels. What changes is how many pockets those payouts have to beat.
Straight up, one number: pays 35 to 1
Split, two numbers: pays 17 to 1
Street, three numbers: pays 11 to 1
Corner, four numbers: pays 8 to 1
Six line, six numbers: pays 5 to 1
Column or dozen, twelve numbers: pays 2 to 1
Red or black, odd or even, high or low: pays 1 to 1
Notice the pattern. Every payout is calculated as though the wheel had 36 pockets. A straight up number pays 35 to 1, so you get 36 units back on a winning unit. A corner covering four numbers pays 8 to 1, returning 9 units, which is 36 divided by 4. The whole table is built on 36.
Where the house edge comes from
The wheel does not have 36 pockets. A European wheel has 37, the numbers 1 to 36 plus a single zero. An American wheel has 38, because it adds a double zero.
That is the whole trick. The payouts are priced for a 36 pocket wheel and you are playing a 37 or 38 pocket one. On a European wheel that gap works out at **2.70%** on every bet on the table. On an American wheel it doubles to **5.26%**. Nothing else about the two games differs. Same layout, same payouts, same rules, roughly twice the cost.
Put it in money. Bet $100 across an evening on a single zero wheel and the maths expects to keep about $2.70 of it. Do the same on a double zero wheel and it expects about $5.26. If you take one thing from this page, take that: choosing the single zero wheel is worth more than every betting decision you will make on top of it.
The one bet to never make
The American wheel has a bet the European one does not: the five number bet covering 0, 00, 1, 2 and 3. It pays 6 to 1. Every other bet on that wheel carries a 5.26% edge, but this one carries **7.89%**, making it the single worst bet on a roulette table anywhere. It exists because the numbers do not divide neatly and the casino rounded in its own favour. Skip it.
The rule that halves the edge
Some single zero tables run French rules, usually labelled la partage or en prison. Both deal with what happens to even money bets when the ball lands on zero.
Under la partage you get half your even money stake back instead of losing all of it. Under en prison the bet is held for the next spin and returned in full if it wins, though without winnings. The two work out the same, and the result is that even money bets on a French table run a **1.35%** house edge rather than 2.70%.
That is half price. It only applies to the even money bets, red and black, odd and even, high and low, and only on tables running the rule. But it makes a French table the cheapest roulette available anywhere, and it costs you nothing to look for one before you sit down.
Reading odds instead of payouts
Here is the same table again, with what each bet actually wins on a single zero wheel next to what it pays.
Straight up: pays 35 to 1, wins 1 spin in 37, so true odds are 36 to 1
Split: pays 17 to 1, wins 2 in 37, true odds 17.5 to 1
Corner: pays 8 to 1, wins 4 in 37, true odds 8.25 to 1
Dozen or column: pays 2 to 1, wins 12 in 37, true odds roughly 2.08 to 1
Red or black: pays 1 to 1, wins 18 in 37, true odds roughly 1.06 to 1
Every line is short by the same proportion, which is why the edge is a flat 2.70% across the board. This is the most useful fact about roulette and the least advertised: no bet on the table is better value than any other. A straight up number is not a worse bet than red. It is the same bet with the variance turned up. You will lose more often and win far more when you do, and the expected cost per dollar is identical.
So pick your bets by how you want the evening to feel, not by hunting for value that is not there. Even money bets give you a long, slow session with small swings. Straight up numbers give you a short, sharp one. Both cost 2.70 cents per dollar wagered on a single zero wheel.
What betting systems really do
Every roulette system is a way of rearranging the same expected loss into a different shape. None of them touches the edge, because the edge lives in the payout structure and no staking pattern can reach it.
Take the martingale, the famous one: double after every loss so the eventual win recovers everything. On a single zero wheel a red or black bet loses 19 times in 37, about 51.4% of spins. Start at $1 and a run of eight losses in a row happens roughly once in every 130 sequences, and by then your next bet is $256 to win back $1. Casinos publish table maximums, and the martingale's real failure mode is not bad luck, it is arithmetic: the sequence outgrows the table limit long before it outgrows your patience.
The others are variations on the same theme. The d'Alembert raises stakes more gently and fails more slowly. The Fibonacci does the same with a prettier sequence. The Labouchere lets you write your own target and needs a longer winning run to clear it. Each one changes how often you win and how much you win or lose when you do. Not one of them changes the 2.70%.
What does help is unglamorous: play the single zero wheel, look for la partage if you are betting even money, size your stake so a bad run is survivable, and decide when you are stopping before you start.
The short version
Payouts assume 36 pockets, wheels have 37 or 38, and that difference is the game. Play single zero, take la partage where you can find it, ignore anything promising a system, and choose bets by the session you want rather than the edge you are hoping to find. There are 325 tables in the roulette section at Jacks Club, and the same maths applies to every one of them.
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