13 agosto 2026
How to Play Roulette: Rules, Bets and the Real Odds
Roulette rules in five minutes: how a round works, what every bet pays, the European and American wheel difference, and what strategy can and cannot do.
Roulette is the easiest table game in the casino to learn properly, because there are no decisions to master and no dealer to play against. You place chips on numbers or groups of numbers, a wheel decides, and every bet on the table costs the house percentage and nothing more. Five minutes with this guide and you will know the rules, the payouts, the difference between the two main wheels, and the honest answer on strategy.
The wheel and the table
A European wheel has 37 pockets: the numbers 1 to 36, half red and half black, plus a single green zero. An American wheel adds a second green pocket, the double zero, for 38 in total. The betting table maps every pocket, and everything you can do in roulette is just placing chips on that map before the ball drops.
That one extra green pocket is the most important fact in this guide, and we will put numbers on it below.
How a round works
Place chips on any numbers, groups, or outside sections before betting closes.
The wheel spins and the ball settles in one pocket.
Losing bets are cleared, winning bets are paid at fixed rates, and the next round opens.
That is the entire game. Online, the only variation is what generates the result: live roulette streams a real wheel with a real dealer, while RNG versions settle instantly from certified random numbers. Both formats sit in our roulette catalogue, which carries more than 300 tables and variants, and both pay from the same tables below.
The bets that matter
Every roulette bet is one of two kinds:
Outside bets cover large groups. Red or black, odd or even, and high or low each cover 18 numbers and pay 1 to 1. Dozens and columns cover 12 numbers and pay 2 to 1. These hit often and keep sessions long.
Inside bets cover one to six numbers. A straight-up bet on a single number pays 35 to 1, a split on two numbers pays 17 to 1, a corner on four pays 8 to 1. These hit rarely and pay heavily.
Notice the shape of the pricing: a straight-up bet pays 35 to 1 on a 37-pocket wheel. The payout is set as if the zero did not exist, and that small shortfall is the entire house edge, identical on every bet. The full payout and probability tables are in our roulette payouts and odds guide if you want each bet priced out.
European vs American: the only decision that changes your odds
Because payouts are identical on both wheels, the second green pocket does all the damage. One zero on 37 pockets costs you 1/37 of everything wagered, a house edge of 2.70%. Two zeros on 38 pockets costs 2/38, or 5.26%. Same game, same payouts, and the American wheel charges you nearly twice as much to play it.
There is one bet worse still: the American five-number bet on 0, 00, 1, 2 and 3 pays 6 to 1 and carries a 7.89% edge, the worst price on either table. Skip it.
So the one genuine roulette decision happens before the first spin: pick the single-zero wheel when both are offered. A European table returns 97.30% over the long run, and how that return figure works is covered in our guide to RTP and house edge.
What strategy can and cannot do
Here is the honest section. Every bet on a European wheel carries the same 2.70% edge, so no combination of chips changes the price. Betting systems do not change it either. The martingale, doubling your bet after every loss, does not beat roulette: it converts many small wins and occasional catastrophic losses into the same long-run cost, and a short losing streak escalates the required bet brutally. Double from a 1 unit start through seven straight losses and the next bet is 128 units, risked to win back 1.
What you can genuinely control is three things: wheel choice, which we covered; bet type, where outside bets stretch a bankroll and inside bets swing it; and session size, deciding what a session may cost before it starts. Roulette played that way is honestly priced entertainment with a known cost, which is more than most games can say.
Playing at Jacks Club
Deposits run on crypto, so you can sit at a live table or an RNG wheel with Bitcoin or USDT, at small bets while you learn the table map. Every game page shows its RTP, and if you want to understand how we can prove results are generated fairly, our provably fair casinos guide walks through the verification procedure.
Common questions
Is online roulette rigged?
Licensed roulette is not, and it does not need to be: the zero already pays for the house openly. RNG tables run on certified generators, live tables are watched by thousands of players at once, and the published edge is the disclosed price. The fuller argument, with the maths, is in our post on whether casino games are rigged.
What is the best bet in roulette?
On a European wheel, every bet except nothing costs the same 2.70%, so the best bet is the one that fits your session: even-money bets for long steady sessions, straight-ups for volatility. On an American wheel the best bet is walking to the European table.
Do dealers or wheels favour certain numbers?
A maintained modern wheel does not produce usable bias, and RNG versions cannot. Number-tracking boards show what already happened, and the wheel has no memory of it.
What are the odds of hitting one number?
1 in 37 on a European wheel, paid at 35 to 1. That two-pocket gap between true odds and payout is the house edge working in plain sight.