Roulette Rules: How to Play Roulette, the Bets and Their Odds

Roulette is the simplest table game to learn, because you make one decision per spin and the dealer does everything else. There is no skill in how a bet plays out: the ball decides, and every bet on a single-zero wheel has the same long-run cost except where special zero rules apply.

A British roulette table has a wheel at one end and a printed layout of the numbers 0 to 36, set out in three columns of twelve, with the outside betting boxes along the edges. You can bet between spins until the dealer closes betting, usually just before the ball drops off the rim. The table sign shows the minimum and maximum stake, often with separate limits for single numbers and for outside bets.

How to play roulette as a beginner

If you are learning how to play roulette, start with the outside bets. Red or black, odd or even and the two halves of the board win almost half the time, so a small budget lasts longer and you can watch how the table runs before trying single numbers. The cost per spin is the same either way; only the size and frequency of wins change.

Watch one or two spins before you buy in. You will see when the dealer opens and closes betting, how winning chips are marked with a dolly (a small marker placed on the winning number) and how payouts are pushed across. Never touch chips on the layout while the dolly is on the table; the dealer clears and pays first, then lifts it to open the next round.

Colour chips and cash chips

Many casinos give each roulette player a set of coloured chips that only work at that table. You tell the dealer what each chip is worth when you buy them, and you change them back for cash chips before you leave. Our guide to how casino chips work explains colouring up and cashing out in more detail.

The order of the numbers on the wheel matters for one thing only: the call bets described below, which cover whole sections of the wheel. For every other bet the position on the wheel is irrelevant, because each pocket is equally likely to catch the ball.

The zero is what makes roulette a casino game. Without it, a bet on red would win 18 times in 36 and pay even money, and nobody would gain over time. With it, red wins 18 times in 37, and the one pocket left over is the casino’s margin. The same pocket appears in the arithmetic of every bet on the layout.

Inside bets are placed on the number grid itself: on a number, on the line between two numbers, at the end of a row, or on the corner where four numbers meet. Outside bets sit in the boxes around the grid and never include zero, which is why zero is the number that beats them all.

You can combine as many roulette bets as you like on one spin, up to the table maximum. Covering more numbers does not lower the cost of playing: two bets that each lose 2.70% over time still lose 2.70% together. It only changes how often you win and how much each win pays. Every payout, the true odds behind it and a calculator are on our roulette bets and payouts page.

The calculation is the same for every bet. Take a £1 straight-up bet: it wins £35 once in 37 spins and loses £1 the other 36 times, so over 37 spins it returns 35 − 36 = −£1, or −1/37 of each pound staked. A £1 bet on red wins £1 eighteen times and loses £1 nineteen times: 18 − 19 = −£1 over 37 spins again. That is why the roulette odds differ from bet to bet while the house edge does not.

On a £10 stake, 2.70% works out at 27p per spin on average. A short session can end well ahead or well behind; the edge is what the wheel takes over many spins. It is higher than blackjack played to basic strategy (about 0.5%) and lower than many slots, as our house edge comparison shows. The double-zero American wheel nearly doubles it to 5.26%, set out on our European vs American roulette page.

La partage, French for “the sharing”, gives you back half of every even-money bet when zero hits: £10 on red returns £5. The working is short. A £1 bet on red wins £1 eighteen times in 37, loses £1 eighteen times, and loses 50p once, so over 37 spins it returns −50p, or −1/74 of each pound: 1.35%.

En prison, “in prison”, holds the stake instead. If the next spin wins the bet, the stake comes back with no winnings; if it loses, the stake goes. The cost is close to la partage, about 1.35% to 1.38%, depending on what the table does when zero comes up again while a bet is in prison.^{3 (source)}

These zero roulette rules are the main reason one table can be cheaper than the next for the same bet. Neither rule applies to inside bets, columns or dozens. If you like the outside even-money bets, a table that offers one of these rules is half the price of one that does not. The rule is usually printed on the table sign or in the online game’s help screen; if it is not mentioned, assume it does not apply.

You announce a call bet to the dealer and hand over the right number of chips; the dealer places them on the layout. Some casinos accept call bets only at certain tables or above a minimum stake, so check the house rules before you try one.

Call bets are bundles of ordinary splits, trios and corners, so they carry the same 2.70% edge as any other bet on the wheel. They do not favour a part of the wheel in any real sense. A related bet, neighbours, covers a number and the two pockets either side of it on the wheel, five chips in all.

The roulette rules you meet in a British casino are usually those of European roulette: one zero, the payouts in the table above and a dealer who spins and settles. Some venues also run electronic roulette terminals linked to a live wheel or an automated one, which follow the same rules and payouts. Table limits, colour chips and whether call bets are accepted are set by each casino.

Online, every licensed game must produce random outcomes that meet the Gambling Commission’s technical standards,^{1 (source)} and the rules and payouts must be shown in the game. Live roulette streams a real wheel from a studio; RNG roulette draws the result in software. The 2.5-second minimum spin time and the ban on autoplay apply to online slots, not to roulette.^{2 (source)}

Thinking of playing online? our UK casino comparison compares UK-licensed casinos on their bonus terms, tables and withdrawal times. 18+

The best known system, the Martingale, doubles the stake after each loss so that one win recovers everything. It wins small amounts often and loses large amounts occasionally: eight losses in a row on red, which happens roughly once in 200 tries of eight spins ((19/37)⁸ ≈ 0.48%), turns a £5 starting bet into a £1,280 stake on the ninth spin. Table maximums and budgets end the sequence long before the maths would let it recover.

Patterns on the results board are the same trap. Red six times in a row does not make black more likely: it is still 18 pockets in 37 on the next spin. The board is a record of past spins, nothing more; the wheel has no memory of it. If sessions start running longer than you meant, the limit tools are on our safer gambling page.