Roulette Rules, Payouts and How a Round Settles

What are the basic rules of roulette?

A round of roulette produces exactly one result. The ball settles in one pocket, that pocket has one number and one colour, and every wager on the table is then either paid at its published price or collected. There is no partial win, no draw and no dealer discretion anywhere in the procedure.

The wheel used decides how many pockets are in play. A European or single zero wheel carries the numbers 1 to 36 plus a green 0, thirty-seven pockets in all. An American or double zero wheel adds a green 00 for thirty-eight. Red and black alternate around the rim on both, and the greens are the only pockets belonging to no colour.

The betting layout is separate from the wheel and is arranged for the convenience of the dealer, not to mirror the rim. The numbers 1 to 36 run down the cloth in three columns of twelve, in plain numerical order, with the zero, and on an American table the double zero, in a box at the head. Everything the rules describe below refers to positions on that cloth. The roulette wheel numbers guide covers the very different order on the rim.

Inside bets sit on the number grid and are named by where the chip touches

An inside bet is defined by the physical position of the chip. Straddle a line and you have made a different bet from the one you would have made a centimetre away, which is why dealers repeat the placement back on a busy table.

Two of those need a note. A split can be made vertically or horizontally, and a zero can be split with 1, 2 or 3 on a European layout. The five-number bet exists only where a double zero exists, and it is the single worst-priced wager in roulette at a cost of 7.89%, against 5.26% for everything else on an American wheel. Leave it alone.

The payout structure has one rule running through it. Take the count of numbers covered, multiply by the payout plus one, and the answer is always 36. Three numbers at 11 to 1 gives thirty-six. Six numbers at 5 to 1 gives thirty-six. The wheel, however, has thirty-seven or thirty-eight pockets, which is where the whole edge comes from and why the european vs american roulette comparison matters more than any bet selection.

Outside bets cover twelve or eighteen numbers and zero is excluded from all of them

Outside bets are placed in the boxes bordering the grid. They cover blocks of numbers, they pay at short odds, and none of them includes the green pockets.

The columns are worth learning because their membership is not obvious from a glance at the cloth. The first column runs 1, 4, 7 and every third number to 34. The second runs 2, 5, 8 up to 35. The third runs 3, 6, 9 up to 36, and it happens to contain eight red numbers against four black, which is the only asymmetry of note anywhere on the layout.

Zero is the reason every one of these bets is a losing proposition in the long run. It is green, so it is neither red nor black. It is not counted as even. It sits in no dozen and no column. When it lands, all six even-money bets and both column and dozen groups lose in full, unless the table runs one of the French rules described below.

La Partage returns half your stake and En Prison holds it, and both halve the cost of even money

French rules apply only to the even-money bets: Red, Black, Odd, Even, Low and High. They never apply to inside bets, columns or dozens, which lose outright to a green pocket at every table in the world.

• La Partage. When zero is drawn, half of the losing even-money stake is returned to you at once and half is taken. A RM100 bet on Red loses RM50 rather than RM100.
• En Prison. When zero is drawn, the stake is marked and held for the next spin instead of being collected. If that spin wins the bet, the original stake is released with no profit attached. If it loses, the stake is taken. Some tables allow a second imprisonment, some settle any second zero as a loss, and the game information panel states which.

The effect on price is substantial. An even-money bet on a single zero wheel normally carries the 2.70% European roulette edge. Under either French rule, that falls to 1.35%, because you now surrender only half a stake on the one spin in thirty-seven where the green pocket lands. Work it through on thirty-seven spins of RM1 on Red: eighteen wins pay RM18, eighteen losses cost RM18, and the zero costs RM0.50. That leaves RM0.50 lost across RM37 staked, which is 1.35%.

It is the best price available anywhere on a roulette table, and it is free. The rule is a property of the table, not of your play, so all you have to do is find a table carrying it. Compare it against the other games on the casino house edge reference and it stands up against most of them.

Announced bets are chip patterns covering an arc of the wheel, and the dealer places them

French-style live tables and many standard ones accept called bets, where you name a wheel sector rather than a set of grid positions. The dealer, or the software, then places the individual splits, corners and straights that cover it. Each remains an ordinary bet settled at the ordinary payout, so nothing about the pricing changes.

Note what these are and are not. They cover a contiguous stretch of the rim, so they group numbers that are neighbours on the wheel and scattered across the cloth. That makes them convenient. It does not make them predictive, and no arrangement of chips alters the price of the round. The wheel sequence page shows exactly which pockets each sector occupies.

One placement quirk is worth knowing. Orphelins puts a chip on the 17/20 split and another on the 14/17 split, so the number 17 is covered twice. If 17 lands you collect on both, which is why the sector pays better on that one number than on the other seven.

The racetrack panel adds neighbour bets and finales, which are rules in their own right

Alongside the named sectors, a racetrack panel usually offers two further families of called bet. Both are ordinary chip placements underneath, and both have a fixed definition that the dealer applies without discussion.

A neighbour bet covers a chosen number together with the pockets on either side of it on the wheel rim, not on the cloth. The default is two neighbours each way, so a call of five and neighbours places five straight-up chips on 23, 10, 5, 24 and 16, which are the pockets physically flanking 5 on a single zero wheel. Most live tables let you widen or narrow that span before you call it. Each chip is settled independently at 35 to 1, so hitting the called number pays the same as hitting one of its neighbours.

A finale is a French call based on the last digit of a number. Finale en plein 4 covers 4, 14, 24 and 34 with four straight-up chips. Finale a cheval 1 or 4 covers the same idea using splits, so the same call can cost two or three chips instead of four. Finales are common on French-language tables and less so elsewhere, and a table that does not accept them will simply decline the call rather than place something approximate.

The rule that matters for all called bets is the same one that governs everything else: the chips have to be down before the window closes. A call made in the last second may not be placed in time, and an unplaced call is not a bet. On a fast table, use the racetrack rather than the spoken call.

The call of no more bets is absolute, and the marker settles any dispute

A live round follows a fixed order and the software enforces every step of it. The betting window opens with a visible countdown. Chips are placed and can be moved or removed freely while it runs. The dealer releases the ball, and at a set point calls no more bets, at which moment the layout locks.

A chip that arrives after the lock is not placed. It is not treated as a late or partial bet, it does not roll into the next round, and there is no discretion to accept it. On a speed table the window can close within a few seconds of opening, so multi-chip patterns need to be committed early. This is the procedural rule that catches out more new players than any other.

Once the ball settles, the dealer announces the number and its colour, places the marker on that number on the layout, and only then clears the losing chips. Nothing on the layout may be touched while the marker is down, including winning chips you would like to collect. The dealer pays outward from the marker, removes it, and the next window opens.

In a live studio every stage is on camera and the winning pocket is read by optical recognition as well as by the dealer. If a round is disputed, it is resolved from that recording. A spin where the ball fails to complete the required number of revolutions, jumps the wheel or lands in a pocket while a foreign object is on the track is voided as a no spin, and all stakes stay where they are for a rerun.

Table minimums, maximums and colour chips are rules as much as the payouts are

Every table publishes a minimum and a maximum, and both are enforced per bet rather than per round. Inside and outside minimums are usually separate figures. A table showing an inside minimum of RM3 and an outside minimum of RM10 will accept three RM1 chips scattered across the number grid, and will reject an RM3 chip on Red.

Maximums scale with the payout. An even-money box will take far more than a straight-up number, because the liability behind a 35 to 1 payout is thirty-five times larger. This is why staking progressions run into the ceiling so quickly, a point the roulette strategy page works through with real figures.

At a physical table each seated player takes colour chips in a colour nobody else at that table is using, valued at whatever they buy in at. They are table-specific, have no value away from it, and must be cashed back into standard chips before you leave. Online tables handle the same problem with usernames on the layout, but the underlying rule is the same: your chips must be distinguishable from everyone else's, because bets sit on shared positions.

Live tables at U88 start from RM3, which suits sitting through a long run of spins on one wheel. New players are usually better served by watching one full round from window to payout before placing anything, which the how to play roulette walkthrough sets out step by step.