European Roulette

If Roulette is your game, and you have to choose between American roulette (without surrender) or European roulette, then European roulette is your best choice, because the odds on the latter are always better than on the former.

The reason for this is an American roulette wheel has 38 numbers, including a single and a double zero. A European roulette wheel has only 37 numbers, because the double zero is omitted. For example, the odds a ball lands on red 32 is 1 to 37 in European roulette, and 1 to 38 in American roulette. Both bets pay the same: 35 to 1. This results in an house edge of 2.70% for European roulette (without surrender), and a house edge of 5.26% for the American variant.

And it gets even better! A lot of European roulette games have a rule called en prison (a.k.a. la partage or surrender). This rule says that if you've placed an even-money bet, like Red-Black or Odd-Even, *and* the ball lands on the single zero, you receive half of your bet back (this is at least how the rule is implemented in most online casinos). This reduces the house edge on even-money bets from 2.70% to as low as 1.35% !.

Game listings

Roulette Royale