In roulette, you need to guess where the ball will land after each spin, you rely on luck to a large degree. You play against the house, and the croupier (the dealer) represents the house. The croupier spins the roulette wheel and also handles the wagers and payouts. In both the European and French roulette versions, the wheel has 37 slots representing 36 numbers and a zero. In the America version, most roulette wheels have two zeros and for that reason has 38 slots.

Play procedure

•  You start playing roulette by placing your bet or bets on numbers. Select any number including the zero in the table layout, or outside the table layout. After everyone placed their bets, the dealer launches the ball.

•  All the while the ball is spinning around players can still place bets. When it is about to drop over the slots, you will hear the croupier shout 'no more bets'.

•  The croupier places the dolly on the winning number on the roulette table, then clears all the losing bets and pays the winners.

•  In roulette, the winners are those players whose roulette bets are on or around the number that comes up.

The house advantage
On a single zero roulette table (European and French roulette versions) the house advantage is 2.7%. On a double zero roulette table (American roulette version) it is 5.26% (7.9% on the five-number bet, 0-00-1-2-3).

The 'En Prison' rule
When the outcome is zero, some casinos will allow the player to either take back half their bet or leave the bet (it is called 'en prison' = in prison) for another roulette spin. In the second scenario, if in the following spin, the outcome is again zero, then the entire bet is lost.

The ' La Partage' rule
The 'la partage' roulette rule is like to the en prison rule, only in this scenario the player loses half their bet and does not have the option of leaving their bet en prison for another spin.

The payouts
A roulette bet is placed on one number only, called a straight-up bet, and it pays 35 to 1. This means, you collect 36. With no house advantage, you should collect 37 (and 38 in the USA on double zero roulette wheels).