Roulette Strategy When Playing American and European Roulette

roulette strategyThere are two main types of roulette: American and European. These games are almost identical except for one key difference, and that difference is that the American version has both a single zero and a double zero. The European version lacks the double zero. This creates a situation where European roulette pays out a higher percentage than American roulette on every single bet that you could possibly make, so it never makes sense to play the American version of this game. In what follows, we’re going to give you details about how these two games compare to each other and how to play roulette in an informed and understanding way.

The Differences in Payout Rates

Something that’s really interesting about roulette is that almost every single bet will have the same payout rate, though the variance can be a bit different. In European roulette, it doesn’t matter if you bet on an evens bet like black or white or if you place a straight-up bet like betting on just the number 25. Every single bet will have a house advantage of 2.7 percent in the European version of this game. In American roulette, this payout rate is 5.3 percent.

For American roulette, there is a single bet that has a different payout percentage. If you place what’s called a top line bet, then the house advantage increases to 7.9 percent. This is a bet on 0, 00, 1, 2 and 3, and it’s the worst bet possible in either of these games.

Calculating Payout Rates

There are tons of different bets in roulette, and it’s extremely difficult to try to remember the payout rates for them all. Along these lines, it’s better to just remember a simple rule. This rule will apply to any bet on American or European roulette with the exception of the top line bet mentioned above.

If you want to know the payout for a bet, then divide 36 by the number of spaces that the bet covers, and subtract one from that result. For example, if you bet on the first third of numbers 1-12, then there are 12 spaces that will win for you. To find the payout rate, you divide 36 by 12 to get 3, and then you subtract one from that to get 2. Thus, the payout rate on the bet is 2:1.

Balancing Risk and Reward

We mentioned above that all bets in European roulette have the same 2.7 percent house advantage. However, several different types of bets exist with different payouts, so how is this possible? It’s made possible by the fact that the higher-paying bets win less often. For example, an evens bet (a bet on black, red, even, odds, 1-18 or 19-36) will payout at 1:1, and it’s a winner pretty often. However, a straight-up bet (a bet on a single number) will payout at 35:1, and they’re able to do that because a straight-up bet wins much less often. It’s this balance between risk and reward that allows you to decide on different strategies in this game based on your own comfort level without changing the overall house edge of the game.