Among all the versions of roulette in land-based and online casinos, European roulette seems to be the most popular. It’s easy to see why – it has the lowest house edge of all variations (2.63%) and is easiest to play.
European roulette offers all the standard bets most casino players know without the extra rules and bets French and American roulette offer.
How Do You Play European Roulette?
European roulette has a total of 37 pockets – there’s the 0 pocket and numbers 1-36. You probably know how the wheel looks like – the house edge (0) is painted green to avoid any confusion in the sea of red and black numbers.
The gameplay is the same no matter if you’re playing at a land-based or online casino, with online roulette matching the visual layout of roulette wheels and tables.
Once you’ve determined your bet type and the amount you want to wager, you can place your chips on the table layout or click the corresponding area in an online game of roulette. After the croupier accepts all bets, the spin starts and you can feel the excitement kick in.
What’s the Best Bet?
When it comes to bets, there’s plenty of action in European roulette. In general, the bets can be separated into two categories – Inside and Outside bets. The inside bets refer to betting on single numbers directly or smaller groups of numbers and their odds are understandably higher. Outside bets, on the other hand, are centered around a larger group of numbers and even money bets and offer a better chance of winning.
The most popular inside bets are Straight Up, which is wagering on any single number, Split, which is betting on 2 adjacent numbers and the line between them, Street bet, where a player bets on 3 numbers in a row, and Corner bet, also known as square bet, where a player bets on a group of 4 numbers which sit in a corner next to each other.
There’s another popular inside bet called Line bet which pays out 5:1. All inside bets have different odds – for example, a Split bet usually pays out 17:1 while a Straight Up bet pays out 35:1. As you can see, the odds for these bets are pretty high and are not in favor of the player.
This is why many players prefer to wager on outside bets. They feature a broader range of numbers as well as betting on High/Low, Even/Odd or Red/Black numbers which have quite lower odds.
Betting on color, for example, has even money payout, while the Dozen bet (wagering on a group of 12 numbers) pays 2:1. These odds are pretty much safer than inside odds and recommended for beginners, although even seasoned casino veterans often prefer them as inside bets are quite hard to get right.