American Roulette

The American Roulette wheel is by far the more ordinary table found on online casinos and Vegas casinos. There is a very easy reason for this, the house edge is 5.25% for all bets apart from the five number bet which has a house edge of 7.29%.

Roulette comparison

Compare this to European Roulette which has a house edge of 2.70% and you can see why casinos prefer American Roulette. The dissimilarity in odds is from the edition of the “00″ stop, so the wheel has stops 1 to 36, 0 and 00.

I don’t recommend playing American Roulette, chiefly online when European Roulette is readily available. The main reason I feature American roulette on this website is so you can understand the difference.

If you are forced to play on American tables then look out for those that offer the surrender rule, often found in Atlantic City. The surrender rule relates to even money bets on the table, when a 0 or 00 is landed half your wager is returned.

On these bets the house edge is only 2.63%, slightly better than European Roulette. Of course the large bets are unavailable to you which may or may not be a problem depending on your preferred betting strategy.

Roulette Odds

The arithmetical formula for anticipation reads as follows:
Expectancy = [probability of a winning outcome X the amount you would win] + [probability of a losing outcome X the amount you would lose]

Which kind of makes sense. What you would be expecting to win on the bet, combined with what you would expect to lose, should tell you what you’re expected outcome is.

For the single dollar bet in roulette mentioned above:

E = [1/38 x 35] + [37/38 x (-1)]
= 0.921 + (-0.97368)
= -0.0526
= -5.26%

The negative simply shows you that you are expected to walk away down, as expectation is calculated as ‘player expectation’. Turn this around into a positive gives you the ‘casino expectation’ or house edge. So now you can see where the house edge in American roulette comes from, and how it weighs in at 5.26%.

You’ll find that the roulette odds behind every single bet on the table work out to the same unquestionable house edge, with the omission of the five number bet, which doesn’t pay it’s odds back as well as the other bets on the table, and works out to an even worse house edge of 7.89%.

Roulette Tips

Tip 1 – Never go after anybody’s system. Even trustworthy names in the online gambling industry advocate you spread your bets around with a ‘system’ that makes no sense. Umm, ok let me just place the black and third column, so that if I win on one I will most likely lose the other. I’m sure they’ve persuaded a million people to play though, because look at how few numbers could cause you to lose totally! That was sarcasm, subtle, but sarcasm.

Tip 2 – Look hard for a single zero roulette wheel. This will slash the house edge much more than any other choice in the game of roulette.

Tip 3 – No matter how attractive a new and sexy bet might feel, never bet the five number bet, it has the worst odds on the table.

Tip 4 – Search for casinos that provide the surrender rule. This will cut the house edge approximately as much as a single zero roulette wheel will, but only on even-money outside bets.