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One of the main rules of the casino, traditional or virtual, is: as games and their rules get easier, the edge that the house has increases. Roulette can be viewed as the best example of this law: every day thousands of players lose large sums by betting on the wheel as winning in this particular game and going home with a profit is a hard task for any. Contrary to the card games, when it is quite possible to use efficient strategies for winning, in European Roulette a lot is left to chance, and, as a result, the person would not have a large amount of influence on the end results of the round.
Probability of winning when playing European Roulette
The edge that the casino has in European Roulette amounts to 2.7%, which is twice as small as in American Roulette, where extra house sector (double zero) raises this edge to 5.26%.
A simple mistake to make would be to assume that the eventuality of a payout in European Roulette is much higher as it would depend on the type of bets the player places. The table below shows the probability tree of a particular bet winning (and also same values for American Roulette for comparison):
| Type of bet | Probability - American | Probability - European | Payout |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bet on single sector | 37 to 1 | 36 to 1 | 35 to 1 |
| Split (bet on 2 sectors) | 18 to 1 | 17.5 to 1 | 17 to 1 |
| Street (bet on 3 sectors) | 11.67 to 1 | 11.33 to 1 | 11 to 1 |
| Corner (bet on 4 sectors) | 8.5 to 1 | 8.25 to 1 | 8 to 1 |
| Bet on 5 sectors | 6.6 to 1 | Doesn’t exist | 6 to 1 |
| Bet on line (6 sectors) | 5.33 to 1 | 5.17 to 1 | 5 to 1 |
| Bet on column | 2.17 to 1 | 2.08 to 1 | 2 to 1 |
| Bet on dozen | 2.17 to 1 | 2.08 to 1 | 2 to 1 |
| Bet on Even | 1.05 to 1 | 1.01 | 1 to 1 |
| Bet on Odd | 1.05 to 1 | 1.01 | 1 to 1 |
| Bet on small numbers (1-18) | 1.05 to 1 | 1.01 | 1 to 1 |
| Bet on large numbers (19-36) | 1.05 to 1 | 1.01 | 1 to 1 |
| Bet on Black | 1.05 to 1 | 1.01 | 1 to 1 |
| Bet on Red | 1.05 to 1 | 1.01 | 1 to 1 |
Once the probabilities above are taken into account, the favourable strategy would be to select the bets on equal odds (which include red or black and odd or even). The payouts would be small, 1 to 1, but the probability is much higher than for other bets.
Staking it on a single sector as well as on split, street and corner, are all ways to lose money in the European Roulette due to the minimal probability of a payout. So, even with significant payouts, which can go to 35 to 1, it’s still not advisable to bet on split, corner, street and single sector.
Bet system for European roulette
As similarly to the other types of this game, very little is left to the risk-taker, it’s impossible to select an all-embracing strategy that would guarantee a payout in every round. There are, however, tens, if not hundreds, of different systems for Roulette, which somehow manage to guarantee a profitable game. In reality, all these systems sooner or later take the gambler to the pawnbrokers, so it’s not advisable to use these (especially as many of them are not free).
The oldest and most well-known system for betting on the wheel is the so-called Martingale strategy, or double-up strategy or the best, in a situation of a lost round. The history of Martingale strategy is long and it goes back as far as the the game itself – and many professionals have time and time again proven that it does not work – and yet, even now players are trying to use Martingale strategy to outplay the house on the wheel. The strategy can not bypass the edge the casino has due to extra zero sectors (or double zeros for American Roulette), which means that in a sufficiently long run, instead of the player who was using the Martingale strategy, the profit would go to the house.
There is another strategy, which is also used commonly in Roulette, and is the approach of constant bets. This tactics is founded on the player’s belief that if a sector has not been rolled for some time, the probability that it would be rolled next, is increasing. This tactics of constant bets assumes that each round on the wheel is dependent on other rounds and that if a series of particular numbers has been rolled, it would be balanced by another sequence of opposite numbers. In the event when the ball has stopped in the red sector for a sequence of rounds, then the strategy assumes that it would start to stop on the black. In reality, each Roulette round is an independent game, and the result of it is only determined by the laws of probability instead of the laws of a particular casino.
