January 17, 2022 By Amber Watson

What is European roulette?

European roulette is a standard roulette game that has pretty much the same rules as any other roulette game. You have a roulette wheel with numbered and colored pockets. You have a cue ball, and players are placing bets on where this ball will eventually land once the roulette wheel is spun.

The game was invented in 1843 when two brothers named Francois and Loius Blanca introduced single zero roulette in the German town of Bad Homburg. They did it to compete with French casinos and their own version of roulette. Eventually, the government banned gambling, and the brothers moved their operation to Monte Carlo. A curious fact about this is that at the time, there were rumors that Francois Blanc had acquired the secrets of roulette by making a deal with the devil as the numbers on it built 666.

The main difference between the two games is that American roulette has 38 pockets and European roulette only has 37, as the American version has the extra “00” pocket. Apart from this, they both have 18 red squares and 18 black squares. However, the two games have a different sequence of numbers. American roulette wheels go in a particular order where the next number is located as opposed to the first. For example, “1” is located opposite “2”. European roulette is more random in that nothing directly intersects with anything simply because there is an uneven number of pockets. Roulette is designed so that odd and even, black and red, are evenly distributed.

The variation in the number of pockets changes the house odds a bit. In American roulette, the house edge is 5.26%, thanks to the addition of the extra “00” slot. This changes the odds as in European roulette; the house edge is only 2.7%.

One of the main differences from European roulette is the “en prison” rule. This rule allows players to get another spin when they place an even bet and the ball lands on 0. This basically represents a free spin which reduces the house edge to 1.35% on these spins where you get the second spin. This is a great advantage of playing European roulette.