Roulette Payout Calculator
Every roulette bet is a fraction: the numbers you cover over the pockets on the wheel, priced by a payout that is always a little meaner than the fraction deserves. Choose a bet and a wheel, and this calculator shows the payout, the true chance of winning, and the house edge working against you — including the one bet on the layout that is worse than all the others.
The Wheel's One Idea
Roulette's pricing is a marvel of consistency: each bet pays as though the wheel had 36 pockets — a straight number pays 35 to 1 (winnings 35, plus your stake back: 36 total), a split 17 (18 × 2), a corner 8 (9 × 4) — while the wheel actually has 37 pockets in Europe and 38 in America. The extra green pockets are the entire house edge, and the arithmetic is the same for every standard bet: your expected value per unit staked is (payout × covered − uncovered) ÷ total pockets, which collapses to −1/37 ≈ −2.70% on a European wheel and −2/38 ≈ −5.26% on an American one. No arrangement of chips escapes it — covering more numbers lowers your variance (you win more often, smaller) without touching the expectation, because each chip on the layout pays the same quietly taxed rate. The calculator's contribution is to print the edge per bet rather than let the layout's variety imply variety where none exists — with one famous exception, priced next.
Worked Example: Ten on a Number, and the Basket's Shame
The defaults price the romantic bet: $10 straight up on the American wheel. A hit returns $350 profit ($360 with stake) at a win chance of 1/38 = 2.63%, and the edge is the wheel's standard 5.26% — an expected cost of about 53 cents per spin for the entertainment of sweating one number. Move the selector to the basket bet (0, 00, 1, 2, 3) and the layout's one honest scandal appears: five numbers at 6 to 1 should pay 6.2 to 1 to match the layout's own pricing pattern, so its edge jumps to 7.89% — half again the standard tax, hiding in the corner of the layout where new players feel cleverest for covering both zeros. The European comparison flatters the Atlantic crossing in the other direction: same bets, one fewer pocket, the edge halved to 2.70%. Serious roulette advice fits on an index card: European wheel, any standard bet, never the basket — and it is all on this page's selectors.
Variance Is the Only Choice You Actually Make
Since expectation is fixed, the player's real decision is the shape of the ride, and the calculator's win-chance line is its dial. Even-money bets win 47.4% of American spins (18/38) in small instalments — a gentle random walk that loses its 5.26% slowly and can run ahead for an evening on luck. Straight numbers win 2.63% of spins in 35-to-1 avalanches — a cliff-walk of droughts and jackpots whose expected destination is identical and whose variance is the entire personality of the game. Systems (martingale, Fibonacci, d'Alembert) rearrange these rides — trading many small wins against rare catastrophic losses along the same −5.26% slope — and none can do otherwise, because rearrangement is not arithmetic on the edge. The wheel does not know your system; it knows its pockets; the calculator is the pockets' advocate.
A Brief History of the Devil's Numbers
Roulette's arithmetic was born taxed: the wheel refined in 18th-century France acquired its zero as the house's founding share, and Monte Carlo's casino built an empire on the 2.70% before America added the second zero and doubled the tithe in the name of more game. The numbers 0 through 36 sum to 666, a coincidence the wheel's nickname ("the devil's game") has dined on for two centuries. What the history clarifies is the edge's nature: it was never hidden — the layout prints its own pricing, the zeros sit in green daylight — and the game's two-hundred-year survival on transparent arithmetic is the strongest evidence that gamblers buy variance and ceremony, not expectation. This calculator merely reads aloud what the layout has always said, which is the most respectful way to lose money ever devised.
En Prison and the Etiquette of Fairer Wheels
One rule deserves its paragraph because it changes this page's numbers where it applies: on some European and Atlantic City tables, even-money bets caught by a zero are not lost outright but imprisoned (en prison) — held for the next spin, returned if the bet then wins — or, in the simpler la partage houses, half the stake is refunded on the spot. Both customs halve the even-money edge: la partage's 1.35% makes red/black the cheapest standard bet in the building, as the FAQ notes, and en prison prices nearly identically. The calculator computes the standard rules (no prison, no partage) because they are the layout's default contract; where the felt offers the kinder custom, halve the printed edge on the even-money row and know that you are sitting at one of honest roulette's few genuinely better seats.
Related Tools
More from the Statistics Calculators hub: the Dice Average Calculator — the craps table gets the same treatment — and the Implied Probability Calculator for converting sportsbook odds into the probabilities they imply.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best roulette bet?
By expectation on a European wheel, every standard bet ties at a 2.70% house edge — so "best" reduces to variance preference and one prohibition: on the American wheel (5.26% standard), avoid the basket bet at 7.89%, the layout's only genuinely worse price. Some European tables add la partage (half your stake back on zero for even-money bets), cutting those bets' edge to 1.35% and making them legitimately the best seats in the house. Everything else marketed as strategy is variance selection in formal dress — which this page prices openly so the selection can be a preference instead of a delusion.
Why does the American wheel cost more?
One pocket: the double zero is a second green slot that pays nobody (except the basket bet, badly) while diluting every bet's win chance from 1/37 to 1/38 and from 18/37 to 18/38. The edge difference — 2.70% versus 5.26% — is the price history attached to the American layout's extra greed, and it is why the wheel choice outweighs every betting decision combined. A player who switches wheels gains more than a player who switches systems, bet shapes and lucky numbers simultaneously, which the calculator demonstrates by changing a single selector and watching the edge halve.
Can a betting system beat the edge?
No — and the calculator's expected-value line is the whole proof's engine: each spin is independent with negative expectation, and sums of negative expectations under any staking pattern remain negative expectations in proportion to total action. Systems change which sessions win (martingale makes most sessions small winners by concentrating ruin into rare ones), never the long-run rate at which money flows to the house per dollar wagered. The honest entertainment framing — roulette as a priced thrill, the edge as its ticket — survives every system ever sold, and the ticket is cheaper in Europe.
What are the true odds of the even-money bets?
Red, black, odd, even, high and low each cover 18 numbers, so the true odds against winning are 20:18 (American) — yet the payout is 1 to 1, even money, as if the odds were 18:18. The missing 2 pockets are the zeros, standing outside every even-money family and taxing them all. The calculator's win chance (47.37% American, 48.65% European) is the number to carry: an even-money bet is a slightly-unfair coin, flipped for money — close enough to fair to feel benign, taxed enough to fund the casino's chandeliers.
What is a sector bet — neighbours, tiers, orphelins?
The French layout's called bets stake arcs of the physical wheel (the voisins du zéro cover 17 numbers around the zero, the tiers du cylindre 12 opposite, the orphelins 8 stragglers) using fixed chip patterns. Their expectation is unchanged — each constituent chip is a standard bet at the standard edge — and the calculator prices any of them by decomposition (sum the covered numbers, weight the placements), which is the general method for every exotic announcement a croupier will accept. Novelty in roulette lives entirely in coverage patterns; the arithmetic is always this page's.
How much does the edge cost over an evening?
Edge × total wagered: an hour of leisurely play might see 40 spins; at $10 a spin that is $400 of action, costing an expected $21 on the American wheel or $10.80 on the European — the ticket-price framing of the earlier FAQ with the invoice attached. Raise the stakes or the tempo and the invoice scales linearly, which is roulette's entire economic personality: no surprises, no volume discount, a constant percentage tithe on motion itself. The calculator's per-spin expected loss, times your planned spins, is the most honest budget line in gambling — set it as entertainment spending and the wheel can never ambush you.