24.02.2026
Chris Mwangi creates educational content focused on roulette rules, bets, odds, and payouts. At Roulette77, he works with an international team to ensure clear explanations, accurate localization, and responsible gaming standards for the US and other regulated markets.
How to play roulette is easier than it looks: you choose a bet, wait for the wheel spin, and get paid if the ball lands on your selection. This guide explains the table layout, main bet types, payout odds, and the basic round sequence, so you can understand the rules step by step before playing.
The aim of the game
Roulette aims to guess at which spot on the wheel the ball will stop. There are three basic sectors on a classical roulette wheel, which are highlighted in red, black and green. The red and black sectors have numbers from 1 to 36, and the green sector has zero. This arrangement opens up the opportunity for players to make different types of bets. It could be a bet on a colour, black or red, as well as on a specific range of numbers, including a single number. Depending on this, each bet has a different range of odds and payouts.
The first thing you need to know about the game is naturally its goal. A game of roulette simply tells you to place a bet on the outcome that you think has the biggest chance of success. No more, no less. If you end up guessing correctly, you will win the amount that corresponds to your bet proportionate to the bet type payout. But hey, let’s take it easy and not get ahead of ourselves. Check this out.
The first step of any roulette game actually begins in the same way. You pick a number or a combination of numbers you wish to bet on. You can place as many different bets as you like without going over the maximum bet limit (we will talk about this a bit later) and usually pick from numbers from 0 to 36. These numbers are displayed in red and black (which is specific to some bets), and you get various payouts on each, such as 35:1 for a straight bet. That’s almost all there is.
One important aspect we wish to remind you about is the so-called Announced Bets. What are these four you may wonder? Well, they are part of the gameplay experience and usually apply to only brick-and-mortar casinos. In other words, you can tell the dealer what bet you wish to place. They apply to the so-called French Bets (which is another term for Announced Bets) and are a more stylish way of playing.
The dealer won’t take any chips from your pile, but they will announce the bets and they will be considered active. This means that if you end up winning an Announced Bet, the full amount will be paid to you. However, if you end up losing it, the chips will then be removed from your pile. As mentioned, you don’t have to move brick-and-mortar chips onto the betting layout during an Announced Bet.
However, there is no way to avoid this when playing online roulette. There, the Announced Bets are always represented with chips on the table, making it easier for players to track. Below you will find additional info about these bets.
Another huge step in understanding the roulette experience is to know about the concept of maximum and minimum bet limits. This is self-explanatory to some, but we will elaborate a bit better. A minimum bet is an amount you need to deposit in order to get started and enter a betting round of roulette. Conversely, the maximum amount is the maximum possible amount you can bet on a single round. This can be a single bet or a combination of several bets. It really depends on what you prefer. Understanding and knowing betting limits is actually very useful. This way you can pick a strategy – such as Martingale or Fibonacci – and make sure that you pick a higher maximum limit table, so you have more leeway for mistakes and always end up winning.
But then there are table limits, and you need to similarly understand how table limits work. Table limits are introduced by the casinos, and they can be higher or lower for some types of wagers. For example, you may have bigger or smaller betting limits on a specific bet type, or group of bets, such as inside versus outside bets.
So, you may be able to bet up to AU$2,000 on a straight-up bet and up to AU$5,000 on an inside/outside bet. It really depends, but these things are important to better understand the game. Check out the following table which compares games by different roulette and their betting limits:
| Bet | Roulette Delux (Playtech) | Golden Chip Roulette (Yggdrasil) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Straight up | 0.1 Min | 100 Max | 0.1 Min | 50 Max |
| Split | 0.1 Min | 200 Max | 0.1 Min | 100 Max |
| Street | 0.1 Min | 300 Max | 0.1 Min | 150 Max |
| Corner | 0.1 Min | 400 Max | 0.1 Min | 200 Max |
| Six Line | 0.1 Min | 600 Max | 0.1 Min | 300 Max |
| Column | 1 Min | 1000 Max | 0.1 Min | 500 Max |
| Dozen | 1 Min | 1000 Max | 0.1 Min | 500 Max |
| Even/Odd | 1 Min | 1000 Max | 0.1 Min | 1000 Max |
| Red/Black | 1 Min | 1000 Max | 0.1 Min | 1000 Max |
| High/Low | 1 Min | 1000 Max | 0.1 Min | 1000 Max |
Next, you want to wait for the dealer to spin the wheel. The dealer will say that there are “no more bets” being accepted using this exact turn of phrase. At this point, you should not and cannot place chips on the betting field. You cannot touch or interact with any of the gaming layouts anymore until the round is finished. This happens when the wheel stops spinning and the ball lands in one of the sectors there. If you accidentally touch the wheel, the round is voided, and all bets are refunded.
In the third step, the dealer will announce the number and what bets are winning, with all gamblers able to collect their winnings. The payout will depend on the amounts you have wagered. So, if you have wagered $10 and have a payout of 35:1, you stand to win $350, provided that your wager has turned out a winner. This is really all there is.
| Bet | Payout | Example (initial bet $10) |
|---|---|---|
| Straight up | 35:1 | 10+35*10=360 |
| Split | 17:1 | 10+17*10=180 |
| Street | 11:1 | 10+11*10=120 |
| Corner | 8:1 | 10+8*10=90 |
| 5 numbers | 6:1 | 10+6*10=70 |
| Six Line | 5:1 | 10+5*10=60 |
| Column | 2:1 | 10+2*10=30 |
| Dozen | 2:1 | 10+2*10=30 |
| Even/Odd | 1:1 | 10+1*10=20 |
| Red/Black | 1:1 | 10+1*10=20 |
| High/Low | 1:1 | 10+1*10=20 |
Remember that straight bets are not all there is in roulette. You may have placed various other bets together at the same time. The payout is calculated based on the payout of each individual wager and the amount you have wagered on each individually.
Last but not least, you can choose to play again. This is done by simply entering the next round by meeting the minimum bet requirement and not exceeding the maximum bet. If you like, you can also stop playing at this point and join at any point provided that you meet the entry requirements (i.e., sufficient minimum bet).
There are three core versions of the game that will pretty much serve as the layout for other variants. Those are French, European, and American. They are very similar to each other with a few minor differences that have to do with some of the special rules. We will talk about this right now.
There are some differences in the available roulette versions out there. But instead of focusing on each version individually, we just wanted to brief you about some of the core rules that can have a tremendous impact on your gameplay. Here is what they look like.
This is a great rule applicable to French roulette. It activates when an Outside Bet misses the mark. You retrieve half of your wagered amount. This effectively reduces the house edge to 1.35%.
This rule is once again available in French roulette. It says that if you hit a 0 but miss to win because you didn’t bet on zero, you get another spin of the wheel for a chance to better that result. Note that you cannot change the bet during that second spin.
This rule is available in American Roulette. If you hit a zero but didn’t bet on zero, the game pays you back half of your wager. This way the house edge is reduced to 2.63%.
Yes, the house edge is a term that denotes how much the casino stands to win for each $100 that has been bet. So, a house edge of 5.36% means $5.36 for each $100 bet.
To calculate this, you need to take a look at the units you are wagering and the payout of the specific bet. For a straight bet, this is 35:1. So if you bet 20 on a 35:1 bet and win, you end up with 35*20 or $700.
The RTP is the percentage that you can expect to win out of every $100 you bet. So, if you have an RTP of 97.30%, this simply means that for every $100 you bet, you win $97.30 back.
Yes, some versions of roulette are clearly more profitable than others and this is a fact. French Roulette has the lowest house edge of 1.35% when the La Partage rule applies.
Yes, cold numbers are numbers that haven’t come as winners for a while. Hot numbers are those that have come up several times already. They are completely random so don’t trust them too much.
Yes, Even Money bets are basically paying out 1:1. This means that if you bet $1 you get back $1. It’s that simple.
You win a payout equal to 35:1. You multiply your bet amount by 35 to get the final result. If you bet 5 and bet on zero, and win, you end up collecting 5*35 or $175. That is solid!
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