French roulette
French roulette is a single-zero roulette game, played on a 37-pocket wheel, in which even-money bets lose only half their stake when the ball lands on zero, under a rule called La Partage or its cousin En Prison. That one concession halves the house edge on red or black, odd or even and high or low, from 2.70% to 1.35%. Every other bet on the table keeps the standard single-zero edge, which is the detail most often lost when the name is used loosely.
How the 1.35% figure is calculated
On any single-zero wheel there are 37 pockets, and an even-money bet covers 18 of them. The bet pays 1 to 1, so over 37 spins of €1 the player expects to win 18 times and lose 19 times, a net loss of €1, or 1/37 of the money staked. That is where the familiar 2.70% comes from.
La Partage changes only what happens on the zero. Instead of losing the whole euro on that one pocket, the player loses fifty cent and gets the other half back, so the expected loss over 37 spins falls to half a euro. Half of 1/37 is 1/74, which works out at about 1.35%.
En Prison reaches nearly the same number by a different road. The stake is held on the layout for the next spin rather than split at once; if that spin wins, the original stake is released without profit, and if it loses, the stake goes. The exact edge depends on what the table does when a second zero follows the first: published calculations put it at roughly 1.31% where a repeat zero releases the stake, 1.35% where the stake stays imprisoned, and about 1.39% where a repeat zero loses it outright. Tables differ on this, so the rule card is the only reliable source.
None of these figures predicts a session.
A 1.35% edge means that €500 staked on red, spread over many spins, costs about €6.75 on average in the long run; one evening can land well above or below that, and a run of black does not make red any more likely on the next spin.
French roulette against European roulette
The two games share the same single-zero wheel, which is why they are so often treated as one. The rows below set out where they actually part company, with the column that suits the player marked in each row.
French roulette | European roulette |
|---|---|
| Single zero, 37 pockets | Single zero, 37 pockets |
| 1.35% on even-money bets with La Partage | 2.70% on even-money bets |
| 2.70% on inside bets, dozens and columns | 2.70% on inside bets, dozens and columns |
| French labels on the layout, such as rouge, noir, pair and impair | English labels on the layout |
| Racetrack for call bets usually built into the table | Racetrack offered at some tables, not all |
Where players meet French roulette
Online, French roulette turns up both as an RNG table and in the live casino lobby, and the name on the tile is not a guarantee of the rule underneath. Some games labelled French use a French-language layout but settle zero exactly as a European table would. What we check first is the help screen or rule card, looking for La Partage or En Prison by name and for the bets it covers.
The layout itself is the other giveaway. Even-money boxes carry French names, such as manque for 1 to 18 and passe for 19 to 36, and the table usually comes with a racetrack, an oval printed in wheel order, for placing call bets. Voisins du Zéro covers 17 numbers around zero with nine chips, Tiers du Cylindre covers the 12 numbers opposite zero with six, and Orphelins picks up the remaining eight with five.
Those call bets carry the standard 2.70% edge, because La Partage does not touch them.
Common confusions about the term
The most frequent mistake is assuming that the whole French table runs at 1.35%. It does not: a straight-up bet on 17, a dozen or a split is priced at 2.70%, exactly as on a European wheel, and only the even-money chances get the discount.
A second confusion treats La Partage and En Prison as the same thing under two names. They reach a similar long-run cost, but La Partage settles the zero immediately while En Prison keeps the stake in play, and the repeat-zero rule can move En Prison slightly either side of 1.35%.
American roulette sits further away still.
Its double-zero wheel has 38 pockets and a house edge of about 5.26% on most bets, so a French table with La Partage costs roughly a quarter as much on even-money play. That gap is large, though it remains a long-run average rather than a forecast, and no betting system changes it, since each spin is independent of the last and the edge applies to every bet placed.
