European roulette
European roulette is the single-zero version of roulette, played on a wheel of 37 pockets numbered 1 to 36 plus one green zero, which gives the house an edge of 2.70% on every standard bet. That figure comes from the paytable rather than from any operator setting: payouts are sized for 36 numbers, and the zero is the 37th. It is the most common roulette table in online lobbies and live casino studios, and it sits between American roulette and French roulette on cost to the player.
How the 2.70% house edge is calculated
The edge comes from a mismatch between the odds of winning and the odds the table pays. A straight-up bet on one number wins once in 37 spins on average, yet pays 35 to 1, which is exactly break-even on a wheel with only 36 pockets.
Take a €1 bet on a single number placed on all 37 numbers in turn. Over those 37 spins the player stakes €37 and gets back €36 from the one winner, stake included, so the missing euro is one thirty-seventh of the total. That is the 2.70%, and its mirror image is a theoretical RTP of 97.30%.
The same sum works for every standard bet on the layout, because the payout scales with the number of pockets covered. A split pays 17 to 1, a corner 8 to 1, a dozen 2 to 1 and red or black 1 to 1, and each one loses the same share to the zero.
No combination of bets changes this.
What the figure means in practice
A house edge is a long-run average across a very large number of spins, never a forecast for one session. Staking €10 a spin for 100 spins puts €1,000 through the table, and the expected cost of that is €27, yet any single evening of 100 spins can finish well up or well down. The zero does not become due after a run without it either, since each spin of a fair wheel is independent of the last one, and an online RNG table is built to behave the same way.
Where players meet European roulette
Online, the term shows up in two places: RNG tables, where software draws the result, and live casino tables streamed from a studio with a real wheel and dealer. The single-zero maths is identical in both, and studio branding or extra side features do not alter the edge on the standard bets.
What does vary between operators and studios is the surrounding detail, such as table limits, the bet layout and whether a game adds multipliers or bonus pockets. Those versions are separate games with their own published RTP, so the 97.30% figure belongs only to the plain single-zero rules.
The lobby tile rarely shows the pocket count, which is why we read the game’s own help screen before anything else.
European, French and American roulette compared
European roulette is most often confused with French roulette, because the two use the same 37-pocket wheel. The difference is a rule for even-money bets on red or black, odd or even and 1–18 or 19–36. Under la partage, half of such a stake comes back when the ball lands on zero; under en prison, the stake is held for the next spin instead.
Either rule halves the edge on those bets to 1.35%, while single numbers, splits, dozens and columns stay at 2.70% on a French table too. So a player who backs single numbers loses nothing by choosing the European game, and one who sticks to red or black gains by finding la partage. Some single-zero tables labelled European apply a la partage-style rule as well, and some games named French leave it out, so the label alone settles nothing.
American roulette is the costlier cousin. Its wheel adds a double zero, giving 38 pockets against the same paytable, and the edge rises to 5.26% on most bets, close to twice the European figure.
The quickest check is to count the green pockets on the wheel graphic.
