What are the different Roulette Wheels

The word roulette may refer to a single type of gambling game, but there are in fact many different versions of roulette. Depending on the version of the game one chooses to play, there are many different roulette wheels that you may encounter both in a live and an online casino.

While the original version of the game was fairly simple and featured the layout similar to today’s European Roulette, many other wheels were invented over the years. On this page, we take a look at the most common roulette wheels and examine their layout, their payouts and the interesting trivia facts you may like to know about them.

European Roulette Wheel

European Roulette is the most common form of the game worldwide and the European wheel is the one most people associate with the game. This wheel contains 37 different slots, with numbers starting at 0 and going up to 36. On the betting table, the numbers are arranged in order, but the order of the numbers on the actual wheel is actually quite a bit different.

european roulette wheel

European Roulette Wheel

The European wheel is designed around the central 0 number, which is the only green number on it. There are 18 red and 18 black numbers on the wheel and these numbers alternate with one black and one red slot appearing in order.

The European wheel is also split into what players like to refer to as series. These seemingly random parts of the roulette are used to allow for verbal bets, making it easy for players to bet on multiple numbers at once. Some of the popular series bets include:

  • Zero Game
  • Neighbors of Zero
  • Orphelins
  • Third of the Cylinder

Each of these bets allows the player to place the bet verbally and automatically bet on multiple adjacent numbers. The Zero Game, for instance, refers to the numbers close to the green 0 slot. These numbers are 3, 12, 15, 26, 32 and 35, making a total of 7 numbers with the zero. Other announced bets offer more or fewer numbers and cost more or less depending on the player’s preference.

An interesting thing about the European Roulette wheel is that the sum of the numbers on it amounts to 666, which is why it is often called the devil’s wheel. Players who play the game are often superstitious about this and will bet different ways due to various superstitions which are not based in any real maths or statistics.

American Roulette Wheel

The second most popular roulette wheel is certainly the American one. Often offered by the American live casinos such as those in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, the American Roulette wheel is somewhat different than its European counterpart.

american roulette wheel

American Roulette Wheel

 

The biggest difference between the two is certainly the addition of another green slot, which is the double zero. The 00 slot is placed to the exact opposite of the 0 slot on the wheel and it is what makes American Roulette less lucrative to play, since all the payouts are exactly the same as the European version, only with one additional number on the wheel.

Regardless of the odds, the American Roulette game is quite popular in the US. Aside from having a different layout, the American wheel is also set up in a different way, with different numbers layout. Players who are used to playing the European version will often get confused about where each number is on the wheel since numbers are set up completely differently.

That said, there are no other major differences between the two versions and the sum of the numbers remains the same. The only thing that is truly changed is the likelihood of the ball landing in each slot, since there are 38 instead of 37 slots in total.

French Roulette Wheel

The French version of the game is in fact very similar to its European counterpart. With the exact same layout and payouts, the game of French Roulette could easily be mistaken for European Roulette. However, there are some differences in the layout of the game as well, but the biggest difference is in the actual rules of the game.

While the French Roulette contains all the same numbers and sectors as the European version, the layout of the betting table is slightly different. Players looking to make outside bets will have a few extra options and the betting area for each of the bets is placed in a slightly different manner.

The big difference in the rules, of course, comes from the “le partage” and “en prison” rules, which allow players to recuperate their losses on red/black and odd/even bets whenever the ball lands in the 0 slot, which makes French Roulette the most favourable of all the versions to play.

Roulette with Multiple Wheels

Online casinos have greatly revolutionized the gambling industry as such and the game of roulette as well. Many versions of the game were invented by the manufacturers of games for the online markets and the multi-wheel roulette has been one of the most popular ones.

Multi-wheel roulette is an extremely interesting new way to play roulette. The player is allowed to place bets on a single betting table, with bets applying to not just one spin of one wheel but to a spin of several different wheels. This way, every bet has multiple chances to be a winner at once.

Multi-wheel roulette is usually played with European wheels in place, and there isn’t really much difference between playing a single spin of this game or multiple spins of the regular game. However, the added dynamic of multiple wheels spinning at the same time have made these versions extremely popular and there is no doubt that multi-wheel roulette is one of the most attractive new games in online casinos.

Along with the multi-wheel roulette, online casinos have also invented multi-ball roulette. Here, the single wheel is powered with several balls, all spinning at the same time. The balls have a chance of landing in the same socket on a spin to award special jackpots and bigger payouts are possible in this version than any normal roulette game.