Roulette Wheel

The roulette wheel is iconic; even people who’ve never set foot inside a casino will be able to identify one. In mainstream pop culture, the red and black roulette wheel symbolizes the thrill and excitement of casino gaming, but inside the casino, the wheel is roulette – without it, there’d be no game to play.

As one of the oldest casino games still in play today, roulette has gone through its fair share of evolution over the centuries. What remains unchanged, however, is that the wheel is central to gameplay, and this is true whether in land-based casinos or here in the Wildz online casino.

All of our roulette games, including our Live Casino roulette and our digital titles, are based on the outcome of the spin of the wheel.

A deeper look at the roulette wheel

According to historians, the roulette wheel was invented by a 17th-century French mathematician named Blaise Pascal. Pascal was determined to create a perpetual motion machine, and the roulette wheel was one of his early attempts.

Over the years, the wheel would go on to spawn its very own casino game – roulette.

The wheel used in modern games is, of course, much more sophisticated than its predecessor. It’s also laid out in a particular way. Firstly, the seemingly random order of the numbers on the wheel is designed to create as much fairness as possible.

Low and high numbers alternate, and odds and even numbers are distributed evenly. There’s an additional condition that all roulette wheels need to adhere to, and that’s for any two consecutive number pockets to be different colours.

A deeper look at Roulette wheels

The American wheel has 38 pockets, from 00 to 36. Pockets 0 and 00 are green, while pockets numbered 1-36 alternate red or black. American wheels are spun counterclockwise, and the sequence of numbers is as follows: 0, 2, 14, 35, 23, 4, 16, 33, 21, 6, 18, 31, 19, 8, 12, 29, 25, 10, 27, 00, 1, 13, 36, 24, 3, 15, 34, 22, 5, 17, 32, 20, 7, 11, 30, 26, 9, 28.

The European wheel is single zero, meaning there’s only one green pocket on the wheel (0), while pockets numbered 1 to 36 also alternate red or black. European wheels are spun clockwise, and the sequence of numbers is: 26, 3, 35, 12, 28, 7, 29, 18, 22, 9, 31, 14, 20, 1, 33, 16, 24, 5, 10, 23, 8, 30, 11, 36, 13, 27, 6, 34, 17, 25, 2, 21, 4, 19, 15, and 32.

A roulette table comes in many different layouts

The double zero pocket in American roulette means the game has a slightly different table layout.

Traditionally, roulette is played with the wheel at the left of the table and a betting grid on the right. The grid features all the different wagering options available to you in the game and numbers that correspond to those on the wheel.

The sections of the table are:

Red/Black
Odd/Even
1st, 2nd and 3rd 12 (numbers 1-12, 13-24, 25-33)
High/Low (1-18/19-36)

On an American table, you’ll notice a green double zero on the table that isn’t present in the layout of the European game.

There are also several differences between the standard American or European table and the table used to play French roulette. Traditionally, French roulette was a game that placed the wheel in the center with two betting grids extending out to the left and right.

While this occurs less frequently today, particularly in online casinos like Wildz, the French variant’s layout includes a table where betting options are written in, you guessed it, French.

The RTP depends on your bet & roulette table setup

Casino RTP stands for Return to Player, and it’s determined by the house edge of a roulette game. The three different roulette rulesets (American, European and French) each have a different house edge, which you can calculate by the number of pockets on the wheel or, in the case of the French variant, the ability to play different rules.

European and French games are single-zero roulette, while American roulette is a double-zero game.

Therefore, the game with the most advantageous casino RTP is one with the lowest house edge or the fewest number of pockets.

Additionally, the type of bet you make when you play roulette in the Wildz Online Casino determines how much of a payout you’ll receive if you win.

Straight-up bets are generally the most favourable, since they payout 35:1 as standard across all roulette variants.