Roulette Rules Explained: La Partage, En Prison and How a Spin Works

Roulette is easy to play and full of small rules that quietly change the odds. Learn the roulette rules that matter — how a spin actually works, the etiquette that keeps a table running, and above all the two French rules that can halve the house edge on your most common bets.

How a spin works

Before each spin, players place chips on the table layout — on single numbers, groups, or the even-money options around the edge. When betting time ends the dealer announces “no more bets”, spins the wheel one way and rolls the ball the other. Where the ball settles decides the outcome. Losing bets are swept, winning bets are paid to the payout table, and the next round begins. Every spin is independent — the wheel has no memory, so past results tell you nothing about the next.

Table etiquette in brief

A few conventions keep the game orderly: buy in for coloured chips unique to you at the table (so bets are never confused between players); do not touch your chips once “no more bets” is called; and leave winning bets in place until the dealer has finished paying and clears the marker. None of this changes the odds — it just keeps the table honest and fast.

La partage — the rule that halves the edge

Here is where the roulette rules become genuinely worth knowing. On a French table, the la partage rule states that if you have an even-money bet down and the ball lands on zero, you lose only half your stake rather than all of it. That single concession halves the house edge on even-money bets from 2.70% to 1.35% — the best odds available on a standard roulette table.

En prison — the same idea, differently done

En prison is a close cousin. Instead of returning half your stake when zero hits, the whole stake is locked — “imprisoned” — for one more spin. If your bet wins the next spin, you get the original stake back (without winnings); if it loses, it is gone. Mathematically the effect matches la partage: the even-money edge drops to 1.35%. Whenever you can find a French table offering either rule, and you are betting even money, it is the best value in the building.

The wheel and the table are two different maps

One thing that trips up new players is that the numbers on the spinning wheel and the numbers on the felt where you place chips are arranged in completely different orders. On a European wheel the 37 pockets run 0 to 36 in a fixed sequence that alternates red and black and scatters high and low numbers around the rim, so no stretch of the wheel is all one colour or all high. The betting layout ignores that sequence. It lays the numbers out as three tidy columns of 1 to 36 with the green zero perched at the top, grouped for easy staking rather than to mirror the wheel. A number sitting right beside another on the felt can be almost opposite it on the wheel. That difference is not just trivia: “neighbour” bets and section bets such as voisins du zéro are read off the wheel order, while everything on the main grid is read off the layout order. Knowing which map a given bet uses saves a lot of confusion at a busy table.

The main bet groups at a glance

Bets fall into two families. Inside bets sit on the numbered grid — a single number, a pair split across a line, a street of three, a corner of four — and they pay more because they are harder to hit. Outside bets sit around the edge — red or black, odd or even, the low or high half, plus the dozens and columns — and pay less because each one covers a big chunk of the wheel. A straight-up bet on one number pays 35 to 1, yet the true odds against it are 36 to 1 on a European wheel; that missing unit is the house edge sitting in plain sight. We keep the full payout table and the odds for every bet on the inside and outside bets page rather than repeat it all here. And if you are tempted to steer your stakes with a progression, read our honest look at roulette betting systems first — the roulette rules of probability do not bend for any of them, because each spin is independent of the last.

European versus American wheels

The single most important number in roulette is not printed on the felt at all — it is how many zeros the wheel carries. A European wheel has 37 pockets, the numbers 0 through 36, and a house edge of 2.70% on nearly every bet. An American wheel adds a second green pocket, the double zero, for 38 pockets in total, and that one extra slot lifts the house edge to 5.26%. Same bets, same payouts, roughly double the cost to you over time, on a game that looks almost identical from across the room. Where a casino offers both, the European wheel is the one to sit at, and a French table that also runs la partage trims the even-money edge to 1.35%. We break the difference down in more detail in European vs American roulette.

At the table, in person and online

The roulette rules are the same whether the wheel is physical or on a screen, but the rhythm is not. At a live table a dealer spins the wheel, calls “no more bets”, and settles up by hand, so a round takes a minute or two and you buy coloured chips that belong only to you. Online, the software runs the spin and pays out in an instant, your bets are recorded the moment you click, and you can churn through spins far faster — which makes it easy to lose track of how much you are staking in an hour. Live-dealer online tables sit between the two: a real croupier on video, digital chips, and a countdown timer for bets. None of these settings shifts the odds by a hair. The wheel and the payout table decide the outcome; the venue only changes how it feels.

For the full maths, read roulette house edge explained, and to see why the wheel itself matters most, European vs American roulette.