European, American or French roulette: the one wheel choice that changes the math

• European. The single-zero wheel: 37 pockets. The default of most online tables and our favourite for a reason.
• American. The same numbering plus the double zero (00): 38 pockets. No new bet compensates for the extra pocket.
• French. The same single-zero wheel; what changes is how even-money bets are treated when zero hits — la partage returns half your stake, en prison holds the bet for one more spin instead of taking it.
• What doesn't change. Bets and payouts are essentially identical across all three; the rest is cosmetics.

• Same bet, different cost. A straight-up or a red pays the same on all three wheels; what changes is how many pockets can come up. The edge lives in the wheel, not in the bet — our house edge guide has the arithmetic.
• The textbooks agree. Grinstead and Snell show that on the double-zero wheel nearly every bet shares the same expected value: switching bets moves variance, not cost.
• No system fixes it. Martingale-style progressions do not touch that arithmetic. Picking single zero lowers the expected cost; nothing eliminates it.
• Who says so matters. The single-zero advice is not casino folklore — it is what OLG's own player-education site tells Ontario players.
• Play responsibly. Set a budget and a time limit before the first spin and never chase losses: the right wheel makes roulette cheaper, not profitable.

Live roulette streams a croupier spinning a physical wheel; RNG roulette draws the number from certified software. Payouts are identical — the mechanism changes, the math does not.

Speed, auto and multiplier versions are wrappers over one of the two base wheels, and some trim payouts to fund their extras: read the paytable and check which zero the wheel carries. In Canada the same wheels appear inside Ontario's regulated market and on the offshore sites serving everyone else; the arithmetic is indifferent to the licence.