NO ZERO ROULETTE

For wagers on single numbers, American Roulette wheels offer a 38-1 chance of winning. European Roulette wheels give you a 37-1 chance thanks to the lack of the double-zero spot.

Since the game's actual payout for individual number bets is 35-1, we can quickly calculate the house edge at 5.26% and 2.63% for the American and European games respectively.

Playing roulette with no zero or double-zero slot drops the house advantage to 0.0%. The result is that you can expect what experienced gamblers call 'straight' or 'true' odds.

Math tells us that playing no zero roulette indefinitely would result in you breaking even. The appeal of the online roulette no zero wheel is hitting that elusive winning streak, which (combined with a 0% house edge) could really put cash in your bankroll.

It's worth saying that not many Internet casinos offer roulette with no zero in 2024, and at time of writing, no land-based casinos offer the game either.

If you place a wager on red, you can expect an even payout should the wheel produce a red number. Since the odds of the ball landing on red are a little less than average, over the long run the house edge means (mathematically speaking) that roulette players will always lose out.

But in roulette with no zero, the math shifts a little. No zero spaces means any bets on red have a 50% chance of winning. That means given infinite time and money, you will break even playing on an online roulette no zero wheel.

That's why more casinos don't host no zero games; they're simply not as profitable. Casinos that do have zero-free roulette tend to place extreme limits on your maximum bet size in order to protect their interests.

Another reason zero free roulette doesn't scare some casinos is a concept called "the risk of ruin".

Let's pretend two people are flipping a coin and are betting on the outcome: 50/50 odds, just like with no zero online roulette wheels.

Every time the coin comes up heads, one player pays the other $1, while every time the coin comes up tails the other player gets paid $1 by the loser. Assuming the game is being played with a real coin and not a loaded or trick coin, neither of them will have an edge over the other, unless one has more money than the other. If player 1 has $10,000 in his pocket and player 2 has only $10, player 2 will be out of money long before player 1, and player 1 will have made money on the proposition.

American Roulette and European Roulette wheels are negative expectation games. Wheels without a zero aren't negative expectation games, but thanks to limited bet sizes and the 'risk of ruin' concept, it isn't possible to drain a casino of all its cash, thanks mostly to your limited wallet.