Roulette green: the odd pocket out

Once in 37 spins on average on a European wheel, which is 2.70%. Twice in 38 on an American wheel, 5.26%. Over an hour of 60 spins you would expect green about 1.6 times on a single-zero wheel and about 3.2 times on a double-zero one. Those are averages; seeing no green in 100 spins happens about 6.5% of the time, and seeing it four times in 60 spins is also perfectly ordinary.

Backed as a straight-up, zero pays 35:1 like every other number. On the layout it also forms splits with 1, 2 and 3, and streets 0-1-2 and 0-2-3, all at the standard odds. There is no "green" outside bet on a normal table; green is just the colour of a number you can back directly.

This is where it earns its colour. When zero comes up, red loses and black loses. Odd loses and even loses. High loses and low loses. Every dozen and every column loses. The pocket sits outside every even-money and 2:1 category, so one spin in 37 sweeps the whole outside of the table.

That one spin is the house edge. Red is paid at even money as though it won half the time; it wins 18 times in 37, and the difference, 1 in 37 or 2.70%, is kept by the house across every bet on the layout. Green is not unlucky. It is the price.

French roulette softens the green pocket for even-money bets only. With La Partage, half of a losing red or black stake comes back when zero hits; with En Prison the stake is held over to the next spin. Either way the cost of green on those bets halves, from 2.70% to 1.35%. Inside bets, dozens and columns still lose in full.

On an American wheel the second green pocket does the same job again. Nearly double the edge for identical payouts, plus the five-number basket bet across 0, 00, 1, 2 and 3 that costs 7.89%. If you take one thing from this page: count the green pockets before the first bet, and sit at the wheel with one.

Green was chosen simply because it is neither red nor black and is easy to see. Some older wheels used other colours for the zero; green became the convention in the nineteenth century and every wheel, physical or on screen, now uses it. On a live stream it is also the pocket the camera finds first.