How to play
E.O., short for “even–odd”, is a wheel game from mid-18th-century England. The wheel has 40 pockets: 19 marked E, 19 marked O, and two blank bar holes facing each other across the wheel. There are only two bets.
You start with 1,000 virtual credits.
- Choose a chip: 10, 50, 100 or 500.
- Tap O or E to bet on the letter the ball will land on. You can bet on both.
- Press Spin.
| Ball lands on | Bet on its letter | Bet on the other letter |
|---|---|---|
| E or O | wins 1 to 1 (stake back, plus the same again) | lost |
| A bar hole | lost | lost |
Example: 50 on E, and the ball lands in an E pocket. You get 100 back.
Each spot takes 10 to 1,000 credits in steps of 10. The recent results row shows the last letters, with a green “Bar” when a bar hole came up.
A bit of history
E.O. appeared in English assembly rooms and spa towns in the 1740s. Laws of the time banned games played “with numbers”, and a wheel marked only with letters slipped past them. The game spread quickly, from fashionable resorts to back rooms, and a bill to outlaw it was proposed in 1782.
The ball, the spinning wheel and the even-money bet all carried over into roulette, where the same bet survives as pair and impair (even and odd). Roulette’s zero plays the role E.O.’s bar holes did.
Old accounts differ on exactly what happened in a bar hole; some say one letter was a stand-off. This table uses the simplest version: a bar hole takes every bet.
The odds
38 of the 40 pockets carry a letter, and each letter has 19 of them. A bet on E wins 19 times in 40 and pays even money, so it returns 38/40 of what is staked on average: a house edge of 5%. We checked it over all 40 pockets.
That’s almost twice the edge of single-zero roulette (2.70%) and a little under double-zero roulette (5.26%).
| Game | Even-money edge |
|---|---|
| European roulette, single zero | 2.70% |
| E.O. (this table), two bar holes in 40 | 5.00% |
| American roulette, 0 and 00 | 5.26% |
Strategy
- There is nothing to choose between E and O. Both cover 19 pockets and lose on the same two bar holes.
- Betting both letters always loses money. One bet wins and the other loses, so you break even on a letter and lose both stakes on a bar: 1 spin in 20.
- Treat it as a piece of history. For even-money bets with a lower edge, single-zero roulette does better.
If you enjoy E.O. Wheel, try European Blackjack or European Roulette next.
