How to play
French Roulette spins the same 37-pocket, single-zero wheel as the European game, with the numbers in the same order. What makes it French is one settlement rule, la partage, French for “the sharing”. If the ball drops into the green 0, every bet on red, black, odd, even, 1–18 or 19–36 loses only half. The other half comes back to you.
Everything else plays the usual way:
- Select a chip: 10, 50, 100 or 500.
- Tap the layout to place it. Repeated taps stack chips on the same spot. The small rings on the lines between numbers take split, street, corner and six-line bets, and the row under the chips holds the racetrack bets: Voisins, Tiers, Orphelins, Zero game and Neighbours.
- Undo takes off the last chip, Clear removes the lot, and after a spin Rebet restores your previous layout.
- Press Spin. Wins are paid, losses collected, and when la partage applies the message under the wheel tells you how much came back.
A single spot holds 10 to 1,000 credits in steps of 10, which keeps every half-refund a whole number, and the table maximum is 5,000 per spin.
How la partage settles a zero
Here is exactly what happens to each kind of bet when 0 comes up:
| Bet | Normal win pays | When the ball lands on 0 |
|---|---|---|
| Red / Black | 1 to 1 | half the stake returned |
| Odd / Even | 1 to 1 | half the stake returned |
| 1–18 / 19–36 | 1 to 1 | half the stake returned |
| 1st, 2nd or 3rd 12 | 2 to 1 | lost |
| Column | 2 to 1 | lost |
| Single number | 35 to 1 | lost, unless it’s on 0, which wins |
| Split, street, corner, six line | 17, 11, 8, 5 to 1 | lost, unless the bet includes 0 (0/1, 0-1-2, 0-1-2-3…), which wins |
An example. You have 200 on black, 100 on the 3rd dozen and 20 on 17, and the ball finds 0. The dozen and the 17 are gone, but 100 of the black bet is handed back. Net loss for the spin: 220 rather than 320.
En prison: the other zero rule
The En prison button under the chips swaps la partage for the older French rule. With it switched on, a zero doesn’t hand back half of your even-money bets. It locks the whole stake “in prison” instead: the chip stays on the layout, striped, for one more spin.
- If the imprisoned bet wins the next spin, the full stake comes back. It isn’t paid a win, it’s simply freed.
- If it loses, or the ball finds 0 again, the stake is gone.
You don’t have to place new chips to settle a prison bet; Spin works with only the prisoner on the table, and a prison bet keeps the game going even if your credits are down to zero. The choice is made before each spin and remembered.
The two rules are close. Over many spins la partage costs 1/74 of an even-money stake (1.35%); en prison costs 19/1369 (about 1.39%), because a freed bet only survives about 18 times in 37. La partage is the slightly better deal; en prison gives you a chance to get the whole bet back.
The odds
On a single-zero wheel without any special rule, every bet gives the house 1/37, or 2.70%. La partage only touches the even-money bets, and it cuts their edge exactly in half:
| Bet group | House edge |
|---|---|
| Red, Black, Odd, Even, 1–18, 19–36 | 1/74 ≈ 1.35% |
| Dozens, columns, single numbers, splits, corners and every other inside bet | 1/37 ≈ 2.70% |
Where does 1/74 come from? Bet one unit on red for 37 spins. On average you win 18 (+18), lose 18 (−18), and on the one zero you lose half a unit. That’s −½ over 37 spins, or 1 in 74.
In credits: 1,000 wagered on even-money bets costs around 13.5 on average; the same 1,000 on dozens costs around 27. Compare that with the American double-zero table, where it’s about 53 whatever you bet on.
Strategy
This is the one roulette table in the collection where bet choice changes the long-run cost.
Make even-money bets the core. Red/black, odd/even and high/low are the cheapest bets here, half the price of anything else. If your aim is to make credits last, play them.
Know what the other bets cost. Dozens, columns, numbers and the racetrack groups (which are built from splits, corners and numbers) are perfectly playable, but each credit on them carries double the edge. Treat them as the spice, not the meal.
Mixing red and black doesn’t hedge anything. A chip on each wins one and loses the other on most spins, and when 0 hits you get half of both back. You’re paying the edge on two bets for no change in your balance.
Leave en prison off if you’re counting pennies. Its edge on even-money bets is about 0.04 percentage points higher than la partage (1.39% against 1.35%). Pick it if you’d rather have a coin-flip at the full stake than a guaranteed half.
Still no system. La partage lowers the edge; it doesn’t remove it. The wheel has no memory, the recent-numbers strip predicts nothing, and loss-chasing progressions still run into the 1,000-per-spot cap.
Big single-number fans: the plain European table pays exactly the same on numbers, so for straight bets the two games are equal.
If you enjoy French Roulette, try Frontier Town or Fruit Slots next.
