Roulette Wheel Layout

The roulette wheel is undoubtedly one of the world's most recognizable casino symbols. In television ads, Internet banners and even newspaper and magazine publications, the roulette wheel is often used as the symbol to represent gambling as a sport. Below we will describe for you, the typical roulette wheel layout in as simple a form as possible. In all cases, the details we provide will refer to the American roulette wheel and not the European roulette wheel that we cover in more detail in its own section.

The typical roulette wheel is nearly three feet in diameter and weighs about a hundred pounds. It's the star of the casino show as it goes round and round, helping to decide the fortunes of numerous casino gamers at any given time. The roulette wheel has 38 numbered compartments (or pockets). The pockets are colored green, black and red. Numbers 1 through 36 are divided evenly among the red and black colored pockets, while the two zeros (0 and 00) have green colored pockets.

The numbers are ordered to achieve as much balance as possible among "high and low", "red and black" and "odd and even" numbers. We've put a roulette wheel layout diagram over there to the right so you can take a first look if you've never seen one before.

On the wheel, directly across from every odd number, you should see the next highest even number. The black and red colors alternate and pairs of even numbers alternate with pairs off odd numbers. This is the standard roulette wheel layout that you'll find in most American casinos and at a lot of online casinos.