Watch a busy table for ten minutes and two kinds of player become easy to spot. One stacks chips on the grid, a corner here, a straight-up there, sometimes ten positions at once. The other puts one stack on red, or on the second dozen, and waits. Both are paying the casino at exactly the same rate. What separates them is how the evening feels, and how far from average the result can land.
This article compares inside vs outside bets on that basis. For the payouts behind every bet, see the main roulette odds and payouts page.
Which bets are inside and which are outside
Inside bets sit on the numbered grid:
- Straight up: one number, pays 35 to 1.
- Split: two adjacent numbers, pays 17 to 1.
- Street: a row of three, pays 11 to 1.
- Corner: four numbers meeting at a point, pays 8 to 1.
- Six line: two adjacent rows, pays 5 to 1.
American layouts add the five-number bet on 0, 00, 1, 2 and 3, at 6 to 1.
Outside bets sit in the boxes around the grid:
- Dozens: 1 to 12, 13 to 24 or 25 to 36, pays 2 to 1.
- Columns: one of the three long columns, pays 2 to 1.
- Even money: red or black, odd or even, 1 to 18 or 19 to 36, pays 1 to 1.
The table layout guide shows where each chip goes, with the European and American grids side by side.
Same edge on both sides of the line
On a single-zero wheel every one of those bets carries a 2.70 % house edge. On a double-zero wheel every one carries 5.26 %, with the five-number bet the lone exception at 7.89 %. This surprises people who assume the long shots must be a worse deal. They are not. The casino gives itself the same margin on a 35 to 1 bet as on a 1 to 1 bet, by paying each slightly less than the true odds.
So the choice between inside and outside is not about value. It is about variance: how widely your results scatter around the average.
How often each bet wins
Swipe the table
| Bet | Numbers | Chance per spin (single zero) | Chance of no win in a row of 10 spins |
|---|---|---|---|
| Straight up | 1 | 2.70 % | 76.0 % |
| Corner | 4 | 10.81 % | 31.9 % |
| Six line | 6 | 16.22 % | 17.0 % |
| Dozen or column | 12 | 32.43 % | 2.0 % |
| Even money | 18 | 48.65 % | 0.13 % |
Read the last column slowly. Pick one number and play it for ten spins, and three times out of four you will not see it once. Pick red for ten spins and the chance of ten straight losses is about 1 in 785. The two players at the table are living in different games, even though the wheel is the same.
How hard each bet swings
The standard deviation per unit staked is the cleanest single measure of swing. On a single-zero wheel:
- Straight up: 5.84
- Split: 4.07
- Street: 3.28
- Corner: 2.80
- Six line: 2.21
- Dozen or column: 1.40
- Even money: 1.00
A straight-up bet swings almost six times harder than red. Over a session that means the straight-up player’s result could land far above or far below the average loss, while the red player’s result tends to sit closer to it.
Every bet below costs the same on average: 2.70 % of what goes on the table, so C$27.03 over 1,000 spins at C$1. The numbers become vivid when you set that next to the chance of being ahead after a fixed run of C$1 bets, worked out exactly from the binomial distribution:
Swipe the table
| Bet | Ahead after 37 spins | Ahead after 1,000 spins |
|---|---|---|
| Straight up | 26.4 % | 45.1 % |
| Corner | 37.1 % | 36.1 % |
| Dozen | 42.3 % | 26.7 % |
| Red | 43.4 % | 18.8 % |
The straight-up figure at 1,000 spins looks generous, and it hides the cost. When the straight-up player is behind, they tend to be well behind, because a long dry spell drains C$1 a spin with nothing coming back. When the red player is behind, the shortfall is usually modest. Average both across every possible outcome and you land on the same 2.70 % of C$1,000, about C$27.03 for each of them. The red player is simply more likely to finish close to that figure. As the spins pile up, the chance of being ahead shrinks for every bet: red falls to 0.3 % after 10,000 spins, and even straight up, which needs a long run to settle, drops to 32.5 % after 10,000 spins and 7.3 % after 100,000.
Waiting for a single number
A straight-up player wants to know one thing: how long until my number comes in? On average the answer is 37 spins on a single-zero wheel, but the average hides a long tail.
About half the time, a chosen number shows up within 26 spins. One time in four, it takes longer than 51 spins. One time in ten, it takes longer than 84. At C$5 a spin, an 84-spin wait costs C$420 before the C$175 win arrives, and the number has no idea how long you have been waiting.
Outside bets have tails too, they are just shorter. A dozen loses five spins in a row about 14 % of the time, and ten in a row about 2 % of the time. Even money loses five in a row about 3.6 % of the time on a single-zero wheel.
These waits are why progression systems are dangerous on inside bets in particular. A player who raises the stake after every miss while waiting for one number can reach the table maximum, or the end of the budget, long before an 84-spin drought ends. Our Martingale article runs the same problem for even-money bets with real table limits.
What this means at the table
If you want a session that lasts and a result you can roughly predict, outside bets do that. A C$100 budget at C$5 a spin on red will usually last a long while, with small ups and downs around a slow decline.
If you want a shot at a large single win and you accept that most sessions will end with nothing to show, inside bets do that. The same C$100 at C$5 on one number can vanish in twenty spins without a single hit (that happens about 58 % of the time) or jump by C$175 on the first spin.
Session length tells the same story from another angle. If you play for an hour at a live table with around 60 spins, a straight-up player will hit their number once or twice in a typical hour and go the whole hour without a hit roughly one time in five. A red player will win around 29 of those 60 spins and lose around 31. The second player has more to do and less to worry about; the first has long quiet stretches and the occasional jolt.
Neither approach is smarter. Our judgement, plainly: pick the swing you are comfortable with, then pick the table with the lowest edge, because that second choice is the only one that changes what you pay. And whichever you choose, decide in advance what the session is allowed to cost. Our responsible gambling page explains the deposit and time limits that registered casinos offer.
Table limits shape the choice too
Limits are set per bet type, and that quietly favours outside bets for larger stakes. A table with a C$5 minimum might cap a straight-up at C$100 but allow C$1,000 on red. Inside minimums work the other way: many tables accept C$1 chips on numbers as long as the total on the grid meets the table minimum. So a small budget can spread across several inside bets, while a large single stake usually has to go outside. Check the placard or the game’s information panel before deciding.
Mixed bets and “covering the table”
Many players combine both kinds: a dozen for steadiness plus a couple of straight-ups for excitement. The swing of the combination falls somewhere between the two; the edge stays at 2.70 % of the total stake.
Some systems try to cover most of the wheel at once. The James Bond pattern, for instance, puts chips on 19 to 36, a six line and zero. It wins on a majority of spins and loses heavily on the rest, and its edge is still 2.70 %. Our strategy section runs that pattern and the progression systems through the numbers. None of them changes the house edge.
Call bets: the racetrack shortcuts
European and French tables often have an oval “racetrack” printed beside the grid. It lets you place bets by section of the wheel instead of by number. Voisins du Zéro covers the 17 numbers around zero with nine chips; Tiers du Cylindre covers the 12 numbers opposite zero with six splits; Orphelins covers the remaining eight numbers with five chips.
These are just bundles of splits, streets, corners and straight-ups, so they behave like a mid-swing inside bet and carry the usual edge. Their real use is speed, and on live tables they save a lot of clicking. Pragmatic Play’s Mega Roulette, for example, offers Voisins, Tiers and Orphelins as racetrack bets on its European layout. If you prefer to play online with a real wheel and a dealer, our live roulette guide compares the tables available in your province.
A note on the zero bet
Can you bet on zero itself? Yes. Zero is an inside number like any other: C$1 straight up on 0 pays C$35, splits with 1, 2 or 3 pay 17 to 1, and the 0-1-2 and 0-2-3 trios are paid as streets at 11 to 1. Players who “protect” outside bets with a chip on zero are just adding another inside bet at the same 2.70 %. It smooths the result on a zero, and costs exactly what it adds.
You might wonder whether anything about the zero pocket is special for the player. Only this: it is the one number that no outside bet will ever touch, so it is the one pocket where a whole table of outside players loses together, and the one where the dealer’s sweep takes longest.