Insider Tips: Best Roulette Numbers to Bet On

This is a fascinating subject, and one that is relatively easy to talk about, but not so easy to solve.

I could (and will) tell you about the best roulette numbers that most players liked to bet when I was dealing.

Obviously, birthdays, wedding anniversaries and so on take pride of place, but there are several numbers that are just favorites, and there is no apparent reason – they just are.

Once you have finished reading this article, you will know what the favored numbers are, what others are included in the list of favorite numbers and perhaps a little of the ‘why they are’, too.

Let’s get rolling . . .

What are the 10 best numbers on roulette?

Of course, the numbers that come up the most in people’s favorite numbers are their birthday, their spouse’s birthday, their wedding anniversary, the street address of the first house they ever owned and so on.

I’ve always thought that people are superstitious about those numbers because they come with a significant ‘this must be a lucky number’ because of what it represents.

If that’s the case, what about the zeroes, or the numbers from 32 to 36, which cannot be a birthday or wedding anniversary?  Hmmm – not too much to say about those.

When I started doing the research for this article, there were some numbers that I agreed with, and some that had me scratching my head a little.

They just randomly drop chips around the layout, corners, splits, straight-ups and so on until they have ‘the right amount’ of chips spread around the layout.

Then they stop and wait for the ball to drop in their (hopefully) winning number.

A few of the articles claimed 23 and 24, but I never saw them bet together.

But there is no doubt that the real favorite numbers that I saw as a dealer were as follows:

17. Seventeen is the most common number that players would bet without the additional reason of ‘it’s my birthday, wedding anniversary’ etc.

So why 17?

It’s right in the middle of the layout, it’s in the middle column and middle dozen so all the options of ‘how to get to it’ are there, and it is a split away from one of the second favorites, number 20.

Sean Connery, the original James Bond, hit a famous triple on the number 17 in Italy

He won the equivalent of over $200,000 in today’s money by betting (and hitting) 17 three times in a row.  His involvement in it is not consciously known in the roulette world, as it’s just part of the ’17 is a lucky number’ legend around the game.

And just to be clear – it was Sean Connery, regular Joe, not Sean Connery playing James Bond in a movie that did it.

The 17/20  split may be the most popular split on the layout. The bet certainly shows up a lot.

And then, for me, the next most common number would be the 32.

It is in the middle column, and the middle of the third dozen, so again, it’s an easy ‘any way you want to get to it’ number to bet.

Interestingly, the research I did never mentioned the 32. Not once. And yet it was one of the most requested numbers to bet on when I was dealing.

I would receive the five-piece, ’32 and all the splits’ bet several times a day, most days when I was dealing.

At the time, I was a dealer and didn’t bother too much as to ‘why that bet’ was requested so often. But now, upon reflection, perhaps there was a strategy to what was going on that went right over my head all those years ago.

32 is a red number, and a popular one. But the four associated splits are all black numbers.

29, 31, 33, and 35 are all black.  The 32 is right next to the zero, and those four numbers are all part of half of the wheel that extends anti-clockwise from the zero around to the 24.

From 32 anticlockwise to 23 is a 22-number chunk of the wheel, and if you add the 17, which is approximately in the middle of the remainder of the wheel, you cover 15 of the 23 numbers in that section of the wheel.

With three 5-piece bets on three center-column numbers of 17, 23 and 32 – with a double up bonus on the 20 if it hits - you cover almost half of the wheel.

So 23 as well?

Yes, 23 as well, and often as a five-piece bet, including the associated splits. And yes, I know 24 is one of the splits of 23.

But I never saw 23 and 24 separated out, without the other three splits of 20, 22, and 26, or as a part of The Tiers.

But why the 23, and the 17, and the 32?

Which would often be bet as a set of three numbers and always included ‘. . . and the splits . . .’.

Back then, I just dealt the game, but now, I can see the strategy.

In the UK, then and today, we would use a French wheel with a single zero.

And by betting 17, 23, and 32 and the associated splits (which included 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 29, 31, 33, and 35), the player would cover 15 out of 23 numbers on one side of the French wheel.

(It doesn’t work on the American wheel at all, but almost half of the French wheel was completely covered).

And for players who were used to betting the Announced Bets, having that much coverage was just a normal thing to do.

Things that make you go hmmm . . .

Other lucky numbers include 7.

In all societies, there are reasons why 7 is considered lucky.

• Hindus have the 7 higher worlds and the 7 lower worlds.
• The Muslims walk around the Kaaba 7 times when making the Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca.
• The Christian God made the world and then rested on the 7th day.
• The five elements of Confucianism, when added to the yin and yang, complete the 7 degrees of society’s natural order and promote world harmony.

In Western society, there has always been a bit of magic attached to the number 7.

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, the 7th son of the 7th son, Anne of the Seven Gables – even Willie Dixon was not immune to it in his song ‘Hoochie Coochie Man, Muddy Waters sings, ‘On the 7th hour, of the 7th day, of the 7th month, 7 doctors say [. . .] and then he finishes off the verse with, ‘I’ve got 700 dollars, don’t you mess with me’.

And the number 3 is also one of the lucky numbers. Good things always come in threes and the number 3 represents the Holy Trinity, so it’s considered a lucky number in the West.

In Asian culture, the number 8 is generally considered to be a lucky number. So that may be a number that is bet quite a lot with Asian players.

January 29th, 2025 is the first day of the Year of the Snake, so I anticipate that the Snake Bet will be a popular bet, at least for the upcoming winter and early spring.

The Snake Bet consists of 12 red numbers and winds its way down the layout from side to side.

With the Chinese tradition of giving out red envelopes with lucky cash inside them at the Lunar New Year, this bet on all those red numbers will almost certainly be popular at the end of January 2025.

When I was dealing roulette in the UK, we would accept all the French ‘Announced Bets’ on our English layout but using a French (i.e. single zero) wheel.

For the French Announced Bets, the most popular bet by far would be Les Tiers Du Cylindre, which is a 6-piece bet on 6 Splits, covering 12 numbers, like this:

The bet would include 1 chip each on the 5-8, 10-11, 13-16, 23-24, 27-30, and 33-36 Splits.

Usually shortened to The Tiers (pronounced ‘The T-Air’), it covers 12 numbers, or almost 1/3 of the wheel in a section that is opposite the zero on the wheel.

Requests for this bet would come in 4 or 5 times more often than the requests for the Voisins du Zero, or the Orphans.

Numbers to avoid

13 is thought to be unlucky in most of the West. The superstition is generally thought to be tied to the Last Supper, where Jesus and his 12 disciples had their last meal together.  Judas Iscariot was the 13th at the table.

Tall buildings and hotels quite often omit the 13th floor, going straight from the 12th to the 14th floor.

As a sidebar, I played football as a central defender and wore the number 13. When asked why I would choose to wear that unlucky number, I always took the position that it was ‘… unlucky for my opponent, not for me…’

Even though I was not (and am not) superstitious, I still used a superstition to justify my wanting to play in the number 13 shirt.

In Asian culture, the number four is always omitted from the numbered player positions on a Baccarat table because it sounds like the word for ‘death’ when said aloud in Mandarin. No one wants to sit in that spot if it’s identified by the number 4.

Some players like to think that the 0 (and the 00 on an American wheel) are considered unlucky because they are green (as opposed to the red or black of the rest of the numbers). Some players think that’s the case, but the players I dealt to didn’t seem to have an opinion on that, one way or the other.

Roulette myths

Over the years, many myths have grown up around the roulette game, so let’s dispel three of those right now.

Myth: Roulette has a pattern.
My response: There is no pattern to roulette.

We humans love to try and see patterns where there aren’t any, and roulette is one of the worst offenders.

The casino operators (and yes, I was one) like to feed this psychological phenomenon by including the scoreboard, an electronic billboard that lists the last 20 numbers to show up.

In a game that was (and is) specifically designed to embrace chaos, there is no pattern to the game – even though the scoreboard seems to indicate that there might be.

As a Vice President of Casino Operations, I used to make sure we had a scoreboard on all the roulette games because our players wanted to see the previous numbers that had hit.

Of course, it didn’t make any difference to the outcome of the next spin, or any of the subsequent spins.

There is no pattern to follow in roulette.

Myth: Betting strategies change the house edge or the winning numbers.
My response: No, they don’t.

There is no strategy ever devised that can change or reduce the House Advantage.

Over the centuries, there have been dozens (hundreds?) of roulette strategies invented. The Martingale, the Fibonacci, the D’Alembert, the LaBouchere, the Bond, James Bond, et al.

And not one of them changes the House Advantage or the winning numbers.

It simply doesn’t work that way.

Myth: All roulette games have the same house edge.
My response: No, they don’t.

A single zero European (also called French) wheel has a House Advantage of 2.7% on every bet on the layout.  

If you add the La Partage or En Prison rule, it reduces the HA down to 1.35% on the even money bets of Red/Black, High/Low, and Even/Odd.

On a double zero American wheel, the House Advantage is 5.26%, except on the ‘Basket’ or ‘Top Five’ bet, which is a bet on 0, 00, 1, 2, and 3.  The HA on that particular bet on an American wheel is 7.89%, which makes it one of the worst bets on any game in the casino.

And on a Triple Zero wheel, the HA is 7.69% on every bet. Again, one of the worst bets on any game in the casino.

The only reason that the VP of Operations has the Triple Zero game on her (or his) casino floor is to take advantage of inexperienced players and increase the casino’s revenue.

There is no benefit to the players at all.

Don’t ever play Triple Zero roulette because you just can’t overcome the House Advantage.

Conclusion

So what are the best numbers to bet on roulette? It turns out the most popular numbers in roulette are based on superstition, myth and some pretty weird theories.

There are no ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ numbers.

There are no patterns to seek out, and even if you think you’ve found one, you haven’t.

The most popular numbers are 17, 7 and perhaps 23. Number 3 is in the mix. The unpopular numbers are 13, 0 and 00, and I’ve seen number 6 mentioned, too.

And all of that is okay, because it’s bad luck to be superstitious, right?

And good luck to everyone!