Whatever happened to Betfair Zero Roulette?

Once upon a time, there was a zero roulette table at Betfair. I remember when it first came out, I was puzzled by it. By all rights, you shouldn’t play any other roulette game. Even roulette with La Partage can’t compete with a roulette table with no house edge.

Casinos make money with the house edge. In the case of roulette, its 2.70%. Over an evening thats very lucrative. With zero edge though, the casino can only break even in the long run. I figured that maybe its because Betfair have a large bankroll compared to the player and in the long run, the player would go bankrupt before Betfair would.

This maybe true against a single punter but collectively the punters have more of a bankroll than Betfair have. I think this is why they discontinued the game. All those small players losing £10-£20 didn’t make up for the lucky players winning hundreds or thousands. If they did, they’d still have the game.

I confirmed that they’d discounted the zero roulette table sometime in late 2013.

This was the promo video for Betfair Zero

The strange thing is that they have zero baccarat still as well as zero blackjack. I can understand zero blackjack, as you have to play perfectly to get the house edge down to zero and most people don’t play perfectly. But with the baccarat, its a game of pure luck, like roulette. You just chose to bet on the banker, player or draw. I like to think of it as roulette with cards as there’s nothing you can do to influence the result, unlike something like blackjack or 3 card poker.

You can still play some great roulette games at [sc:betfairtxt]Betfair but if you want a roulette table with a low house edge, make sure you get one with La Partage and only play on the outside.