The Big Six Wheel

The Big Six Wheel is a game of chance mainly played in casinos. It consists of a large spinning wheel split into a number of segments with a pointer which indicates the winning segment. The game works with the players placing their bets on which segment they believe the wheel will stop on, the dealer then spins the wheel with the winners being whoever placed a bet on the segment the wheel eventually stops on.

There are many different variation of this game making providing the probabilities for all these variations impossible. However we will provide the most common version of this game, the UK and Australian versions. These versions have a large wheel of 52 segments which consist of 7 different outcomes.

The segments are split the exact same way for both the UK and Australian versions, however the payoff varies for each version. For this page we will label them segments A to G with the number of segments on each wheel being as follows:

Symbol	Number of Segments	Probability
A	1 of 52	1.92%
B	1 of 52	1.92%
C	2 of 52	3.85%
D	4 of 52	7.69%
E	8 of 52	15.39%
F	12 of 52	23.08%
G	24 of 52	46.15%

The odds offered for the UK and Australian version vary, both are provided below:

Symbol	Odds offered in UK	Odds offered in Australia
A	50 to 1	47 to 1
B	50 to 1	47 to 1
C	20 to 1	23 to 1
D	10 to 1	11 to 1
E	5 to 1	5 to 1
F	3 to 1	3 to 1
G	1 to 1	1 to 1

The nature of this game is that no matter which value comes out on the wheel the house has an advantage. The house advantage is calculated by subtracting the house's odds of winning by the players odds of winning. This is done with the following formula:

House Advantage = ((( total segments - number of segments on betted symbol) / total segments) x betting value) - ((number of segments on betted symbol / total segments) x return value)

For example, if we were playing in UK rules and placed a bet on C then the house advantage will be as follows:

House Advantage = (((52 - 2) / 52) x 1) - ((2 / 52) x 20) = 19.23%

Here is a list of the house advantage for each segment:

Symbol	House Advantage in UK	House Advantage in Australia
A	1.92%	7.69%
B	1.92%	7.69%
C	19.23%	7.69%
D	15.38%	7.69%
E	7.69%	7.69%
F	7.69%	7.69%
G	7.69%	7.69%

As you can see there Australian version of the game has the same house advantage for every segment. On the other hand, the house advantage varies greatly for the UK version with little advantage in segments A and B but with a large advantage in C and D.