Pinning down "Are roulette wheels all the same?" is done at the wheel. Roulette looks like pure chance, and it is, but the rules still decide how much any bet costs. A European wheel has one green zero, an American wheel adds a second, and French tables add rules that return half of some losing bets. Knowing which wheel is in play, what each bet pays and what the zero takes is most of what there is to know about playing roulette well.
No strategy can beat roulette, because every spin is independent and every bet carries the same edge. Betting systems change the size and rhythm of stakes, not the odds, and no pattern makes it possible to predict the next number. A player can still be good at roulette in a narrower sense: choosing a single zero wheel, sticking to a budget and knowing when to stop is how to play roulette effectively. Can anyone really win? In a session, yes; over many sessions, the edge does the rest.
Speed matters as much as the edge. A busy live table manages around forty spins an hour, while an automated wheel or an online game can run several times as many, and each spin charges the same percentage of whatever is staked. Whether roulette is worth playing depends on treating that cost as the price of entertainment: at a slow table a fixed budget lasts an evening, at a fast screen the same budget can be gone in minutes.
Choosing a single zero wheel, holding to a fixed budget and knowing when to stop is the only approach that works, since the edge stays constant.
The European wheel has 37 pockets with one zero, the American 38 with a zero and a double zero, which raises the house edge from 2.7 to 5.26 percent. The numbers are also placed in a different order, and variants such as double ball roulette add payouts of their own.
Neither: each colour holds eighteen pockets, streaks say nothing about the next spin, and zero counts as neither, so even money bets lose on it.
Each spin charges the same share of the stake, so a live table at about forty spins an hour drains a budget far slower than a fast online game.
Systems only alter the size and rhythm of stakes; every spin is independent and every bet keeps the same edge, so no pattern predicts the next number.