Roulette

Roulette is an all-time classic game at any casino. The basic game play of Roulette is very simple: you bet on a number or color, the wheel is spun in one direction and the ball in the opposite direction. The final resting position of the ball on the roulette wheel determines if you won or lost.

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The History of Roulette

It is difficult to hear the word “casino” without conjuring up the image of a spinning roulette wheel, the green layout and a croupier armed with a rake and dolly. The game is a classic, a gambling icon, popular with many gamblers due to its simplicity, stylishness and the promise of the big win. But where did the game of roulette come from?

The precise origins of roulette are unknown, though many claim that the game is based on one of several older, wheel based games, such as “E.O.” or “Hoca”. It is likely that roulette is simply a combination of many games rather than having developed from just one source, as man’s inclination to gamble is as old as time and it would be no surprise if primitive gambling games were devised utilising a wheel, shortly after its invention.

The murky history of roulette’s development has spawned many a myth, the most popular being that the game’s creators sold their souls to Satan himself, in order to learn the workings of the roulette wheel. Surely it can’t just be coincidence that all of the numbers in the game add up to 666, can it?

Another speculative theory about roulette is that Blaise Pascal invented the game by accident, when undertaking his famous work into the creation of a perpetual motion machine. It is highly unlikely that this story holds any water, however.

The game that we recognise today was certainly played by the French aristocracy in the late eighteenth century and in those days, the wheel featured the double zero pocket, as seen on today’s American tables. The single zero wheel was invented in France, but much later and was only really popularised in Monte Carlo. It eventually spread throughout Europe, whilst America retained the double zero wheel.

Roulette first appeared in America in the nineteenth century and it is likely that the French were responsible for introducing the game originally, as New Orleans produced the earliest, successfully commercial gambling in the US. Like much of roulette’s history though, this isn’t certain, as there are theories to suggest that the English may have been behind the move.

In the modern era, the widespread development of casinos across the world, coupled with the internet bringing the game into people’s homes, has given the roulette player more options than ever before to enjoy the delights of the iconic casino classic