The origins of Roulette are typically thought to be from France; however like most casino games you will find the waters are a little muddy. It is hard to determine where the game truly came from. Most note the game was invented by Blaise Pascal, a mathematician in the 17th century. History of Roulette History of American Roulette & European Roulette. Roulette is a casino and gambling game, and its name has been derived. Chronological evolution of roulette. The earliest form of roulette came into practice in 17th Century in France. Legend of the devil’s game. Roulette History Games existed in Europe that were the precursors to roulette such as Roly-Poly (an English game that was probably imported from France), but roulette as we know it today emerged in France in the 18th century, and drew heavily on the work of Blaise Pascal in 1655, who was working to develop a perpetual motion machine.
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Roulette, perhaps, is the most mysterious of all casino games. It has always been surrounded by different myths and legends. Nobody knows exactly when and where the game was born. Soldiers in ancient Greece and Roman Empire played games using wheels or round shields while having rest between battles.
The roulette invention is ascribed to the French mathematician, writer and philosopher, Blaise Pascal. He invented the wheel in search for the perpetual motion machine in 1655. His machine failed, but the casino received the roulette wheel. Some think the French Dominican monks brought roulette to Europe to play in their monasteries at the end of 17th century.
Raw Roulette History
But according to other evidences, by the 18th century there had been a number of games very similar to roulette. The two of them are Hoca in Italy and E – O (Even and Odd) in England.
To play Hoca they used a circular table with 40 cups. The ball pushed from the centre of the table moved around the table and stopped in one of the cups. Players bet on those cups. There were three cups marked 0 which belonged to the casino. Cardinal Mazarin, chief minister of France, built Hoca casinos in the 17th century in order to collect money for the royal treasury.
E – O was widespread in England in the same century. An EO table was circular, without exact dimensions. Around the perimeter there were places for the stakes with the letters E and O. In the interior part of the table there was a gallery for rolling the ball. The most interior part was moved with the help of handles, whereas the ball moved round the gallery. This gallery had 40 niches: 20 marked with the letter E, and the other 20 had with the letter O on them. The ball stopped in one of the niches thereby determining who won. There were two bar holes belonging to the house.
Never mind how the game appeared the fact is that roulette had become very popular all over Europe by the end of the 18th century. The Russian Empress, Catherine the Great put a number of roulette wheels in her palace. In Turkey Sultan Selim III had several wheels in his palace and one in his harem. Roulette of that time had 36 black and red numbers, 0 and 00. Players could make the following bets – straight-up, odd or even, black or red, dozens, columns, etc., which are similar to the modern roulette.
Somewhere in the middle of the 19th century Francois and Louis Blanc introduced the roulette wheel with a single 0 style in German to compete against other casinos which had traditional wheels with 0 and 00. They say, the Blanc brothers sold their soul to the Devil to get the idea of roulette. The reason to this is that: the sum of all numbers on the wheel is 666 that is the Devil’s number.
French settlers brought the roulette to New Orleans and expanded westward. Many saloons in America set up roulette tables and the game became very popular. Roulette wheel had an extra slot labeled with either a green 00 or an American Eagle. This additional slot almost doubled the casino edge. However, we can see an earlier reference to the game published in regulations for Québec in 1758. It ran that the games of “dice, hoca, faro, and roulette were banned.
Nowadays a double zero version of roulette is called an American Roulette while a single zero game is called a European Roulette.
Roulette
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Roulette, (from French: “small wheel”), gambling game in which players bet on which red or black numbered compartment of a revolving wheel a small ball (spun in the opposite direction) will come to rest within. Bets are placed on a table marked to correspond with the compartments of the wheel. It is played in casinos worldwide. Roulette is a banking game, and all bets are placed against the bank—that is, the house, or the proprietor of the game. As a big-time betting game, it has had its popularity superseded in the United States and the Caribbean islands by others, notably craps, blackjack, and poker.
Fanciful stories about the origin of roulette include its invention by the 17th-century French mathematician Blaise Pascal, by a French monk, and by the Chinese, from whom it was supposedly transmitted to France by Dominican monks. In reality, roulette was derived in France in the early 18th century from the older games hoca and portique, and it is first mentioned under its current name in 1716 in Bordeaux. Following several modifications, roulette achieved its present layout and wheel structure about 1790, after which it rapidly gained status as the leading game in the casinos and gambling houses of Europe. During the years 1836 to 1933, roulette was banned in France.
Equipment
The roulette table is composed of two sections, the wheel itself and the betting layout, better known as the roulette layout. There are two styles of roulette tables. One has a single betting layout with the roulette wheel at one end, and the other has two layouts with the wheel in the centre. The wheel spins horizontally.
Heading the layout design, which is printed on green baize, is a space containing the figure 0 (European style) or the figures 0 and 00 (American style, although such wheels were used also in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries). The main portion of the design is composed of 36 consecutively numbered rectangular spaces, alternately coloured red and black and arranged in three columns of 12 spaces each, beginning with 1 at the top and concluding with 36 at the bottom. Directly below the numbers are three blank spaces (on some layouts these are marked “2 to 1” and are located on the players’ side of the table). On either side of these or along one side of the columns are rectangular spaces marked “1st 12,” “2nd 12,” and “3rd 12” on American-style layouts. On European-style layouts these terms are “12p” (première), “12m” (milieu), and “12d” (dernière douzaine). Six more spaces are marked “red” (rouge), “black” (noir), “even” (pair), “odd” (impair), “1–18” (low, or manque), and “19–36” (high, or passe).
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The roulette wheel consists of a solid wooden disk slightly convex in shape. Around its rim are metal partitions known as separators or frets, and the compartments or pockets between these are called canoes by roulette croupiers. Thirty-six of these compartments, painted alternately red and black, are numbered nonconsecutively from 1 to 36. On European-style wheels a 37th compartment, painted green, carries the sign 0, and on American wheels two green compartments on opposite sides of the wheel carry the signs 0 and 00. The wheel, its spindle perfectly balanced, spins smoothly in an almost frictionless manner.
The standard roulette table employs up to 10 sets of wheel checks (usually called chips). Each set is differently coloured; each traditionally consists of 300 chips; and there is one set for each player. The chips usually have a single basic value, although some casinos also sell chips of lesser value. The colour of the chips indicates the player, not the value of the chips. If a player wishes to buy chips of slightly higher value, the croupier places a marker indicating that value on top of the table’s stack of chips of the colour corresponding to the chips purchased. Most casinos also have high-value chips that can be wagered at any gaming table. Unlike roulette chips, these have their numbered values printed on them.
Bets
It is possible to place the following bets in roulette: (1) straight, or single-number (en plein), in which the chips are placed squarely on one number of the layout, including 0 (and also 00 on American layouts), so that the chips do not touch any of the lines enclosing the number; a winning single-number bet pays 35 to 1 (for each unit bet, a winning player receives his original bet and 35 matching units); (2) split, or 2-number (à cheval), in which the chips are placed on any line separating any two numbers; if either wins, payoff odds are 17 to 1; (3) street, or 3-number (transversale pleine), in which the chips are placed on the outside line of the layout, betting the three numbers opposite the chips; payoff odds on any of the three numbers are 11 to 1; (4) square, quarter, corner, or 4-number (en carré), in which the chips are placed on the intersection of the lines between any four numbers; payoff odds are 8 to 1; (5) line, or 6-number (sixaine or transversale six), in which the chips are placed on the intersection of the sideline and a line between two “streets”; payoff odds are 5 to 1; (6) column (colonne), or 12-number, in which the chips are placed on one of the three blank spaces (some layouts have three squares, marked “1st,” “2nd,” and “3rd”) at the bottom of the layout, thus betting the 12 numbers above the space; payoff odds are 2 to 1; (7) dozens (douzaine), or 12-number, in which the chips are placed on one of the spaces of the layout marked “12,” betting the numbers 1–12, 13–24, or 25–36; payoff odds are 2 to 1; (8) low-number or high-number, in which the chips are placed on the layout space marked “1–18” (manque) or on the space marked “19–36” (passe); payoff is even money; (9) black or red, in which the chips are placed on a space of the layout marked “black” (noir) or on a space marked “red” (rouge; some layouts have a large black or red diamond-shaped design instead of the words); payoff is even money; (10) odd-number or even-number, in which the chips are placed on the space of the layout marked “odd” (impair) or on the space marked “even” (pair); payoff is even money.
On layouts with a single zero (European style), the 0 may be included in a 2-number bet with any adjoining number, in a 3-number bet with 1 and 2 or with 2 and 3, and in a 4-number bet with 1, 2, and 3 at the regular odds for these bets. With the American-style 0 and 00, a 5-number line bet also is possible, the player placing his chips on the corner intersection of the line separating the 1, 2, 3 from the 0 and 00, with payoff odds of 6 to 1.
The play
The game begins when one of the croupiers (dealers) in attendance calls for the players to make their bets, which they do by placing chips on the spaces of the layout on any number, group, or classification they hope will win.
The croupier usually starts the wheel spinning in a counterclockwise direction and then spins a small ivory or plastic ball onto the bowl’s back track in the opposite direction. Players may continue to place bets while the wheel and ball are in motion until the ball slows down and is about to drop off the back track, at which time one of the croupiers announces that no more bets may be made.
Gbf Roulette History
When the ball falls and comes to rest between any two metal partitions of the wheel, it marks the winning number (or a 0 or 00), the winning colour, and any other permitted bet that pertains to a winning number or symbol. The dealer immediately announces the winning number and its colour and places a special marker on the corresponding number on the layout. He first collects all losing bets, not disturbing the chips that are resting on winning spaces, and then pays off any winning bets.