Roulette (named after the French word meaning "little wheel") is a casino game which was likely developed from the Italian game Biribi. In the game, a player may choose to place a bet on a single number, various groupings of numbers, the color red or black, whether the number is odd or even, or if the number is high or low. To determine the winning number, a croupier spins a wheel in one direction, then spins a ball in the opposite direction around a tilted circular track running around the outer edge of the wheel. The ball eventually loses momentum, passes through an area of deflectors, and falls onto the wheel and into one of the colored and numbered pockets on the wheel. The winnings are then paid to anyone who has placed a successful bet.
History
The first form of roulette was devised in 18th-century France. Many historians believe Blaise Pascal introduced a primitive form of roulette in the 17th century in his search for a perpetual motion machine. The roulette mechanism is a hybrid of a gaming wheel invented in 1720 and the Italian game Biribi. A primitive form of roulette, known as "EO" (Even/Odd), was played in England in the late 18th century using a gaming wheel similar to that used in roulette. The game has been played in its present form since as early as 1796 in Paris. An early description of the roulette game in its current form is found in a French novel La Roulette, ou le Jour by Jaques Lablee, which describes a roulette wheel in the Palais Royal in Paris in 1796. The description included the house pockets: "There are exactly two slots reserved for the bank, whence it derives its sole mathematical advantage." It then goes on to describe the layout with "two betting spaces containing the bank's two numbers, zero and double zero". The book was published in 1801. An even earlier reference to a game of this name was published in regulations for New France (Québec) in 1758, which banned the games of "dice, hoca, faro, and roulette". The roulette wheels used in the casinos of Paris in the late 1790s had red for the single zero and black for the double zero. To avoid confusion, the color green was selected for the zeros in roulette wheels starting in the 1800s.
In 1843, in the German spa casino town of Bad Homburg, fellow Frenchmen François and Louis Blanc introduced the single 0 style roulette wheel in order to compete against other casinos offering the traditional wheel with single and double zero house pockets. In some forms of early American roulette wheels, there were numbers 1 to 28, plus a single zero, a double zero, and an American Eagle. The Eagle slot, which was a symbol of American liberty, was a house slot that brought the casino an extra edge. Soon, the tradition vanished and since then the wheel features only numbered slots. According to Hoyle "the single 0, the double 0, and the eagle are never bars; but when the ball falls into either of them, the banker sweeps every thing upon the table, except what may happen to be bet on either one of them, when he pays twenty-seven for one, which is the amount paid for all sums bet upon any single figure".
In the 19th century, roulette spread all over Europe and the US, becoming one of the most popular casino games. When the German government abolished gambling in the 1860s, the Blanc family moved to the last legal remaining casino operation in Europe at Monte Carlo, where they established a gambling mecca for the elite of Europe. It was here that the single zero roulette wheel became the premier game, and over the years was exported around the world, except in the United States where the double zero wheel remained dominant.
In the United States, the French double zero wheel made its way up the Mississippi from New Orleans, and then westward. It was here, because of rampant cheating by both operators and gamblers, that the wheel was eventually placed on top of the table to prevent devices from being hidden in the table or wheel, and the betting layout was simplified. This eventually evolved into the American-style roulette game. The American game was developed in the gambling dens across the new territories where makeshift games had been set up, whereas the French game evolved with style and leisure in Monte Carlo. During the first part of the 20th century, the only casino towns of note were Monte Carlo with the traditional single zero French wheel, and Las Vegas with the American double zero wheel. In the 1970s, casinos began to flourish around the world. In 1996 the first online casino, generally believed to be InterCasino, made it possible to play roulette online. By 2008, there were several hundred casinos worldwide offering roulette games. The double zero wheel is found in the United States, Canada, South America, and the Caribbean, while the single zero wheel is predominant elsewhere.
Rules of play against a casino
Roulette players have a variety of betting options. "Inside" bets involve selecting either the exact number on which the ball will land, or a small group of numbers adjacent to each other on the layout. "Outside" bets, by contrast, allow players to select a larger group of numbers based on properties such as their color or parity (odd/even). The payout odds for each type of bet are based on its probability. The roulette table usually imposes minimum and maximum bets, and these rules usually apply separately for all of a player's inside and outside bets for each spin. For inside bets at roulette tables, some casinos may use separate roulette table chips of various colors to distinguish players at the table. Players can continue to place bets as the ball spins around the wheel until the dealer announces "no more bets" or "rien ne va plus".
When a winning number and color is determined by the roulette wheel, the dealer will place a marker, also known as a dolly, on that number on the roulette table layout. When the dolly is on the table, no players may place bets, collect bets or remove any bets from the table. The dealer will then sweep away all losing bets either by hand or by rake, and determine the payouts for the remaining inside and outside winning bets. When the dealer is finished making payouts, the dolly is removed from the board and players may collect their winnings and make new bets. Winning chips remain on the board until picked up by a player.
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