The Devils Game
Roulette or Small Wheel
Roulette is a casino and gambling game named after the French word meaning "small wheel". In the game, a croupier spins a wheel in one direction, then spins a ball in the opposite direction around a tilted circular surface running around the circumference of the wheel. The ball eventually falls on to the wheel and into one of 37 (in European roulette) or 38 (in American roulette) colored and numbered pockets on the wheel. Players place bets on the winning number and the color of the pocket, whether the number is odd or even, etc. |
Players can place a variety of 'inside' bets (selecting the number of the pocket the ball will land in, or range of pockets based on their position), and 'outside' bets (including bets on various positional groupings of pockets, pocket colors, or whether it is odd or even). The payout odds for each type of bet is based on its probability. The 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. Players can continue to place bets until the dealer announces "No more bets."
The first form of roulette was devised in 18th century France. The roulette wheel is believed to be a fusion of the English wheel games Roly-Poly, Ace of Hearts, and E&O, and the Italian board games of Hoca and Biribi, and then the name roulette from an already existing French board game of that title. The game has been played in its current form since as early as 1796 in Paris. The earliest 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 book was published in 1801. An even earlier reference to a game of this name was published in regulations for New France(Canada) in 1758, which banned the games of "dice, hoca, faro, and roulette." In 1842, fellow Frenchmen François and Louis Blanc added the "0" to the roulette wheel in order to achieve a house advantage. In the early 1800s, roulette was brought into the U.S. where, to further increase house odds, a second zero, "00", was introduced.
In some forms of early American roulette wheels - as shown in the 1886 Hoyle gambling books, there were numbers 1 through 28, plus a single zero, a double zero, and an American Eagle. According to Hoyle "the single 0, the double 0, and 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 1800s, roulette spread all over both Europe and the U.S., becoming one of the most famous and most popular casino games. Some call roulette the "King of Casino Games", probably because it was associated with the glamour of the casinos in Monte Carlo. (François Blanc actually established the first casinos there.) |
