History of Roulette

Roulette is without a doubt one of the most popular casino games and is the game that is the most synonymous with the image of the casino, frequently featured in Hollywood films and TV shows dealing with the theme of gambling and casinos. However, the history of American roulette lays hundreds of miles and hundreds of years away in seventeenth century France. The very first forms of roulette have been traced back to the 1600s in France, where the famous mathematician Blaise Pascal, who is believed to have developed the game out of his fascination with perpetual motion devices, pioneered roulette. The name roulette actually comes from the French for ‘small wheel’ and obviously relates to the rotating wheel that is used in the game.

In 1832 the game was changed significantly by the gambling entrepreneurs Francois and Louis Blanc, who decided to make the addition of a ‘0’ on the wheel, in order to increase the house odds. This was the beginning of what is now known as European Roulette. It was Francois Blanc who actually opened the very first casinos, in the Monte Carlo region of southern France, and it is thought that the connections to the glamour of the Monte Carlo casino industry has led to roulette’s nickname as the ‘King of Casino Games’. However, around the same time, at the beginning of the 1800s, the game also reached the coast of the United States, particularly with the New Orleans area of Louisiana, where many of the very first European immigrants settled. The game quickly spread to the big, albeit illegal, gambling towns in California, where such games thrived with the frontier lifestyle. However, the American game operators made a further change to game play, which marked the transition to a new variation of the game, now referred to as ‘American Roulette’. The game operators added a further zero to the roulette wheel, to increase the house odds even further. In some early forms the double zero was even replaced by the great American eagle. In short, the major difference between the American and European variations of Roulette, is that in the American version of the game, the house odds are much greater, standing at 5.4%, whilst with the European version, the house odds are lower, at 2.7%.

Another difference in game play is in the use of chips. In American roulette, all chips used by the players are actually ‘non-value’ chips of the same value, but distinguished by different colors, which is agreed and determined at the time of purchase. The chips are then cashed at the roulette table. However, in European roulette standard casino chips are used, all of which may have different values but are actually all of the same color, and so both the player and the croupier must reply on memory to distinguish the value of the individual chips and the bets that were placed. This often results in a much more complicated game play, both for the player and the croupier. The size of the roulette tables also varies between the two types of the game. In general the European roulette table is much bigger, necessitating the use of a long tool, or ‘rake’ by the croupier, so that they are able to clear out the chips and distribute any winnings to the players. Since the American Roulette table is so much smaller, this enables the croupier to clear chips and allocate winnings by hand.

Although after the world war two period American gamblers became increasingly interested and tempted by the newer games of craps and blackjack, roulette is still one of the oldest casino games, and it is this sense of prestige that continues to attract players into the casinos, and online games, even today.

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