DO YOU PREFER PLAYING ROULETTE?

Roulette is perhaps the best known and most widespread game of chance. This surprisingly straightforward game has been featured in so many stories, films and fantasies. Yet all it boils down to is guessing the number where the ball will come to a stop... That may sound simple, but the excitement mounts as the ball rolls!

The Origins of the Game

The French mathematician Blaise Pascal is often credited with inventing roulette, but this is not true. It is thought to have originated in 17th century Italy. The German encyclopaedia, Meyers Lexikon,

lists roulette as Italian roulette in around 1900. Roulette can probably trace its original roots back to the mediaeval Wheel of Fortune.

Evolving Further

Roulette reached France during the 18th century, where Louis XV tried in vain to ban it. In 1806, Napoleon Bonaparte restricted gambling to the gambling halls within the Palais Royal in Paris. It was also in France that the process developed into essentially what it is today: the croupier drops the ball against the direction in which the wheel is turning. Once he has declared “No more bets, please”, no more bets can be placed. The game is essentially exactly the same all around the world.

Famous

Attempts to ban the game may have contributed to making it so famous. From the Russian

author Dostoyevsky, who was addicted to roulette and took it as the basis for his

novel ‘The Gambler’, to cinematic works about the gambling wheel, roulette exerts a definite

fascination. As the physicist Stephen Hawking puts it: “All the evidence shows that God

was actually quite a gambler, and the universe is a great casino, where dice are thrown, and roulette wheels spin on every occasion.”