Roulette
As a gambling game, Roulette had been in practice since 1796 in Paris. It is a casino game named after a French word which means ‘small wheel’. The pace of the game is tardy, soothing and leisurely. So much so, that you can nurse a fine drink along.
The game in Paris was played in almost the same form as it is been played today. But Roulette is said to have its origin in multiple other games. During the early 18th century an Italian ball game called ‘biribi’ was very popular. And later it got combined with another wheel game involving colours and not numbers. This gave birth to the modern Roulette form. Then in 1720 an English game called ‘Roly-poly’ acme into vogue. It was played with black and white slots. Roulette is said to be the hybrid formation of ‘biribi’ and ‘roly-poly’. Another Italian board game called ‘Hoca’ then Ace of Hearts and E.O., both English wheel games were also said to have a profound influence over the modern version of Roulette.
The earliest reference to the Roulette game is found in a French novel “La Roulette, ou le Jour” by Jaques Lablee, where roulette wheel is described in the Palais Royal in Paris in 1796. During the 1800s the game spread all over Europe and USA and eventually turned out to be the most popular and famous casino games. It was hailed as the ‘King of Casino games’. There is a legend around eth famous Blanc family of Monte Carlo. François Blanc is said to have apparently bargained with the devil to obtain the secrets of roulette. The legend is based on the fact that the sum of all the numbers on the roulette wheel (from 1 to 36) adds up to 666, which is the “Number of the Beast”.
The game is played where the players place their bets on a single number or a set of numbers or the color red or black. The croupier spins eth wheel in one particular direction and eth ball in eth opposite direction over the tilted circular track which runs around the edge of eth wheel. The winning number or color gets determined in this fashion as the ball falls on the wheel into one of the 37 (European Roulette) or 38 (American Roulette) colored and numbered pockets after losing momentum.
The pockets of eth Roulette wheel are numbered 1 to 36 with alternate colors of red and black. There is a green pocket with the number 0. The American Roulette has another green pocket marked 00. The pocket numbers have the following clockwise sequence.
Single-zero wheels: 0-32-15-19-4-21-2-25-17-34-6-27-13-36-11-30-8-23-10-5-24-16-33-1-20-14-31-9-22-18-29-7-28-12-35-3-26
Double-zero wheels: 0-28-9-26-30-11-7-20-32-17-5-22-34-15-3-24-36-13-1-00-27-10-25-29-12-8-19-31-18-6-21-33-16-4-23-35-14-2
The betting area on a Roulette table is covered with a cloth. It’s known as the ‘layout’. The layout can be either the single zero or the double zero. Selecting the number of pockets that the ball might land in the players place ‘inside’ bets and ‘outside bets’ are placed on the positional groupings of pocket and pocket colors. The types of bets can be: Straight Up, Split, Street, Corner, Six line and Trio.
There is a famous Albert Einstein quote: “You cannot beat a roulette table unless you steal money from it”. The strategies employed are: Martingale betting strategy, where the gambler doubles the bet after every loss, then there is another strategy called the Fibonacci system. But whatever the strategy, the casino’s advantage cannot be denied. The Labouchere System is a sequence betting strategy like the Martingale but the gambler is not required to risk his stake as quickly with dramatic double ups but rather involve the using of a series of numbers in a line to decide the bet amount, following a win or a loss.
