The game of roulette, which is played with a spinning wheel and a colored ball, has fascinated gamblers for centuries. It is a paradoxical combination of elegance and risk, and it embodies the inexorable inevitability of the house edge. Its essential format has barely changed, and it continues to thrive despite the rise of online casinos and the proliferation of gambling devices. In fact, few other casino games have captured the popular imagination like roulette.
The history of roulette is inextricably linked to the evolution of modern probability theory. In 1654, Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat exchanged letters on the problem of points, laying the foundations for modern mathematics and establishing a link between chance and science. As roulette grew in popularity throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, it became a cultural icon of glamour and death, inspiring literature, art, and even film.
While the game may seem random, it is a deterministic physical system, and advances in the 20th century made it possible to forecast certain sectors of the wheel with a high degree of accuracy. These findings prompted casinos to adopt more stringent standards for wheel maintenance and oversight, but the basic structure of the game has remained unchanged.
Unlike most other table games, roulette chips do not display a denomination on their faces, though the color does indicate a value. Each player purchases a set of chips, each with a unique color and value. Players place the chips on the betting table before each spin, and they remain their property until the dealer announces “No more bets.” When the wheel stops spinning, the dealer will signal that all bets are settled, and the winnings will be distributed.
Roulette flourished in the teeming underground gambling economy of Paris in the 1790s, despite royal prohibitions. Municipal complaints and ordonnances list roulette alongside Roly-Poly and number lotteries, and a description of a modern wheel with numbered compartments, a betting tableau of columns, dozens, and even-money wagers on red/black, odd/even, and high/low appears in the first unambiguous source dated to 1801/02.
The essential format of a modern roulette wheel consists of a solid wooden disk slightly convex in shape, separated by metal partitions called frets and containing thirty-six compartments (or pockets) arranged nonconsecutively in rows from 1 to 36. Two green compartments on European-style wheels carry the numbers 0 and 00, while American-style wheels have two additional green zeros. Each number costs a different amount to complete, depending on its location on the layout.
The roulette board features a variety of betting options, but the most common bets are straight-up, split, and corner. Straight-up bets pay 35 to 1, while split bets cover four adjacent numbers, resulting in higher payouts but lower probabilities of winning. Corner bets cover six adjacent numbers in two horizontal rows, while double street bets cover 12 consecutive numbers in one vertical row. Other bets are based on the symmetry of numbers and groups of numbers, or whether the winning number is odd or even.