Roullete (from French for “little wheel”) is a casino game in which players bet on one or more of thirty-six numbers, various groupings of those numbers, the color red or black, whether the number is odd or even, and the presence or absence of a zero. Its fanciful origins include claims that it was invented by the 17th-century French mathematician Blaise Pascal, by Dominican monks, or by Chinese.
Roulette is a classic casino game, but it has a small following in America when compared to the popularity of slot machines, video poker, blackjack, or even craps. It does, however, attract big crowds in Monte Carlo and other European resort cities.
A roulette wheel consists of a solid wooden disk, slightly convex, with a segmented metal edge around which are positioned the compartments, known as frets by croupiers. Thirty-six of these compartments are painted alternately in red and black, while the two green compartments on American wheels carry the signs 0 and 1. A player’s winning chips are paid out in the form of a cheque made payable to that player’s account.