A Brief History of Roulette

Roulette is French for “small wheel.” There are several interesting facts about the game’s origin. Here are a couple of them.

• The tale the history of roulette begins in France in 1655. The first revolves around the story of Blaise Pascal trying to find perpetual motion. He created a big wheel to for his experiments. One of his friends saw this and had a good idea to use this big wheel device for gambling.

• Then in 1842 two Frenchmen, Francois and Louis Blanc add a 0 to the numbers of the roulette wheel. There are now 37 numbers on the roulette, ranging from 0 to 36. Adding the 0 increases the house odds of winning. Another tells about the mysterious story of Francois Blanc who founded the first casino in Monte Carlo. They say he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for the secret of roulette. You don’t believe this story? Add all the number in the roulette wheel. The total is 666.

• China is another country that tries to take the credit for this game of wheel spinning numerological chance. Rumored to have been created in China and brought to the European countries through trade, the Chinese version of Roulette didn’t have numbers but had “animal” symbols on the wheel, which stood on a foundation that bore the numbers 666.

• The roulette’s current layout first appeared in Paris in 1765. French migrants brought the game to the U.S.A. and the first American casino became operational in New Orleans in the year 1800. A casino was opened in Monaco in 1861 that became the gambling business capital in Europe after a ban of casinos in 1873.

• Roulette history was made by one famous roulette player, Joseph Jagger. In 1873 he hired 6 clerks to record the outcomes of the roulette wheels at the Beaux-Arts Casino in Monte Carlo. Using this information he found that one number would come up more than any of the others and won $450,000 before management caught on.

Today, every casino across the globe has a roulette wheel to play. Roulette history is now over 3 and half centuries old. From its humble beginnings as a side project, roulette is now perhaps the most popular casino game in the world. The game is very popular because it is a simple, very easy to play game that is exciting and thrilling at the same time. It is unlikely that roulette's popularity will ever die.