Popular searches:
The History of Roulette
The History of Roulette
Familiarly perceived as a purely French invention, the explicit origins of Roulette are actually shrouded in mystery. Indeed, with nations and empires as far apart as China, Rome and England all having asserted a claim as to its establishment, the true history of the game represents a veritable minefield of myths, legends and contentious assertions.
What appears certain, however, is that the modern-day version of the game, and particularly the wheel-based aspect, originated in post-Revolutionary France where it was given the name, Roulette - meaning 'little wheel'. It is also highly likely that the gambling aspect – with the house pockets and betting table – has grown as an amalgamation of several different games from the aforementioned countries.
To add to the confusion it would appear that the Roulette wheel was not initially intended to be a game but rather an instrument as part of a scientific investigation into perpetual motion. Designed by the mathematician Blaise Pascal it was an utter failure…and thankfully so, or gamers would spend their evenings sinking martinis while watching a ball circle a wheel for eternity!
Somehow, although again little is known of how, the ball and spinning wheel made themselves known to fashionable society during the 1790s. The earliest description of the roulette game in its current form is found in a French novel La Roulette, ou le Jour by Jaques Lablee, which describes a roulette wheel in the Palais Royal in Paris in 1796. The description included the house pockets, "There are exactly two slots reserved for the bank, whence it derives its sole mathematical advantage." It then goes on to describe the layout with, "...two betting spaces containing the bank's two numbers, zero and double zero." This version of the game went on to become known as American Roulette.
The history of the European version of Roulette actually dates from 1843 when the Frenchmen Francois and Louis Blanc debuted the single-zero table in Homburg, Germany. By increasing the chances of winning (while still allowing the house to keep its favour) the popularity of the game soared throughout the continent and the single-zero table became the standard in Europe’s casinos.
Worried by the popularity and perceived danger to public decorum governments in both France and Germany prohibited gambling in the public domain. Some quarters maintain that the decision was influenced by the popular fable that Francois Blanc had bargained with the Devil to secure the secrets of Roulette; a story based on the fact that all the numbers on the roulette wheel (from 1-36) add up to 666, the ‘Number of the Beast.’
True or not, by the 1860s the Blanc family were forced to move to the last bastion of gambling on the European mainland; Monte Carlo. The rest, as they say, is history. Monte Carlo established itself as the gambling Mecca of Europe and Roulette inherited its title as ‘King of Casino Games.’
In the United States, the French double zero wheel made its way Westwards, with the miners and gold speculators, as part of dubious gambling dens which sprang up in the second half of the 19th century. It eventually found a home in Las Vegas and saw a city transform itself from a stopover railroad town into the foremost gambling destination in the World.
Be the first to comment on this
If you are a Gambling.com member, please login at the top left of this page.
If you are not a Gambling.com member, please complete our sign up form—membership is free and it takes just a minute or two to sign up.
Bookmark this page: (What are these?)