The game of Roulette is named after the French word meaning “small wheel”. It is widely popular in casinos and on the internet. In the game, a croupier spins a wheel in one direction and then turns a ball in the opposite direction. The ball rotates along the circumference of a tilted circular surface until it eventually stops and falls into a coloured numbered pocket on the wheel. The number of slots in the wheel depends on where you play roulette. If you’re playing in Europe, the wheel only has 37 slots, in America, it has 38. All players may choose to place bets on a number to win, the colour of the pocket, or whether the number will be odd or even. For the most part, the design is universally the same, and the betting structure remains intact. With the advent of the online casinos in USA the roulette continues to be popular among the online gambling community.
Roulette first appeared in France during the 18th century. The roulette wheel is widely believed to be a fusion of the English wheel games Roly-Poly, Ace of Hearts, and E.O., and the Italian board games of Hoca and Biribi. The name roulette was already assigned to a French board game at the time. The game has been played in its current form since around 1796 in Parish. The earliest description of roulette in its current form is found in a French novel “La Roulette, ou le Jour” by Jaques Lablee. In the story, a roulette wheel is described in the Palais Royal in Paris. This books description included the house pockets and two betting paces which contain the bank’s two numbers. In 1843, the German spa casino town of Homburg introduced the single “0” style roulette wheel with the help of two Frenchmen, Francois and Louis Blanc. This wheel was brought in to compete against other casinos which offered the traditional wheel with single and double zero house pockets.
In some forms of early America roulette wheels, there were numbers 1 through 28, plush a single and double zero, and an American Eagle. In the 1800s, roulette spread all over Europe and the USA, becoming one of the most famous and most popular of all casino games. When the German government abolished gambling in the 1860s, the Blanc family moved to the last legal casino operating in Monte Carlo. It was there that they established a gambling mecca for the elite of Europe. In the United States, the French double zero wheels made its way up the Mississippi from New Orleans. After its long trek north, it then headed westward.
Because of rampant cheating by both operators and gamblers, the wheel had to eventually be placed at the top of the table to prevent any type of devices from manipulating the outcome of the ball. The betting layout was also simplified to make it easier for everyone to grasp game-play. Many researchers tried to deduct the way the ball rolls at a roulette. This eventually evolved into the American style roulette game. The American version is more simplified betting and fast-paced action, using either a single or double zero wheel. This version now dominates most of the casinos around the world.
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