Roulette is a casino game that involves spinning a wheel and betting on numbers. Each number on the wheel corresponds to a color or grouping, and players can also make bets on whether the number is odd or even. The house edge is based on the fact that 38 numbers are possible (plus 0 and 00), while the payouts for bets are based on the odds of hitting them.
Roulette’s origins are obscure, and it is not clear who invented the game. What is certain is that it emerged in the late 18th century from a hybrid of two strands: wheel-and-ball banking games and number-betting lottery. The numbered wheel transforms mechanical spectacle into a matrix of granular odds; bank-reserved outcomes translate into the zero pockets; and the betting cloth codifies both traditions into the single instrument now dealt worldwide.
The earliest unambiguous reference to modern roulette dates from Jacques Lablee’s book, La Roulette, ou Histoire d’un joueur, published in 1801/02. This description describes a wheel with slots numbered 1 to 36 and two additional ones—0 and 00—explicitly reserved for the bank. This essential structure remains the basis of modern casino roulette.
A Roulette wheel consists of a solid wooden disk slightly convex in shape with alternating colored or marked compartments (called frets or “canoes” by roulette croupiers) and numbered segments, along with a pair of green pockets labeled 0 and 00. The pockets are separated by a metal plate with the same numbers, and the resulting arrangement is called a “canoe.” The word itself derives from a French expression meaning “little canoe,” reflecting the wheel’s compact size.
In the 1860s, roulette was a rage in America’s frontier gambling halls, where it flourished in unregulated conditions before being brought under state supervision. During this period, practical innovations emerged to combat cheating and other problems. Wheels were moved to the top of tables to prevent hidden devices; and betting layouts were simplified to speed play and reduce disputes. These adjustments shaped American roulette into the distinctive form that is now used in casinos across the country.
Few games of chance have captured the popular imagination as roulette has. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Gambler (1866) evokes the psychological torment of a man consumed by roulette in a German spa town, and it is now widely seen as both a riveting story and a profound meditation on compulsion, chance, and freedom. In the 20th century, researchers like Edward O. Thorp and Claude Shannon developed wearable computers to track ball and wheel data, and they confirmed that with precise information one can forecast sectors of the roulette wheel with a statistical edge. Yet despite this evidence, casino wheels remain functionally random in practice.
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