One of the most popular games in the casino is roulette, which has been played for centuries in land-based casinos but is now readily available from the comfort of your own home. Now you can feel like you are in Monte Carlo rubbing shoulders with the rich and powerful with even leaving your cozy confines.
The game began from modest beginnings but over time it has grown to symbolize elegance and luxury. Roulette is a French word for “little wheel”, and it should be easy to figure why: the game is played on a little wheel.
Beginnings
The game of roulette was invented by a pair of Frenchmen around 1796, although there were early forms of the game earlier in the 17th century. The game was lauded for its simplicity; a ball is spun in one direction by a dealer and the wheel is spun in the other direction and then the ball will eventually fall in a numbered space on the wheel. You bet on what space you think the ball will land in, and you also can also make other bets that you will find on a playing surface.
The game was then found out by Charles the Third, a prince in Monte Carlo and it was off and running from there as it became a staple of casinos there and that is why the game of roulette has that stigma of being a game of the rich. Monte Carlo is one of the more affluent places in the world and a place where rich people congregate to gamble, so roulette has always (and in some places, still has) been connected to the more well-off. But the game can be now played by anyone and the game can only grow more from being included in online casinos for the people that do not necessarily want to go out to a land-based casino.
Coming to America
Roulette was then brought from Europe to America sometime in the 19th century, and they decided to make their own roulette wheel, adding a single number as the European version of the wheel does not have the double-zero spot, and that spot alone managed to change the house edge from 2.7% to about 5.3%. This is why you should always choose to use the European wheel with only a single zero spot as it gives you a better chance of winning then the double-zero version of the wheel. Make sure you are familiar with both and that you know which game you are playing in your online casino.
However, roulette has been also associated with the devil as all the numbers on the wheel add up to a total of 66, and the myth is that one of the men that created the game, Francois Blanc, got the secrets of it from the devil himself. 666 is, of course, the “number of the beast”, so if you run into some bad luck on your roulette wheel, you know who to blame.
Otherwise, take a spin on the historic game and see if your lucky number cashes you in.