A Brief Look at Roulette History

Roulette is a fascinating game and a look at Roulette history shows that Roulette players have been waiting eagerly for the ball to drop along the Roulette wheel for centuries. The very first evidence we have about the game is from 18th century France. An inventor by the name of Blaise Pascal had been working on the elusive perpetual motion machine when almost by accident he created the first Roulette wheel. This wheel was adopted to the needs of several existing French and English games until a whole new game, that of Roulette was created. Since then, Roulette players have been playing the game in its present form. But there is more to Roulette history than that.

Roulette History References

One of the first descriptions of the rules of modern roulette can be found in a French novel La Roulette. This novel talks about a Roulette wheel in the Palais Royal in Paris in 1796. Here's what it says about the Roulette wheel slots that are reserved for the House (today's green 0 and 00 slots): There are exactly two slots reserved for the bank, whence it derives its sole mathematical advantage." The book also describe the table layout that the Roulette players would gather around with: "...two betting spaces containing the bank's two numbers, zero and double zero." This book which is often cited in discussions of Roulette history was published in 1801. Yet there is an even earlier reference to Roulette history in the annals of historic Quebec which in 1758 banned the games of "dice, hoca, faro, and roulette." Was this the same Roulette that we play today with Roulette players around a Roulette wheel? It seems very likely that it was.

Roulette History in Germany

It was not until 1843, in the German spa casino town of Homburg where we see a reference to a Roulette wheel that had a single "0" space. Almost every other Roulette wheel until that time had multiple house slots. Yet in Hamburg, a casino wanted a game that would give players better odds and hence have an advantage over other places offering the game. At the time, there were even some examples of a Roulette wheel with three house slots.

Roulette History Spreads

Later on, in the late nineteen century roulette spread all over Europe and the U.S.A. It become one of the most famous and most popular casino games. This came despite the fact that there have been attempts to ban the game as a form of devil worship. Some noticed that if you add up all the numbers on the Roulette wheel, one through thirty-six, the resulting total is 666, a number that some associate with devil worship. Yet despite this controversy, the game of Roulette remains one of the most popular games in the world.