What is Roulette?

Roulette is a game of chance involving 37 or 38 numbered slots and a zero or double zero (on American roulette tables). The game is played with colored chips that each player gets to designate their value.

When betting, players must place their chips or cash on the table before the croupier announces “No more bets.” Each bet type has different odds and payouts.

Origins

The history of roulette is a bit murky. The game is believed to have been invented by a seventeenth-century French mathematician, Blaise Pascal. He is believed to have developed the roulette wheel as a byproduct of his work on a perpetual motion machine.

It is not clear, however, whether the game originated in this manner or spontaneously sprung from another game of chance. Historians have noted a number of games similar to roulette in structure, including the Italian game Biribi and the English game E-O (even and odd).

In any event, it is widely agreed that the modern version of roulette appeared in Paris in 1796. From then on, it became popular throughout Europe. The first European roulette was played with a single-zero wheel, while the American version of the game used a double-zero wheel.