Roulette is a simple game of pure chance. The croupier throws a small ball into a spinning wheel, and the players bet on where it will land. Some people try to beat the odds with betting systems, but it’s mathematically impossible to do so.
A low-risk strategy involves placing outside bets, which offer higher payouts. However, you should always familiarize yourself with the odds of each bet type before making a wager.
Variations
Roulette comes in a variety of variants, each with their own rules and payouts. The French variation, for example, offers the ‘En Prison’ and ‘La Partage’ rules, which can boost your winning potential by up to half of your wager if you lose an even-money bet on 0 (the house edge in this game is 2.7%). The double ball variant Double Ball Roulette offers higher payouts than European Roulette, but it uses different balls and has a slightly different layout.
Origins
It is believed that 17th-century French mathematician Blaise Pascal invented roulette. He supposedly did so as a byproduct of his work on creating a perpetual motion machine. However, many historians believe that the game had already been played for at least a century before Pascal’s version became popular in Paris. It is thought to be a variation of the English games roly poly and even-odd, as well as the Italian game Hoca.
However, it is nearly impossible to determine the exact origins of roullete. This is because it has so many similar ancestors. These include portique, hoca, bassette, and roly poly. It is also important to note that the word roullete itself derives from the Latin rotella, meaning “little wheel.” Therefore, it could have been named after any number of different types of rotating objects.