subject: Where Roulete Came From [print this page] Roulete was first devised in 18th century France. Blaise Pascal introduced an early form of the game in the 17th century while searching for a perpetual motion machine. The wheel is generally believed to be a fusion of the Italian board games of Hoca and Biribi, English wheel games Roly-Poly, Reiner, Ace of Hearts, and E.O., and "Roulete" from a French board game that already existed.
The game has been played in its present form since 1796 in Paris, early descriptions of the game are found in a French novel La Roulete, ou le Jour by Jaques Lablee, who describes the roulete wheel in the Palais Royal in Paris. The book was published in 1801.
It was in Germany in 1843 that Frenchmen Franois and Louis Blanc introduced the first wheel with a single zero in order to compete against other casinos in the area who offered the usual wheel with the single and double zero.
In some forms of early American wheels - as shown in the 1886 Hoyle gambling books, there were numbers 1 through 28, plus a single zero, a double zero, and an American Eagle. According to Hoyle "the single 0, the double 0, and eagle are never bars; but when the ball falls into either of them, the banker sweeps every thing upon the table, except what may happen to be bet on either one of them, when he pays twenty-seven for one, which is the amount paid for all sums bet upon any single figure."
In the 1800s, the game spread all over Europe and the U.S.A., becoming one of the most famous and most popular casino games. When the German government abolished gambling in the 1860s, the Blanca family moved to the last legal remaining casino operation in Europe at Monte Carlo, where they established a gambling mecca for the elite of Europe. It was here that the single zero roulete wheel became the premier game, and over the years was exported around the world, except in the United States where the double zero wheel had remained dominant.
A legend tells Franois Blanc supposedly bargained with the devil to obtain the secrets of roulete. The legend is based on the fact that the sum of all the numbers on the wheel (from 1 to 36) is 666, which is the "Number of the Beast".
The French double zero wheel slowly spread north from New Orleans and from there it went west. In the west, due to excessive cheating by both gamblers and operators, the wheel was eventually moved to the top of the table in order to prevent devices being hidden inside the wheel. It was at this time that the betting layout was simplified. Slowly the game because Americanized, setting itself apart from the traditional French style. The French version had slowly evolved with style and leisure in Monte Carlo, catering to the rich and powerful, while the American game evolved in gambling dens across the new territories. The American style had simplified betting and fast action, with either the single or double zero wheel, and this is what now dominates in most casinos around the world.
Monte Carlo, using the traditional single zero French wheel, and Las Vegas, using the American double zero wheel were the only two major casino towns of note in the early 20th century. Casinos were flourishing around the world by the 1970s, and in 2008 there were several hundred casinos all over the world offering roulete games. The double zero wheel can still be found in the U.S., the Caribbean, and South America, while the single zero wheel is preferred elsewhere.
