Aug 10

Roulette in French means ‘small wheel’. It is a gambling game played in casinos. In this game, the players may place bets on numbers, range of numbers, odd numbers, even numbers or colors. A roulette wheel has three major parts; ball track in which is the outer track of the wheel where ball spins; bottom track is the innermost part of the wheel which remains stationary and the biased wheel which has the numbers. The Croupier, French word for dealer, spins the wheel in one direction and the ball in opposite direction in a circular track which is running around the wheel. When the ball looses its momentum, it falls on one of the colored and numbered pockets of the wheel. This is the winning number of color. The roulette wheel pockets are numbered from 1 to 36 and every alternate pocket is red and black in color. The green pocket has a number 0. There is a particular sequence to the numbers which is different in both ‘single zero wheel’ and ‘double zero wheel’. Roulette in its present form has been in use in France since the late 18th century. In Germany, in 1843, two Frenchmen had introduced single zero style roulette wheel as all other casinos were offering double zero styled traditional wheels. With Germany abolishing gambling in 1860’s, these Frenchmen moved to Monte Carlo, most famous gambling destination in Europe then. They introduced the single zero wheel there and it became popular in Europe after that. But in US, double zero wheels is still very popular.  Earlier, in some American roulette wheels, there was a single zero, a double zero, numbers from 1 to 28 and an American eagle. Roulette is also called ‘king of Casino games’ because of the glamour attached to it.