A History Of Roulette
Monday June 27th, 2011The game of roulette is known the world over. Whether in real life or fiction, the black and red roulette wheel is instantly recognisable and has become synonymous with wealth and glamour.
Originally from France, roulette translates as ‘small wheel’, but the game’s exact beginnings are shrouded in mystery. Over the years, many suggestions and stories have arisen regarding roulette’s conception, some more plausible than others.
The person most commonly associated with inventing the game is Blaise Pascal, a 17th Century mathematician and physicist. It is said that he inadvertently invented the roulette wheel whilst trying to create a perpetual motion machine.
While Pascal’s tale seems the more sensible, a more extraordinary tale involves a man by the name of Francois Blanc, who is said to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for the secrets of roulette. This tale is inspired by the fact that if you add up all the numbers on the roulette wheel, one through 36, it adds up to 666, the number of the beast.
Roulette first appeared in the gambling houses of Paris just before the beginning of the19th Century. When gambling was abolished in France, roulette crossed into Germany and then onto Monaco, where it gained a large following and is still played to this day.
Sometime in the 19th Century, the game travelled across the Atlantic and arrived on American soil. However, the Americans decided to make an alteration to the European version, they added an extra zero to the wheel, which gave the casino more of an advantage than on the traditional single zero wheel. The game proved very popular in the USA, and from there, it continued to spread around the world. These days it can be found in almost every casino, and can even be played online from the comfort of your own home.
The popularity of roulette has been reflected in all manner of material, from classic literature to film. Arguably its most famous cameo was in the 1942 film, Casablanca. The story goes that one of the film’s characters needs to win enough money in order to bribe a policeman. The casino owner takes pity on this character and rigs the roulette wheel. He then advises the man to bet on number 22, the character takes his advice and bets twice, winning both times. He is then told by the owner to cash in his winnings and never come back. There is also a very similar scene in the French film Run Lola Run, where the film’s hero wins on the same number consecutively. In real life the odds for such a win are 1368 to one.
Many films, such as Ocean’s 11, which focuses on people effectively cheating a casino, have been inspired by real life exploits. One of the most famous examples of exploiting a roulette game, is that of Joseph Jaggers, who in 1873, with the help of six others, observed all of the roulette wheels in the famous Beaux-Arts Casino in Monte Carlo.
They noted down all the outcomes of the six wheels, and upon studying the results they noticed that one of them had a clear bias. In the following days, Joseph Jaggers amassed £60,000 from playing on the bias wheel, which in the 19th Century was a staggering amount of money (around £3 million by today’s standards). In the end, the casino had to swap the wheels round and even dismantle the frets of the board. Jagger returned to England 2 million Francs better off, where he was popularly known as the Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo.
