The Roots and People of Roulette

It is still a dispute between game historians when Roulette actually began. Some believed that it started in China and was carried to Europe by the monks who did business with the Chinese traders. Although the most accepted beginning of Roulette is credited to the French mathematician Blaise Pascal who invented the roulette wheel in 1655.

In the 18th century Roulette became a highly played game because of its popularity with Prince Charles of Monaco. He introduced the game to his monarchy to alleviate the distress the economy was giving his people. It was also during this era that the modern roulette wheel, with its alternating colors, was used in a Paris casino.

In 1842 two Frenchmen, Francois and Louis Blanc added 0 to the wheel to increase the house odds of winning. A popular tale that the Frenchmen made a deal with the devil for the secrets of the Roulette due to the fact that when you add all the numbers on the wheel from 0 to 36 it would result to 666. Francois even established the very first casino in Monte Carlo where roulette became the most popular game.

Eventually, after the game spread throughout Europe, it reached the shores of America. The American casinos were not too keen on the small odds that the house had with these wheels. So they added a double 0 to the wheel to even the numbers out to 38. Later on they introduced the 31-pocket wheel so that the odds of the player winning are not that high.

The game further established its colorful history by people like Joseph Jagger, Thorp and Shannon and Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo.

In 1873 Jagger hired 6 clerks to monitor the outcome of the roulette wheels at Beaux-Arts casino in Monte Carlo. They found out that a certain number would always come up more than the other numbers. Jagger won $450,000 from this information before the casino management caught up to him.

Thorp and Shannon made a portable computer to predict the outcome of a roulette wheel. They tested it and predicted a +44% gain when betting on a favored octant. They brought the small device to be tested on the field and were able to get that +44% gain they had expected. However a malfunction in the device cut their experiment short.

Garcia-Pelayo used a computer at the Casino de Madrid to predict where the wheels would stop most of the time. He bets on these numbers and made himself a millionaire in just a couple of years before being caught by the authorities.

Today it is one of the most popular games that are being played in the casinos. It is a game of chance as exciting as its colorful history.