What is a Roulette Wheel?
Roulette is a casino game of French origin, whose name in translation means "the small wheel". Players place chips on either one or a range of numbers, whether the number is odd or even, or if the number is red or black. A croupier, similar to a card dealer in a poker game spins a wheel, and then spins a ball in the opposite direction on a track that runs around the roulette wheel.
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History
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Roulette as we know it was invented in 18th century France. Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician, philosopher and physicist, is generally credited with developing a crude form of the game in the 17th century while trying to create a perpetual motion machine. The roulette wheel itself is a fusion of several games that already existed in England, such as Roly-Poly, Reiner, Ace of Hearts, and a French board game of the same name.
Roulette was first played at the Palais Royal in Paris in 1796. In the 1860s when the German government banned gambling, Francois and Lous Blanc, inventors of the "single zero" variation of roulette, moved to Monte Carlo, establishing one of the premier gambling cities in the world. By the mid 1800s, roulette had spread to Europe and the United States, and subsequently became one of the most popular casino games in history.
Wheel Sequence
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In traditional French roulette the pockets of a roulette wheel, in which the ball is caught when the wheel stops spinning, are labeled from 1 to 36, alternating between red and black, with a green 0 pocket. In the American version of roulette, there is a second green pocket, marked 00.
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Table Layout
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The felt area covering the top of the betting area where chips are placed is referred to as the layout. Traditional French roulette tables have a single zero layout, while newer American tables have a double zero layout. The French style layout places the wheel in the center of the table, with the layout on both sides of the wheel. The American table has the wheel on the far end of the table with the layout next to it.
Betting
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Roulette players can place two distinct types of bets. Inside bets, meaning a player is betting on a range of pockets or one particular pocket number, and outside bets, where a player bets on pocket color, or whether the number will be odd or even. Roulette tables generally have minimum and maximum bets, though these usually vary between inside and outside bets. Once the wheel is set in motion, players may still place bets until the croupier announces that no more bets will be taken.
Game Odds
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The presence of the green square, or squares in American roulette, are what give the casino an edge over players. All bets lose when the ball stops in a green square, except the bets specifically placed on a green square. The casino has a 5.26 percent edge over gamblers in American roulette, and a 2.70 percent edge in the traditional single zero version. Some European casinos offer roulette where only half of a player's money is lost when a zero comes up on the wheel, lowering the casino's edge by 50 percent.
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