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Roulette is a casino and gambling game
(Roulette is a French word meaning "small wheel").
A croupier turns a round roulette wheel, which has 37 or 38
separately numbered pockets in which a ball must land. The
main pockets are numbered from 1 to 36 and alternate between
red and black, with number 1 being red. There is also a green
pocket numbered 0. In most roulette wheels in the United States
but not in Europe, there is a second zero compartment marked
00, also colored green.
If a player bets on a single number and wins,
the payout is 35 to 1. The bet itself is returned, so in total
36 multiply it. (In a lottery one would say 'the prize is
36 times the cost of the ticket', because in a lottery the
cost of the ticket is not returned additionally.)
A player can bet on numbers, combinations,
ranges, odds/evens, and colors.
Roulette is said by some to have been started
way back in 1655 in France and first played in a makeshift
casino in Paris. Still others say it originated in an old
Chinese game whose object was to arrange 37 statuettes of
animals in a "magic square" of 666 (but they fail
to describe the method of play). Since the early French roulette
wheels of the 1800s had both the 0 and 00, this theory does
not sound plausible. The modern version of the Roulette wheel
appears around 1842.
There are two types of roulette, American roulette
and European roulette. The difference between the two types
is the number of 0's on the wheel. American roulette wheels
being made standard with the two zeros "00". Which
increases the house advantage to 5.3%. In European roulette
there is only one zero, giving the house an advantage of 2.7%.
Although both the double zero and single zero wheels originated
in France, the double zero became known as the "American
Wheel," because it was accepted with open arms and survived
in the states.
The two versions use chips differently also.
American roulette uses so-called "non-value" chips,
meaning that all chips belonging to the same player are of
the same value determined at the time of the purchase, and
the player cashes in the chips at the roulette table. European
roulette uses standard casino chips of differing values as
bets, which can make the game more confusing for both the
croupier and the players.
A traditional European roulette table is also
much larger than an American roulette table, and the croupier
uses a long tool called a rake to clear out the chips and
to distribute winnings. In American roulette the croupier
collects and distributes chips by hand.
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