Odds before history
Roulette is a game of chance with a built-in house edge. No betting system or pattern changes the odds in the player’s favor over time, most players lose money in the long run, and nobody should gamble money they cannot afford to lose. A local support service can help anyone struggling with gambling.
A story with uncertain parts
The origin of roulette is retold in many versions, and several popular claims cannot be confirmed. This article presents the commonly told outline and marks where the evidence is thin. What is generally agreed is that the modern game took shape in France in the 18th century, drawing on earlier gambling games and wheel devices, and that its form later split into a European and an American version.
Earlier ancestors
The name comes from the French word for “little wheel”. Before the modern game, there were other gambling games that involved wheels or boards. Several are often mentioned as relatives:
- Roly-Poly and similar games, played in England, used a wheel with numbered compartments.
- E.O. (for “even-odd”) was a wheel game popular in 18th-century England.
- Biribi, an Italian numbers game, used a board with numbered bets, and bears resemblance to a roulette layout without the wheel.
How directly each of these influenced roulette is debated. It is better to regard roulette as the result of several gambling ideas merging than as the invention of one person.
The Pascal legend
A frequently repeated story credits Blaise Pascal, the 17th-century mathematician, with inventing roulette. The more careful version is that Pascal experimented with the idea of a perpetual motion machine in the 1650s and that a wheel was involved, and that this later became attached to roulette’s legend. There is no good evidence that he designed the gambling game. Historians generally treat the claim as a myth. Pascal is, however, an important figure in the history of probability, as covered under probability pioneers.
France and the modern wheel
Records of a game recognizable as roulette in France appear in the 1700s, with fuller descriptions by the late 1700s and early 1800s. Roulette was played in Parisian gaming houses at the time, and these early versions had a layout with numbers and sometimes extra pockets. Many accounts say the early French wheel had both a zero and a double zero, but details vary by source and period, and the earliest rules were not standardized.
France later banned most gambling houses, in the 1830s according to common accounts, which pushed the business toward spa and resort towns elsewhere in Europe, including German states, where gambling remained legal.
The single-zero wheel
A central part of the story involves the brothers Louis and François Blanc. In the 1840s, according to the usual account, they were running a casino at Bad Homburg in Germany and offered roulette with a single zero instead of the double zero then common. With only one zero, the house edge was lower, and the story says that this attracted players away from competitors. The Blancs later were associated with the casino at Monte Carlo, in the 1860s, which helped spread the single-zero version through Europe.
Whether the single zero was entirely their invention is not certain, but the broad pattern is well supported: European roulette settled on a single zero, giving 37 pockets (numbers 1 to 36 plus zero), and it became standard in much of the world. The consequence for players is explained under roulette probabilities: a single zero gives a lower edge than two zeros, but still an edge.
The American wheel
In the United States, roulette spread in the 19th century, including to New Orleans and along the Mississippi. The American version kept the double-zero layout, with 38 pockets. Several accounts say operators preferred the higher edge. Early American wheels sometimes had other symbols, such as an eagle, in place of one zero or in addition, but these did not last. By the 20th century the standard American wheel had a zero and a double zero, and the standard European wheel only a zero.
The practical difference is described in the article on the extra zero. In brief, the additional pocket roughly doubles the house edge on most bets. Some European-style tables also use rules such as la partage or its relative to cut the edge on even-money bets.
Later changes
The core game has changed little since. Modern changes are mostly about equipment and format: wheels with tighter manufacturing standards, electronic displays showing recent results, and electronic versions on machines and live video tables. Older wheels could develop physical imperfections that gave a very small bias, a topic covered under wheel bias, but modern wheels are made and checked to avoid this. Some online and video versions use a random number generator in place of a physical wheel.
What to take from the history
Roulette’s evolution shows how a rule change as small as one pocket can alter a game’s cost for players. It also shows how many popular tales surround gambling. The history does not suggest any way to predict the wheel: each spin is independent, and earlier results do not influence the next.