What is Roulette?

Roulette is a game of chance played with normal casino chips. The table has a numbered segmented wheel with compartments for red and black numbers and a green zero or double-zero (on European wheels) or 00 (on American ones).

The dealer spins the wheel and throws the ball into one of the slots. Bets are placed until the croupier announces “No more bets!”

Origin

The game of roulette has a long and complicated history. Several games were precursors to it, including portique, hoca, bassette, and roly poly. The word “roulette” comes from the French for “little wheel.”

Historians believe that the modern version of roulette was invented in the 17th century by the mathematician Blaise Pascal. He was trying to develop a perpetual motion machine, and inadvertently came up with the concept of a spinning wheel that would eventually become the game we know today.

The first modern roulette wheels appeared in Paris in 1796. They were used in gambling houses and featured numbered slots from 1 to 36 on red and black backgrounds. The rules for placing bets were also similar to the ones we use today.

Variations

Roulette has a number of variations that differ in their rules and payouts. Some variants use more than one ball and have a different house edge. Others have different numbers on the wheel or include a bonus game. Some of these games include European Roulette, which has 38 pockets and a single zero. Other versions are French Roulette and Lighting Roulette, both of which offer higher payouts.

In mathematical geometry, a roulette is the curve described by a point attached to a given curve as it rolls, without slipping, along a fixed curve. It is a generalization of cycloids, epicycloids, hypotrochoids and trochoid.

It can be described more formally by stating that, given a differentiable curve in a plane and a fixed curve in the same space, a roulette is defined as the locus of the generator subjected to continuous congruence transformations.