The History Of Roulette

No one will ever know who invented roulette - Roman soldiers, monks returning from Tibet and a French mathematician have all been credited with it. Find out more about the mysterious history of the "King of Casino Games" that is such a favourite of today's of online casino fans.

Some will tell you Roman soldiers invented roulette by spinning chariot wheels. Others give the credit to wandering monks who discovered it in Tibet. Still more credit a French mathematician searching for the secret of perpetual motion.

In fact, the only thing that can be said with certainty about this most mathematically precise of games is that no one really knows for sure how it began.

The actual name of the game is French - it means "small wheel" - and the European version of the game, which features a single zero, is sometimes known as "French roulette".

The likeliest version of its history certainly puts its origin firmly in France, although some of its roots may be in the UK and a great deal of its future turned out to be in the United States - and, of course, across the world on the internet in Online Casinos.

It may or may not be true that Roman soldiers used to tip chariots over and spin the wheels for fun but, if they did, it's unlikely the game survived the Dark Ages to become the forerunner of modern roulette.

Another romantic tale cites an old Chinese game that involved arrangements of 37 statuettes. This game is said to have spread to Tibet, where French Dominican monks found it and replaced the statuettes with the numbers 0-36, which they placed around a revolving wheel.

As a story, it has the virtue of explaining roulette's French heritage - but it ignores the inconvenient fact that early French wheels, like modern American ones, had a 38th slot featuring a double zero.

A more likely candidate for the game's French forefather is the mid-17th century mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher Blaise Pascal, who developed the theory of probability and made devices to explore the concept of perpetual motion.

He is said to have invented the game as a by-product of his perpetual motion work while on a monastic retreat; soon it was being played in a Paris casino.

Whoever actually was responsible, by the 18th century games were appearing that bore an increasing resemblance to modern roulette. In 1720 a game called "Roly-Poly" was being played in England that involved a spinning ball and rotating horizontal wheel. Soon after, the dandy and society leader Beau Nash introduced a fashionable game called "Even-Odd", which had similarities to the outer table bets in modern roulette.

These games were banned by successive Gaming Acts, but what really killed off the development of the British game was the influx of refugees fleeing the French Revolution.

The gamblers among them brought early roulette to Britain - the game had developed some 20 years before, with police encouragement, as a cleaner version of existing games.

By the mid-19th century, France was once again a congenial place for gambling, and roulette made its return thanks to Francois Blanc, who - allegedly - did a deal with the Devil for the secret of the game.

Whether he was demonically inspired - and it is true that adding up the numbers 1-36 gives you 666 - Blanc is certainly credited with standardising the single-zero wheel and founding the first casinos in Monte Carlo.

From here, it spread rapidly across Europe and crossed the Atlantic, where it re-acquired the double zero (although some houses initially used an American eagle instead).

Today it is known as the "King of Casino Games", an internationally recognised symbol of glamour, excitement and the high-rolling lifestyle. And, with the growth of online gaming, it has never been easier to bring a slice of that glamour into your own home whenever you feel like it.