Roulette

The game of Roulette has an interesting nomenclature derived from the French word for “little wheel”. The game of Roulette is conducted by a croupier whose job is to spin the roulette wheel in one direction; he/she then drops the ball spinning it in the opposite direction. The ball once set in motion, runs around the circumference of wheel. This creates one of the most tense moments in a player’s life, when the anticipation is high and one doesn’t know if the bet one has placed is going to bear fruit or not. The Roulette player waits with bated breath while the ball loses momentum and settles into one of the colored and numbered pockets in the Roulette wheel.

The number of pockets in a Roulette wheel depends on the version of the game being plated. A European Roulette wheel will have 37 pockets while an American Roulette wheel sports an additional pocket. The origin of Roulette as the name suggest was in France. Roulette’s history is as interesting as the game itself. The Roulette wheel history says is a remarkable mix of the English wheel games of Reiner, Ace of Hearts, Roly-Poly, E.O, the French board game of Roulette and the Italian board games Hoca and Biribi.

Typically, a Roulette wheel will either sport single or double zeroes. Usually the American Roulette layout comprises of double zeroes. Albert Einstein had very famously said that one cannot beat a Roulette table unless one steals money from it. Well since stealing didn’t look like a feasible idea to many they devised ingenious methods to get the better of the game of Roulette. The Martingale betting strategy was devised that involved a player doubling his bet after every loss in order for the first win to recover the previous losses and also gain a profit that equals the original bet. There have been other methods devised by scientists, engineers and plain Roulette enthusiasts all claiming a method that will beat the game, but the success of such Roulette beating strategies succeeding is based on a system of probability.

The game has been cultivated for so long that it has become a culture in itself. There are implicit rules that define the game, a certain decorum that is tacitly understood by people who have played this game for long. It is understood that the croupier has to be tipped when one leaves the table.

Roulette like most casino games runs high on the chances of probability. A player if he decides to place his bets on the inside will select a number on the pocket where he thinks the ball will land or if he places the bets on the outside he will select the bets on the larger positional groupings of pockets, the pocket number or the pocket color.

A Stephen Hawking quote perfectly defines how the game of Roulette is compared to the functioning of the universe. He calls “the maker of the universe a gambler who plays in the casino called the universe and dices are thrown here and the roulette wheel is spun on every occasion.”