Roullete, also written as Roulette, is a casino game in which a ball is spun around and ultimately comes to rest in one of 36 numbers. Players can place bets on a single number, various groupings of numbers, the color red or black, whether the number is odd or even, and other categories. Whenever the ball lands in a player’s bet category, the player wins.
A croupier or dealer spins the wheel in one direction while pushing a ball in another direction around and around it. The wheel contains numbered slots in a circle of segments called “pockets” or “canoes”, with alternately colored red and black compartments, and on European-style wheels there is also a green division marked 0 and on American wheels there are two additional green pockets labelled 00. Speculative betting is placed on these sections of the wheel, and winning bets are paid out accordingly.
The earliest recorded instances of roulette were in France, where it became popular in the 17th century after being derived from earlier games such as hoca and portique. Fanciful theories abound as to its origins, including that it was invented by the 17th-century French mathematician Blaise Pascal.
Prior to the spinning of the wheel, bets are made by laying down chips on a special betting mat. The precise placement of the chips correlates to the type of bet being placed, with bets on six or fewer numbers known as “Inside bets”, and bets on 12 or more as “Outside bets”.
Although many of the bet types are identical in both American and European Roulette, there are some important differences. The main difference is that in European Roulette the game employs La Partage, which returns half of any losing bets to the player. This reduces the house edge on even money bets to 1.35%.