Roulette is without any doubt one of the most popular games of chance in every Casinò, and also one of the oldest: roulette as we know it was in fact invented in France in the XVIII century, although its real origins have roots in much older times.
Roulette actually is the result of a mix between older games and it is thought that some "ancestor" games of roulette date back to the ancient Greeks and Romans. In this article some facts about the most popular games in Online Casino .
The earliest ancestors of roulette
A game based on a wheel similar to that of roulette, the rotae fortunae (Latin for wheel of fortune), already existed in ancient Rome and it could be considered one of the earliest ancestors of roulette. At that time a wagon wheel was used, supported horizontally by a pin, on which an arrow was fixed. The wheel was divided into different sectors, on which the legionaries could bet: the area on which the arrow stopped was the winning one
During the following centuries, the wheel of fortune underwent several changes, giving rise to different games that maintained similar rules. Especially in Italy the wheel of fortune was still in use. The only difference with the Roman wheel of fortune consisted in making the wheel spin perpendicular to the ground, so that more people could watch the rotation.
On the other hand in fact the lotto reale consisted of a folding table with 36 pockets. People could bet on numbers, but also on red, black and other combinations similar to those of roulette.
Perhaps the most similar ancestor to today's roulette is the boule , a game of French origin that worked with a pot of two concentric circles, each with 18 holes numbered from 1 to 9 with the number 5 assuming the typical function of 0.
Who Invented the first Roulette?
Modern roulette was introduced in the 1700s becoming very popular between the French aristocracy but actually there is no certain information about its inventor. Some say it was brought to the West from China by a monk, but the most famous legend is certainly the one that recognizes the philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal as the inventor of roulette.
The invention of roulette was erroneously attributed to Pascal for a mistranslation of his geometry treatise called "roulette" by the Italian word "rulletta" which means curve. At the same time the mathematician was trying to develop a perpetual motion machine, so the legend was born.
The invention of roulette was also mistakenly attributed to Françoise Blanc, a French entrepreneur and owner of the casinos in Bad Homburg and Monte Carlo. Blanc certainly had the merit of innovating the structure of the game in 1843, eliminating the double zero box, but roulette had undoubtedly existed for more than a century.
The most accredited theory is, therefore, that modern roulette is the result of the merger of the "ancestor" games mentioned above, and that following several changes, it has reached its current structure, becoming the most popular game in casinos.
