What Is Roulette?

When playing roulette, the goal is to bet on a specific number or group of numbers on the table and win a payout based on the odds of winning. The game has many bet types, including outside and inside bets.

A croupier spins the wheel and sends a ball spinning that will land on one of the 36 or 37 numbered slots. Bets are placed on the table correlating with the slots the ball can possibly land in.

Origins

Roulette is a game that has a long history. It is believed to have been invented by the French mathematician Blaise Pascal in 1655 while he was working on his quest to create a perpetual motion machine.

However, historians have also discovered that similar games with a spinning wheel had been around for a century before Pascal’s invention. These games were based on even and odd bets and were played by Dominican monks as a form of recreation in their monasteries.

While it is impossible to know the exact origin of roullete, many anecdotal accounts suggest that the game was first introduced to the world by Chinese monks who taught it to Dominican monks as they traveled throughout China. These monks then spread the game as they traveled through Europe and beyond.

Variations

Roulette offers an enticing world of varied variations, each with its own unique twists to the game. Whether you’re looking for an online Roulette variation with the highest payouts or want to play a game that offers a bonus feature, there is sure to be a variant that suits your tastes. The most popular variations include European Roulette, which only contains a single zero and has the lowest house edge at 2.7%, and French Roulette, which adds the rules ‘En prison’ and ‘La Partage’ to lower the house edge even further. Other popular Roulette variants include Lighting Roulette, an Evolution Gaming production that relies on multipliers and Triple Bonus Spin Roulette from IGT, which pays 1:12,000 for a straight bonus win.