Today, the most noticeable different between American and European roulette is the dreaded “00″ on American wheels. In American roulette, the house has a much higher edge than patrons. While it is true that roulette originated in Europe, the first roulette boards in France likely had two spaces for the house as well.
The prototype for the roulette wheel was actually not designed for play. In the 1600′s, a French scientist named Blaise Pascal sought to create a perpetual motion machine, or a device that continues to move without any external force. Because the laws of physics prevent such a device from functioning, he instead created what others would eventually turn into a gambling game.
The oldest known reference to roulette games comes from a law banning them, along with other gambling games, in what we today call Quebec but in 1758 was known as New France. Presumably, the game of roulette had already been popular in France earlier in the 18th century. The French may have drawn their inspiration from earlier wheel games from England like Roly-Poly as well as Italian boards game Biribi.
In the 1801 French novel “La Roulette, ou le Jour” by Jaques Lablee, the author details a roulette wheel located in Palais Royal, describing “…two betting spaces containing the bank’s two numbers, zero and double zero.” Lablee noted that the bank, or house, naturally had higher odds of winning against any betters. Originally, the single zero space was red and the double zero was black, but game makers soon started making the zero spaces green to better distinguish them from the rest of the table.
The single zero wheel is rumored to originate from a German casino in Homburg. By the 1800s, the popularity of roulette games had boomed and it became a staple in European casinos. Gambling experienced a harsh crackdown in Europe and America in the mid 19th century, resulting in the closure of many casinos. As a result, Monte Carlo was the sole legally operated casino in Europe for years. The Monte Carlo casino games used the single zero board, which became the European standard once gambling laws were relaxed.
Roulette gained popularity in North America originally in New Orleans and then spread west. The first American roulette tables actually had three spaces for the house: zero, double zero and an American eagle symbol. Gamblers did not like the odds, so these tables fell out of use. Today, finding a roulette table with an eagle space could be much more profitable than gambling – they sell for thousands at auctions.
The game evolved as it traveled westward, and the betting layout became more simplified. Las Vegas became the center of gambling culture in the early 1900′s, and its casinos used the double zero wheel, making it the standard in the U.S., the Caribbean, Canada, and South America, while the single zero wheel and poker games remains dominant in all other parts of the world.
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