joeko

Roulette is the third most favourite game in casinos, more popular than roulette are just slot machines and craps. Its name is a French diminutive for little wheel and there are basically two types of little wheels that give a different house edges.. While European roulette contains only one 0 and gives a house edge of 2.7 %, the American roulette includes 0 and 00 which represents a house edge of 5.26 %. But those are only quite uninteresting facts which nearly every player must know. Let’s look into history of roulette because it is pretty amazing.
[B]Roulette as killing machine[/B]
The roots of roulette reach to Ancient China where a grandmother of that popular game was used for executing of prisoners. And betting was also part of it. The executioners gave their wager on whether the prisoner dies or stays alive. And how did the convict get rid of his life? There were two huge spinning wheels and in the middle of them the poor condemned was fastened. Those two wheels came closer and closer and exactly this movement slowly killed the victim. But he had also an opportunity to survive. How is that possible? Before being executed he drew a number which defined the size of wheels. The smaller were the wheels and the thinner was the prisoner the bigger was his chance to stay alive. Naturally this is not the roulette as we know it nowadays but its principal is the same – spinning wheel and betting.
[B]Devil’s game[/B]
Why should be roulette a devil’s game? One reason could be that some people have lost much money by playing it but it is not the story we are talking about. There is a legend which says that François Blanc, the inventor of modern roulette who opened the first casino in Monaco, asked devil to help him to obtain the secrets of roulette and Satan told him to add 0 (and later, in America, was added 00) so the house edge was guaranteed. And a proof for this legend should be the sum of all roulette numbers (1-36) which is the Number of the Beast - 666.
[B]Russian roulette[/B]
As we are looking into the history of roulette we should not forget the Russian roulette which is based on placing a single round into a revolver, spinning the wheel, putting the gun to the temple and pulling the trigger. Who dies is a loser. This game should have been invented in 1st World War by Russian officers that were bored so they started betting their own lives. Who survives hands the gun to next participant. Stupid is that you are betting everything and you can win just some respect but it is still roulette!
[B]Myth: Online casinos are not fair[/B]
Some people think that online roulette works on the same principal like slot machines which means that it should be programmed for having a specific payback percentage (so it would not be fair). This is not true! Online roulette works on the same principal as “normal” roulette so the odds are the same. Yes, it works on random number generator like slot machines and yes, there is a certain payback percentage but that is based on the house edge (accordingly on those odds) which is not different from “normal” roulette!