Roulette, from the French for little wheel, is a casino game in which a small ball is spun around and then settles into one of numbered compartments on a spinning wheel. Players make bets about which red or black, odd or even, or grouping of numbers they believe the ball will land in as it spins, and each bet pays out a different amount depending on the odds. The game is a test of skill and chance, and it has long been considered a classic casino table game.
The Roulette wheel consists of a solid, slightly convex wooden disk with 36 compartments, alternately painted red and black and numbered nonconsecutively from 1 to 36. There is a single zero on European-style wheels, while American-style ones have two green compartments marked 0 and 00. The compartments are separated by metal separators, called frets or dividers by roulette croupiers, and the roulette ball makes contact with them as it spins.
After a player has made their bets, the croupier, who runs the game, throws the ball into the wheel while it is still in motion. The ball then swirls and bounces around until it finally comes to rest in a compartment marked with a number. The player who betted on that number wins.
There are many fanciful stories about the origins of roulette. One is that the game was invented in the 17th century by the French mathematician Blaise Pascal as part of his attempts to develop a perpetual motion machine. Another is that the game was derived from older games hoca and portique.
The roulette ball used to be made of ivory, but nowadays it’s usually made of a resin or a Teflon-like material that looks and feels like ivory. The ball’s material, size and weight affect its performance. A light ceramic ball, for example, makes more revolutions on the wheel track and jumps more unpredictably before it lands on a number than a heavier ivorine one would.