Roulette is a casino game that relies on luck and chance to determine the winning outcome. It is played on a green felt table with a grid of numbers and betting areas. Players can place bets on single numbers, various groupings of numbers, or red and black colors. Each round, the dealer shuffles and draws a card from a unique deck to determine which bets win. The payouts are then made, and a new round begins. The game has become popular worldwide, and its essential format remains unchanged for over two centuries.

In its modern form, the game crystallized in late 18th-century Paris as a hybrid of wheel games and number lotteries. Wheel-and-ball banking games like Roly-Poly and oca contributed the wheel mechanism; number lotteries like Biribi supplied a set of numbered compartments, plus the notion that some outcomes belong to the bank. This fusion of mechanical spectacle and granular odds yielded the modern roulette, whose numbered pockets and standardized betting layout codified the game in its most recognizably familiar form.

Today, roulette is a global symbol of elegance and risk. It inspires literature, art, and film, and evokes the excitement of gambling in our everyday vocabulary (“to spin the wheel,” “life is roulette”). Mathematically, it illustrates the concept of expected value and the inevitability of the house edge. Psychologically, it embodies our fascination with risk and fate, and is fertile ground for biases such as the gambler’s fallacy.

The earliest unambiguous reference to the modern game is found in Jacques Lablee’s La Roulette, ou Histoire d’un Jour (1796 and 1801). Set in the Palais-Royal, a crucible of Enlightenment commerce and vice, his narrative describes a wheel with a fixed set of numbered compartments (1 through 36) and two additional slots–0 and 00–explicitly reserved for the house. This combines the mechanics of a mechanical spectacle with the rigors of a centralized betting system, establishing a distinctive synthesis of mechanics, mathematics, and social practice.

In the 1700s, roulette traveled to New Orleans, where French settlers integrated European gaming traditions with local Creole culture. The city’s port helped the game cross the Atlantic, allowing it to grow quickly in Europe and America. By the 19th century, it had become a fixture in casinos around the world.

Currently, American roulette has 38 pockets, while European roulette has 37, with the 0 spaces reserved for the house. In both cases, the game has a house edge of 2.7% on all bets, though rules such as La Partage reduce that edge to 1.35% for outside bets.

While it is possible to use skill to mitigate the house edge, it is not practical to build a career on the game. Unlike poker and blackjack, where skills can make you a professional, roulette is a pure game of chance, and no advantage play systems have been proven effective. That doesn’t stop charlatans from promoting dubious strategies, but it should keep you from investing your hard-earned money in them.