Roulette and the design of its wheel have seen only a couple of changes throughout history. The table game itself has had a lot of changes and it looks like the future is bright for roulette as well. It’s not one of the most popular casino games for no reason!
If you haven’t noticed already, online casinos are popping up all the time, and this is certainly one of the biggest evolutions of roulette. Online casinos allow people all over the globe to play their favorite roulette game wherever they want. Players can use sites like Roulette 77 to play demo roulette from their home, or anywhere they desire.
Not only can you play roulette wherever you like, but players love that there are heaps more variations of roulette, like Power Up roulette, which includes the added excitement of multipliers. Power Up roulette hasn’t been around for very long, but it is quickly becoming very popular.
Let’s take a step back in time and see just how much the roulette wheel has changed:
Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician, and inventor, invented the roulette wheel. He wasn’t trying to invent a casino game; instead, he was trying to design a perpetual motion machine that continues to run without needed energy from any external source.
The physics laws mean this is impossible, but the inquisitive mind of Pascal was still willing to give it a try. While the wheel he invented isn’t the wheel we know and love today, it was the beginning of roulette and the design was taken from Pascal’s invention.
For Pascal’s invention, he took inspiration from board games that were around at the time like roulette (yes, roulette was a board game back then!) and Roly-Poly. Pascal wasn’t able to create the perpetual motion machine, as he set out to; however, he did create something else that was extraordinary.
It wasn’t until the mid-nineteenth century when the wheel design was updated to accommodate the zero, giving the house more advantage. The wheel designed by Pascal remained pretty much identical until this change.
The zero was added to the roulette wheel by Francois and Louis Blanc. The pair designed this wheel for King Charles III of Monaco. The roulette wheel was brought to the masses by King Charles, who was facing financial trouble at the time.
Monte Carlo became the ideal destination and the epitome of upscale gambling. Thanks to the increased house edge, the new roulette wheel design generated a lot of income for the country. This all happened around the same time that France outlawed gambling, and that made Monte Carlo even more attractive.
As if one zero wasn’t enough, America is responsible for another update to the roulette wheel design, adding a double zero. Roulette has been quite popular in America, ever since the 1800s, but the wheel design was again tweaked, to give the house even more of an edge.
The American variation of roulette features 38 numbers, including 1 through 36, and:
| New Number | When the Number Was Added |
| 0 | Added by Francois and Louis Blanc for King Charles III of Monaco, to give the house a greater edge. |
| 00 | Added to the American variation of roulette, to give an even greater edge to the house. |
The first casino was established in 1996, and the growth has been out of this world. From just a handful of games to online casinos being decked out just like a physical casino, they are now becoming the ideal choice.
It’s no secret just how much roulette is loved around the globe, so making it more accessible only meant the popularity of this game rose. If you’re bored with the traditional variations of roulette, playing online is a great option because there are so many more to choose from.
Different variations of roulette that are available to play online now include:
With online casinos being easily accessible by many around the world, it’s looking like the future is online. The continued evolution of the roulette wheel and its design will likely be driven by the force of technology and there could be many new variations and formats being developed in the future.
The next big thing in the evolution of roulette is the addition of a live dealer when playing online. While the design of the roulette wheel has not changed in decades, the addition of a live dealer is a major advancement as it gives online players as close of an experience as possible to playing in a physical casino.
Many online casinos now provide the option for live dealer roulette and it has quickly become one of the most popular methods of playing roulette online. Now, online casinos will broadcast live roulette games, so players can experience as close to the real thing as possible.
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