Roulette is a casino game where a ball rolls around a wheel and people bet on which number it will land on. It is played on a table and the bets are made by laying chips on a betting mat.
The game was invented in its primitive form in the 17th century by a French physicist and philosopher Blaise Pascal.
Origins
The history of roulette is a bit of an enigma. Many stories exist about its origins, but they almost all have to do with a 17th-century French math wizard, Blaise Pascal and his quest for a perpetual motion machine. Some people believe that he based his game on an ancient Chinese board game that was brought to France by Dominican monks, while others say that it evolved out of older games such as portique and hoca and the Italian board games Biribi and Hoca.
As European immigrants moved to America, they brought with them some of their favorite gambling games. In the 18th century, the modern version of roullete was developed from an amalgamation of these games. It took about a century for the roulette wheel and table layout to develop into the form we know today.