What is Roulette?

If you are an avid gambler, the chances are high that you have already heard about Roulette a lot of times.
For starters, it is a popular casino game in which players place their bets against a numbered wheel. Roulette is a French word, which means ‘little wheel. The game first originated in France in the 17th century, and soon became popular in the luxury gaming rooms hosted by Monte Carlo.
The game was first discovered by Blaise Pascal, a famous mathematician while attempting to build a perpetual motion machine. It was soon introduced in the United States and European countries.
The popularity of the game has definitely reached notches today and is played in thousands of casinos as a classic table game around the world.
Roulette comprises of a roulette wheel, betting table, and small ball. The whole game revolves around placing the bets against the House by placing chips on the betting table. The table consists of red and black spaces.
The croupier who is the dealer of the game starts the game by spinning the wheel and rolling the ball in the opposite direction. As the ball circles the wheel, it randomly stops in one of the 37 numbered pockets of the wheel. The players corresponding to the numbers on the table are declared as winners.

Roulette Variants

Although the overall concept of the Roulette is pretty simple, the presence of various variants have spiced up the things a bit.
Majorly, Roulette has two variants – European Roulette and American Roulette. There are no major differences between the two variants, but the minor changes make these variants interesting. The main difference is about zeroes.
While the European Roulette has only 1 zero on the roulette wheel, the American Roulette consists of 2 zeroes: 00 and 0.
The presence of an additional zero has a bigger impact on the overall dynamics of the game, and how bets are placed. This also influences the house edge which is around 2.7% for the European Roulette, and 5.26% for American Roulette.
This difference in house edge is because of the fact that there are 38 numbers on the American Roulette wheel while just 37 on the European Roulette Wheel.
In addition to these two variants, there is a third variant as well which is called California Roulette. This version is pretty different and uses cards on the roulette wheel instead of numbered slots.