A game based purely on chance, roullete involves placing chips on a betting mat before the croupier (dealer) throws the ball into a spinning wheel. Then players wait to see if their number comes up.
Bets on either odd or even, or a dozen, pay out at 2-1. Other bets include la partage, where if the ball lands on 0, half your original bet gets returned to you.
Origin
There are many theories about the origin of roullete, which is the French word for little wheel. The most popular one is that it was invented by 17th-century French mathematician Blaise Pascal as he searched for ways to create perpetual motion. It may also have been inspired by a game called Roly Poly or the Italian games Hoca and Birbi. However, it is more likely that roulette developed gradually over a century or so as elements of a variety of different games were combined and modified.
Another theory suggests that roullete originated in ancient China. The Chinese played a board game that involved arranging 37 animal figurines into a magic square with numbers totaling 666. This game was later brought to Europe by Dominican monks, who made some modifications to the rules.