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10 things you didn’t know about roulette

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10 things you didn’t know about roulette

10 things you didn’t know about roulette

Turns out there’s more to gambling’s big wheel than you’d think. Join 32Red online casino on a journey of discovery into the strangely beguiling world of the roulette table.

1 – Must be an omen

On any standard roulette table, add every number from 1 to 36 and you’ll end up with 666. That’s the fabled number of the beast, supposedly found on the scalp of Satan himself, according to popular culture.

Mere coincidence, or proof of some more infernal element to a game nicknamed “the devil’s wheel”? One for the conspiracy theorists, it seems…

2 – Blaise of glory

Seventeenth century philosopher Blaise Pascal is widely credited with having conceived the roulette table, even if the hi-falutin Frenchman had loftier ambitions than simply fleecing a few rubes (no offence).

Pascal was seeking to invent a perpetual motion machine – that is, a device that the laws of physics say is simply not possible. Pascal’s experiment was unsuccessful – Physics 1, Pascal nil. But his doomed scheme did at least give gamblers something else to do in Vegas, in between spunking a week’s wages on slot machines and visiting a dubious gentlemen’s establishment.

3 – Zeroes to heroes

Initially, roulette tables didn’t include a zero number. The zero was added when a cash-strapped King Charles III of Monaco was looking to scare up some money in a hurry. With non-fungible tokens still some two centuries away, Charley had to come up with some other grand scam concept in order to bring in the extra cheese.

Happily for the idler king, the “innovation” worked, with gamers flocking to Monaco to spin the wheel, helping to forge Monte Carlo’s reputation as a haven for louche playboys and degenerate gamblers alike.

4 – Shaken, not stirred

Number 17 is supposedly the number played most often in roulette. In real life, James Bond star Sean Connery supposedly bet on number 17 three times in a row during a visit to an Italian casino, apparently winning around 17 million lira in the process (about £10,000).

In recent years, a publicist connected with the early Bond films has claimed the win was a publicity stunt dreamed up by the promoters of Dr No, however, with Connery in on the stunt, which was apparently achieved with a rigged wheel. Which is kind of a downer, so let’s just forget about that part, what do you say.

5 – Wheeler dealer

If someone suggests a game of roulette in California, you’ll be spinning a wheel with a difference. Specifically, a significantly worse wheel. Unlikely as it sounds, the Golden State has a law that prohibits the use of any device used for gambling, apart from a deck of cards.

Canny Californian casinos have found a way to bypass this killjoy law, tweaking the rules to pass muster. The main difference is that instead of a ball, you’ll watch a wheel comprised of a spinning deck of playing cards, which represent the various numbers of the roulette wheel. The overall experience is similar to standard roulette, though somewhat less elegant than the original.

6 – Don’t try this at home

In order to fund a huge gamble, Londoner Ashley Revell sold all his possessions to fund a wager of $135,000 at Las Vegas’s Plaza Hotel. Revell bet everything he owned on red, and the ball did indeed land on red 7, doubling Revell’s money for a return of $270,600.

To be clear, I would argue it would be a mistake to take any inspiration from Ashley’s story, since the other outcome here – namely, selling all your earthly belongings, journeying to Vegas and then losing every penny you owned – probably isn’t ideal for most players.

7 – Just one more go, what could it hurt?

You might think that if you’ve just seen the ball land on red once, or twice, or certainly three times, black should be due to hit any time soon.

That’s not always how it works though – as was proven at one Bristol casino during the early 1990s, when red came up 36 times in a row, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. Let’s hope no-one was trying the Martingale strategy on that occasion.

8 – Lucky number seven

Maybe 19 should be your lucky number; it supposedly came up seven times in a row during a roulette session at Las Vegas’s Rio hotel.

Professional poker player Jeff Romano took a photo of the results screen, posting evidence of the unbelievable run on social media back in 2012. Er, the hotel later said that the table was not being used by customers, and was instead undergoing a test at the time the photo was taken, however, ending this point on a bit of a bum note. Never mind, onto the next one…

9 – Mike Ashley, what a complete… gambler 

Adding to the allure of lucky number 17, former Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley is another roulette player who has enjoyed good results backing this number. Indeed, so taken with the number is Ashley, he even used to appear at Newcastle games wearing a shirt bearing the No.17 number.

Ashley reportedly won £1.3 million betting on 17, placing bets totalling £480,000 on the roulette table at a Mayfair casino. He placed a “complete bet” – that means you cover every inside bet for a specific number. See the image above to see what that bet would look like in practice – one for the high rollers, basically…

10 – Stick to the classic literature, book-boy

Gloomy Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky was also a fan of roulette – albeit with less success than some of the earlier names on this list. The famed 19th century author is best known for Crime and Punishment, though he also wrote a novella called the Gambler in 1867 – written, ironically, chiefly so the writer could pay off his gambling debts.

There’s something bleakly hilarious about a letter Dostoevsky sent to a friend after enjoying an early success at roulette, writing “I possess the secret of how to win instead of losing. I really do know the secret – it is terribly silly and simple, merely a matter of keeping oneself under constant control and never getting excited, no matter how the game shifts. That’s all there is to it – you just can’t lose that way and are sure to win.”

He returned to the roulette tables – and within a week he was potless, and writing more letters to friends, this time asking for money. Don’t be like Dostoevsky, is what we’re saying.

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