Roullete (pronounced rou-li-te) is a casino game in which players place bets on a spinning wheel with numbered holes. The croupier throws a ball into the wheel and, if it hits a number, you win! There are a variety of bets that can be placed, including individual numbers, various groupsings of numbers, red or black, whether the number is odd or even, and so on. There are also a number of symmetries on the European roulette wheel: for example, the high red and low black numbers are grouped together on one side of the zero, while the opposite is true for the second dozen (29-7-28-12-35-3-26-0-32), so there are some odds to be taken advantage of.
The roulette wheel consists of a solid wooden disk slightly convex in shape, with a groove around its edge that holds thirty-six metal compartments containing alternately red and black numbers, plus two green compartments labelled 0 on European-style wheels and 00 on American ones. The croupier spins the wheel and the ball rolls inside the groove until it comes to rest in one of the pockets marked with a number.
The history of roulette is a bit mysterious; it was supposedly invented in the late 17th century by the French mathematician Blaise Pascal, and it may have its roots in ancient China. However, it soon spread throughout Europe and became a staple in casinos and gambling dens. Today, the world of online casinos has spawned many variations of this classic game, each with subtle differences every player needs to understand in order to maximize their chances of winning.
