No 1 in Gambling

Straperlo or Stra-Perlo was the brand of a fraudulent electric roulette game, promoted by Strauss and Perlowitz.

In 1935 during the Second Spanish Republic, they tried to introduce the Stra-Perlo in the San Sebastián and Formentor casinos in Spain. Corruption connected with the prohibition of the game reached the nephew of Alejandro Lerroux and caused the downfall of his Radical Party. The political centre was abandoned and the Spanish public polarized, contributing to the Spanish Civil War.

After the war, estraperlo acquired the meaning of black market, the illegal trade of ration items.

Read the rest of this entry »

Russian roulette (in Russian: (Русская) Рулетка, оr (Russkaya) Rulyetka) is the practice of placing a single round in a revolver, spinning the cylinder and closing it into the firearm without looking, aiming the revolver at one's own head in a suicidal fashion, and pulling the trigger. The number of rounds placed in the revolver can vary, though as a rule there will always be at least one empty chamber. As a gambling game, toy guns are often used to simulate the practice. The number of deaths caused by this practice is unknown.

History

Legends abound regarding the invention of Russian roulette. Most of these, predictably, take place in Russia, or occur among Russian soldiers.

Read the rest of this entry »

Petits-Chevaux, French for "little horses", is a gambling game played with a mechanical device consisting of a board perforated with a number of concentric circular slits, in which revolve, each independently on its own axis, figures of jockeys on horseback, distinguished by numbers or colors.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Big Six wheel is a gambling game based on a large vertical spinning wheel, similar to the wheel used on the television game show Wheel of Fortune. (The wheel used on the show is mounted horizontally, however.) The wheel is divided into sections, separated by spokes or pins. The wheel is spun by a dealer, and the winning section is indicated by a pointer mounted on a flexible piece of rubber or leather, which also rubs against the pins to impart friction and slow the wheel down.

Bettors wager on what number or symbol appears in the winning section, and are paid at odds that are based on the distribution of that symbol on the wheel. Most wheels have 54 sections. The numbers or symbols used differ according to the variation of the game.

Read the rest of this entry »

Albert Einstein is reputed to have stated, "You cannot beat a roulette table unless you steal money from it."

Read the rest of this entry »

Traditional roulette wheel sectors

There are a number of series in roulette that have special names attached to them. These are placed by betting a set amount per series (or multiples of that amount). They are based on the way in which certain numbers lie next to each other on the roulette wheel. Not all casinos offer these bets.

Voisins ("Neighbors")

This is a name for the numbers which lie between 22 and 25 on the wheel including 22 and 25 themselves. The series is 22,18,29,7,28,12,35,3,26,0,32,15,19,4,21,2,25 (on a single zero wheel).

9 chips or multiples thereof are bet.

Read the rest of this entry »

The house average or house edge is the amount the player loses relative to a bet, on average. If a player bets on a single number in the American game there is a probability of 1/38 that the player receives 36 times the bet (35 times the bet plus the return of the bet itself), so the player ends up, on average, losing 5.26% on each bet:

( (probability * payout) / bet ) - 1 = expected value as fraction of bet

For example, betting $10 on a single number on an American wheel:

( ((1/38) * 360) / 10 ) - 1 = -0.0526

Read the rest of this entry »

Board depiction (American Roulette)

Read the rest of this entry »

1800s engraving French Roulette

Read the rest of this entry »

Early roulette table, ca. 1800

Read the rest of this entry »

Roulette is a casino and gambling game (Roulette is a French word meaning "small wheel"). A croupier turns a round roulette wheel which has 37 or 38 separately numbered pockets in which a ball must land. The main pockets are numbered from 1 to 36 and alternate between red and black, with number 1 being red. There is also a green pocket numbered 0. In most roulette wheels in the United States but not in Europe, there is a second zero compartment marked 00, also colored green.

If a player bets on a single number and wins, the payout is 35 to 1. The bet itself is returned, so in total it is multiplied by 36. (In a lottery one would say 'the prize is 36 times the cost of the ticket', because in a lottery the cost of the ticket is not returned additionally.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Roulette wheel

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/11/Rwheel.jpg