Roulette is the most famous game of chance in the world. Both the prince and the beggar can be captured by her attraction. At the same time, she can easily swap them. The sum of all the numbers on the roulette wheel is 666, which is why many players seriously call it the devil's wheel. And even atheists do not exclude that dark forces control the roulette …
Probably there is no person who has not watched the game of roulette in some movie. Roulette rules seem to be quite simple, and the winnings are in the power of chance. However, not all so simple. Both experienced players and professional croupiers have in their arsenal tricks to increase the player's chances of winning or, conversely, losing.
Fun saint
According to one of the versions, French monks were the first fans of roulette. Legend has it that in 1655 the great mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal came to one of the monasteries. In solitude, the scientist thought about the device of a perpetual motion machine and in his designs tried to reduce to a minimum the friction of the wheel on the axle. As a result, he never created a perpetuum mobile, but he managed to spin a wheel that rotates easily and quickly!
Another version of the origin of roulette says that in the monastery Pascal was struggling with the problem of the probability of winning a lotto with 36 tickets. As a random number generator, Pascal used a spinning wheel divided into sectors. Leaving the monastery, Pascal forgot his "generator" there, and the monks adapted it for entertainment.
But even before Pascal's experiments, dozens of casinos existed in France, where the so-called hoka was the main game. It should be noted that it was not much different from roulette, because its heart was a wheel that had 40 "digitized" slots, and three of them were marked with zeros - "zero". The fact is that the opening of such a number of casinos and the popularity of hockey was facilitated by the head of the Catholic Church of France, Cardinal Mazarin. The treasury of Louis XIV was bursting at the seams, and the king was grateful to the cardinal that he had found a way to replenish it. Interestingly, after the death of Mazarin in 1661, a decree was issued banning casinos for playing hoku on pain of execution. It is possible that the “equipment” from the banned casinos could be transported to the monastery for storage. And there, after the lapse of time, monks began to test it in order to while away the gray days.
From France all over the world
One can, of course, disagree with the authorship of Pascal or with the fact that the prototype of roulette was the hoka, but the third version also indicates that it is a purely French invention. Its essence is that roulette was invented in 1765 by an officer of the Parisian police Gabriel de Sartinet. During the reign of Louis XV, Paris was flooded with card cheaters, and the honest gambler had nothing to do with the game. And in roulette, unlike cards, it was difficult to cheat - the ball and the wheel create the illusion of honesty.
And the term "roulette" itself comes from the French word "ru" and means "wheel, roller, slider". In the book La Roulette, published in 1801 in Paris, its author Jacques Labelle writes that in the royal palace of the Palais Royal in 1786, they actively gambled with a wheel with slots in two colors - red and black.
Ordinary French people could play roulette at the Perrin brothers' establishment of the Lyons. Here, bets were made on even and odd numbers, on dozens, columns and zero. True, the “wheel of fortune” did not last long: in 1789, the Constituent Assembly of the Great Revolution banned all gambling in France for the second time.
The aristocrats fleeing the guillotine of the revolution brought the roulette across the ocean to New Orleans. It was here that roulette took off for a victorious march across the American continent. Having overcome the Mississippi, the game conquered the Wild West and found itself with the settlers on the Pacific coast.
During the California gold rush in 1848, roulette casinos were more profitable than gold mining. For the gold in the river still had to be found, and the roulette wheel was always profitable. True, American roulette holders turned out to be greedier than their European colleagues. In the American version of the wheel, the roulette wheel now has only 28 numbers instead of 36 and as many as three sectors that give the croupier the right to take players' bets: zero, double zero and American Eagle. Obviously, in this situation, the chance of winning decreased, but the players' indignation was not taken into account. And only in the 20th century, roulette in the USA returned to 36 numbers and two zeros.
Since roulette was popular at the royal court of France, this game soon found itself at the court of Catherine II. Overseas fun quickly gained popularity, and roulette could be found not only in the halls of the imperial palaces, but also in the kitchens of dignitaries, where cooks and footmen played it. Also, roulette was loved in the palace of the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Selim III first learned about it from the captured French, and when he became interested, he sent Turkish mechanics abroad to see the design of the "wheel". On the Indian subcontinent, the local aristocracy was hooked on the roulette wheel by British officers and officials.
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King of the game
Having come to power, Napoleon legalized casinos and roulette in 1804. The reason is simple - the budget deficit. Dozens of casinos were opened in the country, several of these establishments belonged to the Blanc twins - Francois and Louis. Subsequently, these people became something like saints for the gaming industry. But they started with little things: they played on the stock exchange, kept taverns and pubs, and then - gambling salons. François, who wanted to increase the profit from the house, came up with a movable bottom in roulette. The croupier pressed it so that the ball would fly into those sectors on which there were no bets, and the players would lose.
In 1837, casinos were banned in France again. François Blanc was on the verge of collapse, but the capital allowed him to buy up premises in Hamburg and other German cities, where equipment and personnel from France had moved. It was the Blanc brothers who, in 1843, made from the provincial German town of Bad Homburg the "German Las Vegas", which the Russians fell in love with. In the summer of 1845 in Bad Homburg, Nikolai Gogol burned the first version of the second volume of Dead Souls. Here, another great writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky, wasted his fees (and got into debt). He described his impressions of Bad Homburg in the novel The Gambler, and an alley in the city Kurpark is named after him. Today, there are two casinos operating in Bad Homburg: Spielbank Bad Homburg (this is where Fyodor Mikhailovich played) and Merkur. But François Blanc was not satisfied with Germany alone. In 1861, he bought a casino concession in the Principality of Monaco. The ruler of the principality, Charles III, hoped to thereby replenish the treasury. And I was not mistaken. Having paid the prince 2 million francs, Blanc pledged to support the government of the principality, officials and the army.
By agreement, 15% of the casino income went to the budget of the principality. But François not only sponsored Monaco, he changed all government officials and reformed the state apparatus. It is interesting that all these innovations were carried out by the joint stock "Society of Sea Bathing", owned by Blanc. But it has never been engaged in sea bathing, focusing on the gambling business. To attract players, Blanc organized the Nice-Monaco steamboat service and built the France-Monaco railway. In 1863, the luxurious Monte Carlo casino was opened in the principality. Its architect was Jean Louis Garnier, the author of the building of the Parisian "Grand Opera". The luxurious palace of games quickly earned the nickname "House of the Devil". For his protection, Blanc organized a special unit of the principality's army.
Magazine: Mysteries of History, no. 42. Author: Alexey Martov