The common theory of the origins of roulette is that it was devised by Blaise Pascal, the famous early scientist, after gambling during his vacation in France. The story is that when he returned to England, he used his mathematics genius concerning the laws of probablity and added in ways to gamble on the outcome, and came up with the first roulette wheel.
Through the next couple of hundred years, roulette had several transformations and several names. Each time it would grow popular, Great Britain would pass another law that outlawed it. By the late 1700s, roulette has made it back to France and acquired it’s distinctive black and red color scheme.
Roulette is one of the most popular table games throughout the world but some variations have arisen through the years. One of the biggest variations in live roulette is the two main wheel designs that are used. The American style roulette wheel and the European style roulette wheels are identical in almost every way – the only difference is that the American roulette wheel has a double zero slot while the European roulette wheel has only the single zero slot.
If you are not a math genius, the difference may seem negligible to you on the face of it. However, this difference actually makes a huge contrast when it comes to what is known as the house edge. With the American wheel, the house edge is 5.25% while with the European roulette wheel the edge drops significantly, down to 2.70%. What this means is that you have a better chance of winning when you play the European roulette rather than American.
