What is roulette? In its latest incarnation live Online TV Roulette is a game where multiple players can play the game over the internet or on live TV watching live croupiers place your bets and spin the wheel. In a casino though, roulette is a game in in which anywhere from 1-8 players bet on where or which slot a ball will fall on a rotating wheel. The dealer keeps the wheel spinning at all times. A small ball is released in the revolving wheel and moves in the opposite direction of the spin of the wheel. The players' place bets concerning which number, red/black, or odd/even numbers the ball will land in. The bets are all placed again the house, or casino (or in the case of live online TV roulette, against the TV channel!). Bets can be made up until the ball slows down and just before it is about to drop into a compartment. Various bets are made on single numbers or combinations of numbers in which payouts differ.



Roulette is a French word for "small wheel." It emerged in the late 18th century among the European casinos. The wheel itself is believed to have been a fusion of Ace of Hearts, Roly-Poly, and E&O; an Italian board game. The game has been played the same since its inception as early as 1796 in Paris. Jaques Lablee, a French novelists, wrote a book titled "La Roulette, ou le Jour" which makes mention of the earliest description of the roulette game. This book was published in 1801. There was an earlier reference to the game in French Quebec in 1758 and published in regulations which banned the games of dice, hoca, faro, and roulette. If you are going to play live online TV roulette, you should check out their rules on the website.

The "0" was added to the roulette wheel in 1842 by French brothers Francois and Louis Blanc. This was done in order to achieve the house advantage, this is the wheel used in live online TV roulette. To further increase house odds, roulette was brought into the U.S. in the early 1800s where a second zero "00" was added. In some of the 1866 Hoyle gambling books, there were some forms of early American roulette wheels that demonstrated numbers of 1 through 28, plus a single zero, a double zero, and an American Eagle. Payouts for any numbers as well as zeros and the eagle were 27 to 1. Roulette spread all over both Europe and the U.S. in the 1800s and became one of the most famous and popular casino games. It is associated with glamour in such casinos as the Monte Carlo.

One legend tells that Francois Blanc bargained with the devil supposedly to obtain roulette secrets. It is based on the fact the the sum of all the numbers is 666, which is the number of the Beast in a biblical sense.

Today roulette is played all over the world. European wheels, those with one zero and better odds for players, are most often only found in European countries and South Africa, but is used on the UK Live TV online roulette shows. Some may be found in the United States, but typically one will only find the American wheel.