1. Who Discovered Roulette Meaning
2. Who Discovered Roulette
3. Who Discovered Roulette Wheel
4. Who Discovered Roulette Model
5. Who Discovered Roulette Videos

• » History

The history of humanity is inextricably linked with the history of gambling, as it seems that no matter how far back in time you go there are signs that where groups of people gathered together gambling was sure to have been taking place. Now we are not going to attempt to track every single twist and turn in the evolution of gambling in this article, but what we are going to do is to pick out some of the most important dates to act as milestones on the road to today’s gambling experience.

The Earliest Evidence of Gambling

While it is almost certain that some forms of betting have been taking place since the dawn of human history, the earliest concrete evidence comes from Ancient China where tiles were unearthed which appeared to have been used for a rudimentary game of chance. The Chinese ‘Book of Songs’ makes reference to “the drawing of wood” which suggests that the tiles may have formed part of a lottery type game. We have evidence in the form of keno slips which were used in about 200bc as some sort of lottery to fund state works – possibly including construction of the Great Wall of China. Lotteries continued to be used for civic purposes throughout history – Harvard and Yale were both established using lottery funds – and continue to do so until the present day.

And if you think I'm lying, just Google 'roulette systems' and then 'roulette gambling addiction' and you'll see what I'm talking about. I cannot stress this enough. Stop trying to game the system. There's a reason the saying goes 'The house always wins'. Please, any adults in here, back me up on this.

Dicing with the Law on the Streets of Ancient Rome

The Greek poet Sophocles claimed that dice were invented by a mythological hero during the siege of Troy, and while this may have somewhat dubious basis in fact, his writings around 500bc were the first mention of dice in Greek history. We know that dice existed far earlier than this, since a pair had been uncovered from an Egyptian tomb from 3000bc, but what is certain is that the Ancient Greeks and Romans loved to gamble on all manner of things, seemingly at any given opportunity. In fact all forms of gambling – including dice games – were forbidden within the ancient city of Rome and a penalty imposed on those caught which was worth four times the stake being bet. As a result of this, ingenious Roman citizens invented the first gambling chips, so if they were nabbed by the guards they could claim to be playing only for chips and not for real money. (Note that this ruse will not work if attempted at a Vegas casino).

Playing your Cards Right in China

Most scholars agree that the first playing cards appeared in China in the 9th century, although the exact rules of the games they were used for have been lost to history. Some suggest that the cards were both the game and the stake, like trading card games played by children today, while other sources believe the first packs of cards to have been paper forms of Chinese domino. Certainly the cards used at this time bore very little relation to the standard 52 card decks we know today.

Baccarat in Italy and France

The earliest game still played in casinos today is the two player card game of Baccarat, a version of which was first mentioned as long ago as the 1400s when it migrated from Italy to France. Despite its early genesis, it took hundreds of years and various evolutions to arrive at the game we know today. Although different incarnations of the game have come and gone, the standard version played in casinos all over the world came from Cuba via Britain to the US, with a few alterations to the rules along the way. Although baccarat is effectively more of a spectator sport than a game, it is a feature of just about every casino due to its popularity with high rolling gamblers.

1. Blaise Pascal is credited with the invention of a primitive roulette game in his quest for a perpetual motion machine in the 17th century. However, the roulette wheel itself is believed to be a.
2. The English doctor Thomas Dimsdale was nervous. It was the evening of October 12, 1768, and Dimsdale was preparing the empress of Russia, Catherine the Great, for her procedure.
3. Blaise Pascal is credited with the invention of a primitive roulette game in his quest for a perpetual motion machine in the 17th century. However, the roulette wheel itself is believed to be a.
4. How To Increase Discovered at On-line Roulette - Balls Out Motors. Balls Out Motors - Midwest’s best new and used golf cart and turf car dealer servicing Omaha, Lincoln, Council Bluffs, and Blair Nebraska. New, pre-owned, and custom golf cart, sales and service, E-Z.

Blackjack through the Ages

Some suggest that the earliest forms of blackjack came from a Spanish game called ventiuna (21) as this game appeared in a book written by the author of Don Quixote in 1601. Or was it the game of trente-un (31) from 1570? Or even quinze (15) from France decades earlier? As with all of these origin stories, the inventors of games of chance were rarely noted in the historical annals. The French game of vingt-et-un in the seventeenth century is certainly a direct forefather of the modern game, and this is the game that arrived in the US along with early settlers from France. The name ‘blackjack’ was an American innovation, and linked to special promotions in Nevada casinos in the 1930s. To attract extra customers, 10 to 1 odds were paid out if the player won with a black Jack of Clubs or Spades together with an Ace of Spades. The special odds didn’t last long, but the name is still with us today.

First Casinos in Italy

The earliest gambling houses which could reasonably be compared to casinos started to appear in the early 17th century in Italy. For example, in 1638, the Ridotto was established in Venice to provide a controlled gambling environment amidst the chaos of the annual carnival season. Casinos started to spring up all over continental Europe during the 19th century, while at the same time in the US much more informal gambling houses were in vogue. In fact steam boats taking prosperous farmers and traders up and down the Mississippi provided the venue for a lot of informal gambling stateside. Now when we think of casinos we tend to picture the Las Vegas Strip, which grew out of the ashes of the Depression in America.

The Little Wheel in Paris

Roulette as we know it today originated in the gaming houses of Paris, where players would have been familiar with the wheel we now refer to (ironically enough) as the American Roulette wheel. It took another 50 years until the ‘European’ version came along with just one green zero, and generations of roulette players can be grateful for that. During the course of the 19th century roulette grew in popularity, and when the famous Monte Carlo casino adopted the single zero form of the game this spread throughout Europe and most of the world, although the Americans stuck to the original double zero wheels.

Poker: Bust to Boom

It’s hard to pin down the precise origin of poker – as with a lot of the games mentioned here, poker seems to have grown organically over decades and possibly centuries from various different card games. Some have poker’s antecedents coming from seventeenth century Persia, while others say that the game we know today was inspired by a French game called Poque. What we do know for sure is that an English actor by the name of Joseph Crowell reported that a recognizable form of the game was being played in New Orleans in 1829, so that is as good a date as any for the birth of poker. The growth of the game’s popularity was fairly sluggish up until world poker tournaments started being played in Vegas in the 1970s. However poker really exploded with the advent of online poker and televised events allowing spectators to see the players’ hands. When amateur player Chris Moneymaker qualified for and won the 2003 world poker championship after qualifying through online play, it allowed everyone to picture themselves as online poker millionaires.

One Armed Bandits Appear in New York

The first gambling machine which resembled the slots we know today was one developed by Messrs Sittman and Pitt in New York, which used the 52 cards on drum reels to make a sort of poker game. Around the same time the Liberty Bell machine was invented by a Charles Fey in San Francisco. This machine proved much more practical in the sense that winnings could be precisely regulated, and marked the beginning of the real slot game revolution. The fact that some new video slot games still feature bell symbols dates back to this early invention. While early machines spewed out cigars and gum instead of money, the money dispensing versions soon became a staple in bars and casinos around the globe, and when the first video slot was invented in 1976 this paved the way for the online video slots which were to follow.

Gambling in the US: Two Sides of the Same Coin

The United States has always had an up and down relationship with gambling, dating back to when the very first European settlers arrived. Whereas Puritan bands of settlers banned gambling outright in their new settlements, those emigrating from England had a more lenient view of gambling and were more than happy to tolerate it. This dichotomous relationship has continued until now, and in 1910 public pressure led to a nationwide prohibition on gambling. Just like the alcohol prohibition of the same era, this proved somewhat difficult to enforce and gambling continued on in an only slightly discreet manner. The Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression that this spawned in the early 1930s led to gambling being legalized again, as for many this was the only prospect of alleviating the grinding poverty which they suffered through. Although gambling is legal in a number of States today –most famously in Las Vegas, Nevada - online gambling is still something of a grey area in the United States. Right now, many international internet casinos are unable to accept American clients, although the signs are that this will change in the near future.

The New Frontier for Gambling

Microgaming is one of the largest casino and slot game developers in the world today, and they are also considered to be pioneers of online gambling. The leap into the world of virtual casinos was taken all the way back in 1994, which in internet terms is kind of like 2300bc! Online gaming was worth over a billion dollars within 5 years, and today is a multibillion dollar industry with over a thousand online casinos and growing. The first live dealer casinos appeared in 2003 courtesy of Playtech, bringing us closer to a hybrid between brick and mortar casinos and the virtual world.

Gambling Has Gone Mobile

Since New Jersey legalized online gambling in 2011, there has been a boom in the interest people have in it. America has seen a move towards legalizing it state by state, as well as experiencing the rapid rise in mobile gambling. Across the globe, internet users are gradually veering away from their desktops and towards their handheld devices. This is true of online gamblers too, wanting to be able to enjoy their favorite games whilst on the go. The top gambling sites out there have recognized a market and have stepped up to deliver. With a wave of impressive mobile focused online gambling destinations taking the world by storm, it's safe to say that desktops are being left far behind in favour of more mobile alternatives.

…The Future

What Comes Next?

It is just about as difficult to predict the future for gambling as it is to uncover some of the origins of the gambling games we know so well today. Much of the focus at the moment is on the mobile gaming market, with online casinos scrambling to make more content compatible with the latest hand held devices. Virtual reality technology is just taking its first steps as a commercial proposition, and you can be sure that there will be gambling applications down the road. How would you like to sit around a virtual poker table with a bunch of your friends from all over the world, share a few laughs, try to tell if you can spot a tell-tale facial tick; and all this from the comfort of your home? VR Headsets can make it happen – maybe not today, but certainly just a few years down the track if technology continues to advance in bounds and leaps.

And after that? Well who knows, but when it comes to gambling all things are possible.

References

• Dice: Game Pieces (Britannica.com)
• Baccarat (card game) (Wikipedia.org)
• Twenty-One (card game) (Wikipedia.org)
• How Casinos Work (HowStuffWorks.com)
• Where Did Poker Originate? (History.com)
• History Of Poker (Wopc.co.uk)
• Chris Moneymaker (Wikipedia.org)
• Historical Interlude (VideoGameHistorian.com)
• Charles Fey and San Francieco's Liberty Bell Slot Machine (California Historical Quarterly)
• Microgaming: About Us (Microgaming.co.uk)
• New Jersey Now Allows Gambling via Internet (NYTimes.com)

Wulich […] invited us to sit around in a sign. [We] silently obeyed him […]. It seemed to me that I read the seal of death on his pale face. I noticed [...] that often on the face of a person who is supposed to die in a few hours there is some strange imprint of an inevitable fate [...].

“You will die today!” I told him.

He quickly turned to me, but answered slowly and calmly:

“Maybe, yes, maybe no…” Then, turning to the major, he asked: “Is the gun loaded?” The confused Major did not remember well.

This passage from the classic novel ‘The Hero of Our Time’ by great Russian author Mikhail Lermontov describes a bet between two officers in the Tsar’s army who just had to discover if fate was predetermined or ruled by people.

In the absence of sufficient empirical evidence, the parties turned to a gun and luck, conducting an experiment very similar to what is widely known as ‘Russian Roulette’, a mysterious deadly “game” shrouded in mystery.

Although, to this day, people keep dying as a result of this game, little is known about its origins, as well as how widespread it really is.

Officers’ fun

What’s known for sure about ‘Russian roulette’ is just how popular a reference it is for writers and producers all over the world. Countless plots have been created around this peculiar theme.

One popular theory says that not so famous American author of adventure stories Georges Arthur Surdez first coined the term ‘Russian roulette’ when he published a short story of the same title in Collier’s magazine in 1937.

The fictional story is told by a French soldier, who had a chance to witness how Russian officers — those who had little to lose after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 — used to play ‘Russian roulette’ just about anywhere: “At a table, in a cafe, at friends.”

Strangely, no Russian writer working before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution mentions ‘Russian roulette’ in their fiction prose or biographies. Even the above-mentioned passage by Mikhail Lermontov describes a situation where a single-shot gun was used instead of a revolver (the question there was simply whether it was loaded or empty).

Who Discovered Roulette Meaning

The most widespread revolver in the Russian Empire at the time of the revolution was the seven-shot ‘Nagant’ M1895 revolver. Since writer Surdez’s character describes a six-shot gun in his short story, many question the story’s relation to reality. It might well have been a fictional tale created at the whim of the author’s imagination.

'Nagant' Revolver, Model 1895.

Many other theories claim to reveal the real origin of the deadly game, however none of them have ever been proven with hard evidence. Some believe ‘Russian roulette’ emerged as a way for police to put pressure on captured suspects; others say prison guards used to force inmates to play ‘Russian roulette’ while they were making bets; yet others maintain that ‘Russian roulette’ emerged in the Tsarist army as a relatively “safe” trick that easily impressed onlookers.

Peculiarly, the fictional Russian officers in Surdez’s short story only removed one bullet from the revolver’s cylinder, leaving the other bullets in their chambers. Thus, they greatly reduced their chances of surviving the game. As shocking as it may sound, despite the grave risk the chances to survive ‘Russian roulette’ are relatively high if played with only one bullet.

The math behind the game

‘Russian roulette’ follows the laws of probability theory: A chance that the gun fires increases with every single blank, given there is a fixed number of empty chambers in a revolver’s cylinder and given that the cylinder is not rotated after every shot.

The classic variance of the game is played with a six-shooter, a revolver that has six chambers of which only one contains a bullet. Then, the cylinder is rotated and stopped at random. The game begins when the first player places the barrel against their head and pulls the trigger.

All other things being equal, the probability that the gun will fire starting with the very first attempt is one to six or 16.6 percent; the second — 20 percent, the third — 25 percent; the fourth — 33.3 percent; the fifth — 50%; the sixth shot is always fatal at 100 percent.

In other words, if all five shots are blank, the sixth always fires.

The player who shoots second (if only two players participate in the game) has an advantage: they will not need to shoot if the first one dies.

But if the first player survives, then the chances of survival for the second player are sharply reduced: Now the probability of surviving is 66.6%, in contrast to the 83.3% that the first player had during their first shot, unless the second player spins the revolver cylinder again.

It is always beneficial for any player to spin the cylinder before each shot, because this way they return their chances of survival to the original 83.3%.

'Dead Man's Bluff'

As surprisingly as it sounds, a person who decides to play ‘Russian roulette’ (although we strongly discourage you from doing this!!!) and does so only once is, theoretically, a favorite to survive the game. Only statistically, as in reality, such a trick may cause very gruesome consequences.

Modern modifications

‘Russian roulette’ comes in a great many modifications all over the world. In the Russian city of Perm, for example, locals created non-lethal electronic guns to play a game similar to the classic ‘Russian roulette’.

Who Discovered Roulette

A Facebook app called ‘Social Roulette’ was once a thing on Facebook: it randomly deleted an account of one out of six users who decided to use the app.

More gruesome instances are known, too. In Cambodia in 1999, three men died after they sat down to play a modified version of ‘Russian roulette’, stepping on an anti-tank mine instead of pulling a revolver’s trigger.

Shockingly, people keep playing the original version of ‘Russian roulette’ today, as multiple cases confirm. For example, one medical research studied 15 cases of death by ‘Russian roulette’ in 2008 alone and compared it to 75 cases of suicide committed outside of the brutal game. Surprisingly, the study found that most victims of ‘Russian roulette’ were African-Americans, whilst white Americans were more likely to be victims of other forms of suicide. A typical portrait of a ‘Russian roulette’ player (in the U.S.), according to the study, is a young unmarried black male.

Another medical study from 1987 found that those people who risked playing ‘Russian roulette’ were significantly less likely to be depressed, but more likely to have a history of drug and alcohol abuse than other victims of suicide.

It’s chilling to realize there are so many cases of ‘Russian roulette’ victims (the number of actual players might be considerably higher) to make medical research feasible.

Who Discovered Roulette Wheel

We might never know the true origin of this deadly game, but we can assume it is most likely much more widespread than we initially thought.

Who Discovered Roulette Model

Click here to find out how Russians lost their own 2nd Amendment to bear arms.

If using any of Russia Beyond's content, partly or in full, always provide an active hyperlink to the original material.

Get the week's best stories straight to your inbox

Who Discovered Roulette Videos