The word itself is French and it means “little wheel”. There are a number of myths and stories about where the game was first played and/or who invented it. Some suggest it was developed in China or Tibet and brought back by the first traders or missionaries to visit. Others see it as an essentially European game, possibly invented by monks in the seventeenth century. Or invented by Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician, while he was on retreat in a monastery in 1655. A religious origin for the game seems unlikely given that the sum of the numbers 1-36 is 666 which has diabolical overtones (or perhaps the monks of the day had a sense of humour).

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The fact that it has a French name may indicate a European origin given that it combines features of other games such as Even Odd (EO), the Ace of Hearts, Biribi and Hoca (some of these games were more like lotteries or used cards). The English Parliament became alarmed at the wave of dishonest gambling that was cheating many out of their hard-earned money, and produced a series of statutes starting in 1739 which criminalized the running of gambling houses (without any benefit of peerage as a defe nce). The games outlawed were Ace of Hearts, Fao, Basset, Hazard, and Roulette or Roly-Poly.

The early version of roulette was exported to the “colonies” causing the government of New France in Canada to ban "dice, hoca, faro and roulette" in 1758 as a pernicious influence. EO remained very popular in Europe leading to it being banned in the 1780s. Players switched their attention to roulette with the single and double zero version of the game as we know it today being openly played in Paris in the 1790s from where it spread throughout Europe.

The French brothers, François and Louis Blanc, modified the wheel to a single zero in 1843 and so improved the player’s odds of winning to allow the spa casino in Homburg, Germany, to attract more business. When the German government abolished gambling in the 1860s, the Blancs moved to Monte Carlo which, at that time, was the only place in Europe where gambling remained legal. The rich and famous flocked to the principality and confirmed the popularity of the single zero version of the game.

During the twentieth century, the moral and legal culture changed to a more liberal system of licensing and regulation. The result is the spread of casinos around the world. Now that the internet has developed, the freedom to gamble online has created hundreds of different games to play. But, no matter how many new games come along, the traditional games such as roulette dominate the market. Roulette remains the "King of Casino Games", possibly because of its long-term association with the glamorous world of Monte Carlo.

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