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Names and dates and the big picture
The image that the phrase "casino" or "casino games" inevitably recalls in the minds of most Americans is that of Las Vegas: a massive city in the deserts of the southwest. The image of Las Vegas at night is the most prominent; row after row of wide avenues with medians of palm trees down the center, and complex after complex of hotel-casinos, with their glittering signs and promises of large winnings. Few people actually think about the history of the games that they are playing; the image in their minds is one that is inevitably and quintessentially modern. Few would imagine that some of these games trace their origins back for hundreds of years, to Europe or even to East Asia.
A brief history of Roulette
Historians of Roulette argue over the game's exact origins. Was it a game played by soldiers in ancient Rome? Or was it in Tibet? Or did it perhaps originate in France just a few centuries ago? The majority of the game's historians choose the last option and attribute the game to a man by the name of Blaise Pascal, often considered the inventor of the modern Roulette wheel. The original version of the game, most believed invented in France, features a Roulette wheel with only one single zero pocket (as opposed to the version employed in the United States with a double zero pocket) and is known as European Roulette; it is this version which is the most popular version of the game.
Commonly held to have been invented in France in the late 17th century (the name "Roulette" is actually French for "little wheel"), the game had migrated across the Channel to England by the early 18th century in the form of a game called RolyPoly. This game was played with a small bouncing ball and a wheel, much like modern Roulette.
A pair of French brothers by the names of Louis and Francois Blanc are credited with the founding of the first major casino, in Monte Carlo, by contract with King Charles III of Monaco sometime in the 1860s. It was called the Casino de Monte Carlo and was unbelievably fancy: a mark of European aristocracy at the time.
The advent of the Internet in the mid-1990s heralded an unprecedented change in the casino gaming industry: the parallel advent of online casinos. Unlimited by the walls of the facility, online casinos could vastly expand their Roulette offerings, providing not only both European and American Roulette, but also other spin-off versions of the game.
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