Before the turn of the 19th century, the original Parisian roulette wheel featured 38 numbered slots, or pockets. Among those were 18 red numbers and 18 black ones, along with two green bank slots, the zero and double zero, to give the house its advantage.
This version of the wheel was shipped to French-influenced New Orleans around the time of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. From there, the wheel traveled up the Mississippi on riverboats and then on to America’s western frontier. As the European layout evolved to a single-zero version with 37 pockets in the latter half of the century, the original 38-slot form would eventually become known as the “American wheel.”
Despite many attempts to change the configuration, the wheels seen in casinos and online today are exactly the same as the ones used more than 150 years ago. The numbers on each wheel alternate red and black. No more than two odd or even numbers may appear next to each other. The numbers are also distributed to create randomness among the various dozens and columns that appear on the table layout, too.
If you take a close look at the American wheel, you will see that each odd number has been fixed directly across from the next even number in sequence. In order, the numbers appearing from the single zero clockwise are 0-28-9-26-30-11-7-20-32-17-5-22-34-15-3-24-36-13-1-00-27-10-25-29-12-8-19-31-18-6-21-33-16-4-23-35-14-2.
With an odd number of slots, the single-zero European wheel has no slot directly opposite any other, so the sequence has to be different. Clockwise from zero the numbers are 0-32-15-19-4-21-2-25-17-34-6-27-13-36-11-30-8-23-10-5-24-16-33-1-20-14-31-9-22-18-29-7-28-12-35-3-26.
In 1888, some American versions of the wheel featured only 14 red numbers and 14 black ones, along with three bank slots—a zero, a double zero and an American eagle symbol. That made 31 pockets in total. But with odds of 27-to-1 paid for a straight up bet, the house advantage was 9.8%, and the experiment soon failed in favour of the original 38-pocket version.
By contrast, the elimination of the double-zero on the European wheel meant odds actually improved for the player, as the house edge fell from to just 2.7%. It has been said that a couple of French brothers, Francois and Louis Blanc, made a pact with the devil in 1842 to obtain the single-zero idea, which made roulette more popular than ever when introduced at German casinos the following year. As many have since pointed out, adding up all of the numbers on the roulette wheel results in a total of 666—the number of the Antichrist—yet another supposed indication of evil influences at work in the game.
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