Roullete, sometimes spelled Roulette or Rulette, is one of the oldest and most popular casino games. It is played with a rotating wheel and a table with different sections for placing bets. A player may choose to bet on a single number, various groupings of numbers, the color red or black, or odd or even. The wheel, which is a solid wooden disk slightly convex, has thirty-six compartments painted alternately red and black and numbered nonconsecutively from 1 to 36. A green compartment carries the sign of zero, and two additional green compartments carry the signs of 0 and 00 on American-style wheels.

Roulette is a game of pure chance, and unless exceptional circumstances occur, no betting system can overcome the built-in house advantage of the game. Despite its low profile in the United States, where other games have grown in popularity such as slot machines and video poker, roulette still draws considerable crowds in Europe, particularly Monte Carlo. The game’s history is shrouded in legend, including fanciful stories about its invention by the 17th-century French mathematician Blaise Pascal and a Dominican monk.