Roulette is the best gamble
The name of one of the most popular gambling in the world – roulette – gave the French word roulette (wheel). And it is deeply natural. After all, roulette began its history in the 18th century in France.
A device for playing roulette, which remained unchanged to this day, appeared in Paris in 1765. Roulette was born thanks to the ingenuity of one of the officers of the French police – Gabriel de Sartine, who invented this game of chance as opposed to card games – the predecessors of poker and Black Jack. After all, Paris during the reign of Louis XV was inundated with card cheaters, which give the guards a lot of trouble.
Roulette became a fashionable game and quickly conquered the gambling houses of Paris. One of the most popular houses in the French capital belonged to the Perrin brothers, immigrants from Lyon. It was they who came up with how to diversify the game by introducing odd-even odds, dozen, column and zero (0) bets.
The victorious procession of roulette was stopped by the French Revolution, which erupted in 1789. In 1791, the French National Assembly banned all gambling, imposing harsh penalties on the owners of gambling houses and people who would not inform that a game was being played in the house next door.
With Napoleon’s rise to power, gambling houses were reopened. But gambling flourished a little over thirty years. In 1839, all gambling houses in France were closed, and gambling was outlawed.
The ban on gambling houses in France could lead to the ruin of the brothers Francois and Louis Blanc. They were players by nature: they successfully turned things around on the French Stock Exchange, kept a gaming casino in Paris, and even figured out how to increase the profitability of roulette. Francois came up with a moving bottom in roulette, pressing which the dealer of the casino could substitute the right hole under the ball. The Blanc brothers were forced to emigrate to Germany and in Hamburg they reopened a casino where the game of roulette went. They use a single zero circle, reducing the percentage of casino revenue to 3%, attracting players, and get huge profits.
Blanc Brothers Casino is gaining fame throughout Europe. In 1861, Francois received a concession for the opening of a gambling house in the Principality of Monaco, where he soon moved. Here, fortune again turns to face it: in 1873, all gambling houses were closed in Europe except Monaco, and Francois became the king of the gambling business.
In the exaltation of Francois Blanc, Charles III, the Most Serene Prince of the Principality of Monaco since 1856, played a significant role. Monaco is a principality on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, surrounded on three sides by French territory. Charles III allowed gambling in his principality, including roulette. He wanted the gambling house to provide the means of subsistence for his state. His Serene Highness contributed to the establishment of the Nice-Monaco shipping line and the construction of the France-Monaco railway, which gave an influx of visitors to the gambling house. But the real heyday of Monaco as the capital of the gambling world began after the closure of gambling houses in Europe in 1873, the prohibition of gambling and the arrival of Francois Blanc.
Having paid Charles III two million francs, Blanc took upon himself all the costs of maintaining the principality government, officials and the army. He allocated 15% of roulette income to the treasury. Francois Blanc replaced the entire state apparatus, providing places in it to his friends. Maurice Blanc organized a joint-stock company of sea bathing.
Roulette is the best gamble
Although the resorts on the Cote d’Azur were already famous, the aforementioned society had nothing to do with sea bathing, but tightly controlled the entire gambling business in Monaco. Blanc invited the then-famous architect Jean Louis Garnier, who became famous for the construction of the Grand Opera building in Paris, and he built for him in Monte Carlo the roulette palace, nicknamed the Devil’s House. Garnier erected an opera house near the gambling house. To protect the casino Blanc created a special unit of the army of Monaco. For services to the country, Charles III granted Blanc noble dignity. Francois Blanc died in 1877, leaving his son Camille a gaming business in Monaco and two hundred million francs in gold. Note that at the end of the XIX century the budget of Monaco amounted to two million francs, of which one million four hundred thousand is the rent received from gambling houses.
Roulette began its victorious procession in the United States of America in 1800 in New Orleans. The game was brought there by the French emigres who fled from the horrors of the revolution. In the New World in the 19th century, the game was pursued by the same vicissitudes of fate as in Europe: the game was banned, gambling houses were closed.
The twentieth century has brought to humanity, among other benefits of civilization, the legalization of gambling, and with the development of the Internet you can easily play online roulette, Black Jack and poker at home.
