Roulette

“ Roulette is considered vulgar compared with 30-and-40 (Trente et Quarante) , otherwise Red and Black (Rouge-et-Noir) .
326 ROUGE-ET-NOIR, OR, TRENTE ET QUARANTE. This game is played, like roulette, on a table covered with green cloth.
DIAGRAM OF ROUGE-ET-NOIR.
The tailleur (“cutter of the cards,” banker or dealer) seats himself at the centre of the table, while opposite him, and at each end, are croupiers (rakers-in) , to see that no mistakes are made, to aid bettors in placing stakes, and to draw or push money lost or won with long wooden rakes. ”

“ Instead of confronting such a tragedy, I found myself in the presence of a large company of quiet people, sitting around long tables, watching a revolving wheel in the center, and listening to the click of the little ivory ball as it slackened and fell into a numbered compartment of the wheel and determined the gain or loss of the players. There are four of these roulette-tables, and two others in an adjoining room, at which only trente et quarante is played, the latter a game of cards. No game lasts over a minute, so that the suspense is not long and agonizing. ”

“ There is some chance at faro, if the game is square. But roulette; bah! It is plain robbery."
"The blind Madonna of the Pagan, as Stevenson called chance," mused the colonel, lighting a cigar. "I often wonder if gambling is not as much a particle of our blood as salt. Perhaps you have all wondered why I never have kept a racing-stable, why I play bridge and poker for fun. ”

“ In the casino a crowd is gathering round the roulette wheel. Three-deep they stand. A woman rushes out from the dance-hall and pushes her way through the throng. She is very young, very fair and redundant of life. A man jostles her. From frank blue eyes she flashes a look at him, and from lips sweet as those of a child there comes the remonstrance: "Curse you; take care."
The men make way for her, and she throws a poke of dust on the red. "A hundred dollars out of that," she says. The coupier nods; the wheel spins round; she loses.
"Give me another two hundred in chips," she cries eagerly. ”

“ It was a strangely silent crowd, sitting or standing with eyes intent upon the tables, the only sounds being those incident to the game: the voices of the croupiers inviting their patrons to place their bets, the quick whir of the ivory ball about the rim of the roulette wheel, the warning that no more bets could be placed, the rattle of the ball falling into a compartment, the announcement of the winning number, and the clatter of the little rakes pulling in the bank’s winnings. ”

“ Dice, faro and roulette are the principal games of the gambling house and, considering these, the experienced player will tell you that he is suspicious of a "petey" in the dice box, a "high layout" in faro, and a "squeezed wheel" in roulette, in just the proportion that the gambling house keeper has not recognized that he cannot indulge them because of the fear of detection. The gambler holds to the gambler's view of the gambler—and it is not complimentary to the profession. ”

“ Twenty or thirty men were betting at roulette, in groups of three or four each. John passed them with a negligent, preoccupied air, walking straight back.
No faro play was just then going on. At one layout sat a dealer in that state of chilled ophidian tension characteristic of professional gamblers in the face of their prey, and by none so remarkably achieved as by the faro bank dealer, who drinks ice water without warming it, who sees without looking, who speaks only under great provocation and then softly, and whose slightest movement is pontifical until he reaches for the six-shooter. ”

“ This is the regimen of Roulette. The banker sits before the wheel,—a croupier, or payer-out of winnings to and raker in of losses from the players, on either side. Crying in a voice calmly sonorous, "Faites le Jeu, Messieurs,"—"Make your game, gentlemen!" the banker gives the wheel a dexterous twirl, and ere it has made one revolution, casts into its Maelstrom of black and red an ivory ball. The interval between this and the ball finding a home is one of breathless anxiety. Stakes are eagerly laid; but at a certain period of the revolution the banker calls out—"Le Jeu est fait. ”

“ The roulette tables attract the crowd, as well as for the reason that the game opens to the player many modes of proportionate risk, as that it affords him opportunity to play smaller sums on any one event, than he can at hazard. ”

“ Ridiculous as it may be that I should expect so much for myself from roulette, yet I consider even more ridiculous the conventional opinion accepted by all that it is stupid and absurd to expect anything from gambling. And why should gambling be worse than any other means of making money—for instance, commerce? It is true that only one out of a hundred wins, but what is that to me? ”

“ Between ten and eleven there are still to be found in the gambling halls the genuine desperate gamblers for whom nothing exists at a spa but roulette, who have come for that alone, who scarcely notice what is going on around them and take no interest in anything during the whole season, but play from morning till night and would be ready perhaps to play all night till dawn, too, if it were possible. And they always disperse with annoyance when at twelve o'clock the roulette hall is closed. ”

“ I ought to have said ere now that she had her first anger against me—or at least the first she showed—on the score of the gaming-tables. She had urged me with the prettiest and most passionate insistence to try and make my fortune in a night at the roulette-ball. And I had refused always.
I was no better than other men; I did not condemn what they did; but gaming had no charm for me, and it seemed to me that in one who had so little as I it would be utter madness to court ruin by staking that little on the chance of an ivory ball. ”

“ Roulette, rōōl-et′, n. a little ball or roller: a game of chance played on an oblong table divided into numbered and coloured spaces, and having in the centre a rotating disc on which a ball is rolled until it drops into one of the spaces, the player winning if he has staked his money on that space or its colour: an engraver's tool: a cylindrical object used to curl hair upon: (geom.) ”

“ It is strange that carelessness at roulette invariably brings good fortune. I glanced about me, eager to discover madame herself, but saw neither her nor the barber whom I had followed to this place. At the end of the room there were, however, a pair of long sage-green curtains, and as one of the players rose from the table and passed between them, I saw that another gaming-room lay beyond, and that the gamblers were playing baccarat, the bank being held by a superior-looking old gentleman who was wearing the crimson ribbon of the Legion d'Honneur in the lapel of his dining-jacket. ”

“ The pull, or percentage, of roulette against the player, being, however, nearly five times that of hazard, the small stakes played realise as large a result to the bankers. It requires all the vigilance of a player to guard his interests at this game; for, generally speaking, there is much confusion in the distribution of money staked by the many adventurers, on the numbers, and other points of speculation attaching to the game ”

“ I'm representing nine other game-owners and myself from all the saloons in town. We don't understand. We know that no system ever worked against roulette. All the mathematic sharps in the colleges have told us gamblers the same thing. They say that roulette itself is the system, the one and only system, and, therefore, that no system can beat it, for that would mean arithmetic has gone bug-house."
Shorty nodded his head violently.
"If a system can beat a system, then there's no such thing as system," the gambler went on. ”

“ The croupiers who sat at the two ends of it had not only to watch the stakes, but also to calculate the game—an immense amount of work for two men! As for the crowd itself—well, it consisted mostly of Frenchmen. Yet I was not then taking notes merely in order to be able to give you a description of roulette, but in order to get my bearings as to my behaviour when I myself should begin to play. For example, I noticed that nothing was more common than for another’s hand to stretch out and grab one’s winnings whenever one had won. ”

“ Marston was highly buoyant as he made his way to the garage where he could secure a car to give chase. He even paused with boyish and delighted interest to gaze into the glittering shop windows of the Promenade and the Avenue Felix Faure, where were temptingly displayed profound booklets guaranteeing the purchaser a sure system for conquering the chances of roulette “on a capital of £9, playing red or black, manque or passe, pair or impair, and compiled by one with four years of experience.” ”

“ Playing with Gaming-Machines.—Notwithstanding that roulette is an illegal lottery, it is an unhappy fact that of late years it has been much more played than formerly. An inspection of tradesmen’s catalogues, and a glance round the departments at the stores, tends to confirm the impression that it and like games are becoming much more common. ”

“ The regulation now prevailing at Monte Carlo, which prescribes twenty francs at trente-et-quarante and five francs at roulette, is a very salutary one, preventing as it does a certain class of player from risking small sums which he can ill afford to lose. During the existence of the Paris gaming-tables there was at times a good deal of agitation in favour of raising the limit at roulette, the lowness of which was said to be responsible for [Pg 262] widespread ruin amongst the working-classes. Occasionally, however, fortune was kind towards some of her humble worshippers. ”

“ For some reason or other his “system” failed absolutely.
“You see, he is hopeless,” mused Kennedy over our light repast. “And yet of all gambling games roulette offers the player the best odds, far better than horse-racing, for instance. Our method has usually been to outlaw roulette and permit horse racing; in other words, suppress the more favourable and permit the less favourable. However, we're doing better now; we're suppressing both. Of course what I say applies only to roulette when it is honestly played—DeLong would lose anyhow, I fear.” ”

“ As though of set purpose, there came to my aid a circumstance which not infrequently repeats itself in gaming. The circumstance is that not infrequently luck attaches itself to, say, the red, and does not leave it for a space of say, ten, or even fifteen, rounds in succession. Three days ago I had heard that, during the previous week there had been a run of twenty-two coups on the red—an occurrence never before known at roulette—so that men spoke of it with astonishment. Naturally enough, many deserted the red after a dozen rounds, and practically no one could now be found to stake upon it. ”

“ Certain players attach considerable importance to the numbers inscribed upon the check handed to them by the attendants who look after cloaks and sticks. Now and then, as must of necessity happen in the ordinary course of events, an individual succeeds in winning a good stake by backing a number at roulette corresponding with that on his wooden ticket ”

“ Roulette was O.K., but it seemed too mechanical and small in scale. The best roulette odds were not as good as the best odds in craps. Craps had a traditional sound to it. Oliver studied craps.
Players stood around an enclosed table and took turns throwing a pair of dice. On the first throw, the player "passed" if a 7 or an 11 came up. A 2, 3, or 12 was a "no pass." Any other number became the "point." The player continued to roll until either the point came up again, a pass, or a 7 was rolled, a no pass. All players could bet on every roll. ”

“ Any one not acquainted with the roulette man would almost marvel that with such immense odds in his favour, he should think it necessary to cheat; but to cheat is his delight and recreation.
The man who enters the roulette-tent on the racecourse, should he be the only bonâ fide player, may well leave all hope behind. Supposing that he commenced playing with the determination of losing a certain sum only, he would save himself trouble by paying down that sum then and there.
True, if several are playing at the same time, he does stand a chance ”

“ Every systematic method of play must depend upon increased stakes to retrieve past losses; and though a player with an unlimited capital might be practically certain to achieve his end in the course of time, the circumstance that there is always a maximum renders the bank invincible. The roulette table, covered with a green cloth, is made up of precisely corresponding halves with a circular space let into the middle holding the wheel, on either side of which the cloth is divided into spaces marked passe, pair, manque, impair, and the black and red diamonds. ”

“ Mart said there were roulette wheels there. Ed Chazzy has got a big picture up in the mountains, all framed and colored and everything, of a lot of men playing roulette in a gambling house in Arizona. It’s a dandy. The gamblers have on green eye-shades, and there’s one fellow just walks about with a big cigar in his mouth and his hands behind his back. The lookout, Ed said he was. And big, big stacks of chips—all colors. And stiffs and buckaroos and Mexicanos bucking the game. So I—Mart said there was roulette at Stlingbloke, and I wanted to try it just once. ”