The classic size of a roulette ball varies from 18 to 21 millimeters, and its weight reaches 6 grams. Earlier, in respectable gambling establishments, balls were made of ivory, which perfectly matched the elegant interior of a gambling establishment. Today casinos use Teflon and plastic balls; ivory was abandoned due to the greater practicality of modern materials.
The croupier throws the ball clockwise while the wheel rotates counterclockwise. By the way, dealers do not have access to balls before the start of the game – they are stored in guarded safes to minimize the risk of equipment tampering.
Practice shows that if light plastic balls are used in a gambling establishment, in this case, with proper care, the roulette system can be used for up to 20 years. Large casinos take care of the equipment and specially trained specialists regularly exchange roulette wheel rotors.
The owners of the gambling establishment and the management of the casino do everything to prevent players from making additional profits due to some even minor flaws in the operation of the equipment, therefore, the quality of manufacture, as well as the accuracy of the fit of the roulette wheel, plays an important role. It is a common practice when the rotors are changed weekly (between roulettes running in the hall).
The operation of the roulette mechanism is controlled by independent government experts and the gambling establishment itself.
How are the numbers arranged?
At first glance, the location of the numbers on the roulette wheel seems random, but this is fundamentally wrong. The numbers were not scattered at random – this is the fruit of painstaking work, which was necessary in order to ensure completely random occurrences. In classic roulette, clockwise from the zero sector, the numbers are arranged as follows:
0, 32, 15, 19, 4, 21, 2, 25, 17, 34, 6, 27, 13, 36, 11, 30, 8a, 23, 10, 5, 24, 16, 33, 1, 20, 14, 31, 9, 22, 18, 29, 7, 28, 12, 35, 3, 26
As we know, red and black colors alternate in roulette. The parity of the numbers does not alternate, since there are 13 places on this wheel, where 2 odd and 2 even numbers are located next to each other. More than 2 odd or even numbers in a row cannot be located.
You may have heard of such an interesting fact that the total sum of all roulette numbers reaches 666. Another interesting observation is that by laying a fictitious line dividing the wheel of ambassadors from zero to sector 5-10, then in this case, on each half of the wheel, the total sum of numbers is equal to 333.
A few words about American roulette
As we know, American roulette differs from European one by the presence of one more sector of zero – 00. The sequence of numbers in a clockwise direction looks like this:
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.
Both zero sectors are opposite each other. But the sum of any 3 numbers that are located nearby, the total sum of the extreme digits reaches 37 or 39. This proves once again that the numbers on the roulette wheel are not scattered in a chaotic manner.
We have told you everything about the roulette wheel design – perhaps this information will be useful to you in the future.