What Colors Are on the Roulette Table?

The colors on a roulette table are red, black, and green. The red and black colors alternately cover the 37 spaces on the wheel.

The green color covers the 0 space.

Roulette is a casino game named after the French word meaning little wheel. In the game, players may choose to place bets on either a single number or a range of numbers, the colors red or black, or whether the number is odd or even, or if the numbers are high (19–36) or low (1–18).

To determine the winning number and color, a croupier spins a wheel in one direction, then spins a ball in the opposite direction around a tilted circular track running around the circumference of the wheel. The ball eventually loses momentum and falls into one of 37 (in French/European roulette) or 38 (in American roulette) colored and numbered pockets on the wheel.

The first form of roulette was devised in 18th century France. A century earlier, Blaise Pascal introduced a primitive form of roulette in the 17th century in his search for a perpetual motion machine.

The game has been played in its present form since as early as 1796 in Paris. An early description of the roulette game in its current form is found in a French novel La Roulette, ou le Jour by Jaques Lablee, which describes a roulette wheel in the Palais Royal in Paris in 1796. The description included details such as:.

There are two handles on each side of the wheel; when they are turned together, they cause it to revolve.There are 37 pockets. They are numbered from 1 to 36 inclusive, and there is a single zero. They are alternately colored red and black. There is also a green pocket numbered 0.[T]wo men standing at opposite ends of it with rakes turn it.a small ivory ball is introduced and thrown into it by one of them while it revolves rapidly. After turning for some time it falls into one of these pockets.[W]hen it falls into one that is colored black,.it loses; but if it falls into one that is colored red,.it wins.If it happens to fall into zero,.the bettor neither wins nor loses.”.

The bettor has two options: he can either win 35 times his original bet if his number comes up, or lose his entire bet if his number does not come up. There is also a third option: he can bet that either 0 or 00 will come up, which pays off at 17-to-1 odds if successful.