Month: January 2022

Single-zero roulette, also known as European or French roulette, offers a selection of traditional bets, known as ‘call’ or ‘French’ bets, on combinations of numbers according to their position on the roulette wheel. One such bet, known as ‘les (grand) voisins du zéro’, or ‘the (big) neighbours of zero’, includes seventeen numbers surrounding, and including, zero and requires nine chips, which are placed on several split and corner bets.

By contrast, the so-called ‘zero game’ bet, also known as ‘jeu zéro’or ‘zero spiel’ bet, includes just seven numbers, namely 12, 35, 3, 26, 0, 32 and 15, and requires just four chips, placed on three split bets and a straight up, or ‘en plein’, bet. The three split bets are placed between 0-3, 12-15 and 32-35, respectively, and the straight up bet is placed on 26. Consequently, the payout for a winning zero game bet varies from 17:1, in the case of a winning split, and 35:1, in the case of a winning straight up bet.

Being a call bet, only the croupier is allowed to place the chips required for a zero game bet on the layout and does so in response to players calling out the bet – hence the name – and handing over the requisite number of chips. Call bets are based on the sequence of numbers on the roulette wheel, so a zero game bet is available exclusively on single-zero roulette wheels; the numbers on double-zero, or triple-zero, roulette wheels are arranged in a different sequence.

Craps is, of course, a casino game in which players bet on the outcome of a roll, or a series of rolls, of a pair of dice. The name ‘craps’ is believed to be an Anglicisation of the French word ‘crapaud’, meaning ‘toad’ which, in turn, is derived from how a precursor of craps, called ‘hazard’, was played by people crouched on floors or pavements in seventeenth century France. However, the origins of hazard are believed to be much older. The invention of the game is credited to William of Tyre, during the siege of the castle of Hazarth – after which the games was probably named – in the early twelfth century.

 

Fast forward five hundred years or so and craps was a simplification of hazard created in France in the late sixteenth century. In the early nineteenth century, the game was introduced to New Orleans by French-American nobleman Bernard de Marigny who, as an errant young man, spent time frequenting the gambling houses of London. In the early years of the twentieth century, John H. Winn, a.k.a. ‘the Father of Modern-Day Craps’, remedied an obvious flaw in the game, by allowing ‘pass’ and ‘don’t pass’ options. His innovation revolutionised craps and encouraged its spread throughout French Louisiana and along the Mississippi River. Fast forward again, to the early Thirties, and the legalisation of gambling in Nevada further increased the popularity of craps and it has remained a rollicking, social game on the tables of Las Vegas ever since.

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