Chip behind a roulette wheel beside a THE DEVILS WHEEL neon sign in dramatic red light

Roulette: The Story of the Devils Wheel

🕑 8 min read

Last updated: June 2026

Last verified 5 hours ago (11 June 2026)

Roulette has a nickname few players know: the devil’s wheel. Add up every number from 1 to 36 and you get 666, and the legend says its inventor sold his soul to learn its secrets. Behind the superstition sits a glorious history, a French philosopher’s accident, the brothers who built Monte Carlo, and the men who genuinely broke the bank. Here is the full story of the most elegant, most cursed game on the casino floor, told by a man who spun the wheel for a living.

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I spent a good chunk of my career behind a roulette wheel, friend, and there is no more hypnotic object in the whole casino. The little ivory ball rattling around, the held breath of the table, the moment it drops. It’s pure theatre. But the wheel carries a darker reputation than most players realise, so let me tell you where the devil got involved.

Why they call it the devil’s wheel

Here’s the eerie little fact at the heart of it. Take all the numbers on a roulette wheel, 1 through 36, and add them together. The total is 666, the number of the beast. That single piece of arithmetic gave roulette its sinister nickname, the devil’s wheel, and a legend to match.

The story goes that a man so badly wanted to understand the secrets of roulette that he made a bargain with the devil himself, and the 666 is the devil’s signature, hidden in plain sight on every wheel in the world. It’s nonsense, of course, the numbers were simply arranged for balance and the sum is coincidence. But it’s a wonderful piece of casino folklore, the kind we collect in our casino superstitions piece, and once you know it, you’ll never look at a wheel quite the same way.

A philosopher’s happy accident

The truth of roulette’s birth is less satanic and rather charming. In the 17th century, the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal was trying to build a perpetual motion machine, a device that would spin forever without an energy source. He failed, as everyone must, the laws of physics don’t allow it. But his spinning contraption became the basis for the roulette wheel.

So the most famous gambling wheel on earth began as a doomed science experiment. The game took shape in France over the following century, and the word “roulette” itself simply means “little wheel”. For a long time it had both a single zero and a double zero, until a clever change turned it into a goldmine, which brings us to two brothers and a tiny principality.

The brothers who built Monte Carlo

In the 1840s, two Frenchmen, François and Louis Blanc, made a brilliant move: they introduced a roulette wheel with only a single zero. By removing the double zero, they lowered the house edge, which made their tables far more attractive to players, and ironically made the brothers a fortune through sheer volume. This single-zero wheel is the European wheel still played across the world today.

The Blancs took their wheel to the tiny seaside principality of Monaco and helped build the legendary Casino de Monte-Carlo, turning a struggling little state into the glittering playground of European royalty. So successful and so associated with the game was François Blanc that people whispered he was the one who’d struck the deal with the devil. The 666 legend attached itself firmly to his name. In reality, his only magic was good mathematics: a smaller edge brought bigger crowds.

The men who broke the bank

Now for the legends who actually beat the wheel. In 1873, a British engineer named Joseph Jagger had a sharp idea: if a wheel had any tiny mechanical imperfection, certain numbers would come up more often. He hired clerks to secretly record thousands of spins at Monte Carlo, found a biased wheel, bet the favoured numbers, and won a fortune, reportedly equivalent to millions today. He is the original “man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo”.

Then in 1891, an Englishman named Charles Wells broke the bank repeatedly over a few days, winning a million francs and inspiring the famous song. Here’s the twist: Wells had no system at all. He was a career fraudster on a once-in-a-lifetime lucky streak, and he later died penniless in prison. Jagger beat a flawed machine with science. Wells just got staggeringly lucky and called it genius. Both stories tell you something true, and we explore the modern versions, like the Garcia-Pelayo family, in our famous advantage players piece.

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I spun the wheel at the Stardust for years, friend, and I’ll tell you, no game draws a superstitious crowd quite like roulette. I had regulars who bet their birthday every single night, others who’d only play red after the ball landed black three times, certain it was “due”. I watched a woman win big on number 17 and then chase that number for a week straight until she’d given it all back and then some. The wheel doesn’t know your birthday and it doesn’t remember the last spin, but try telling that to a hopeful soul at two in the morning. I never tried. I just spun the wheel, called the number, and watched the oldest dance in gambling play out one more time. The devil’s wheel, they call it. The only devil in it is the little green zero, and that’s just maths.

The wheel today, and can you beat it?

Today you’ll meet the wheel in a few forms. The European wheel, with its single zero and a 2.7% house edge, is the one to seek out. The American wheel adds a second green pocket, the double zero, which nearly doubles the edge to a punishing 5.26%, so avoid it when you can. And online, dazzling variants like Lightning Roulette add random multipliers and showmanship on top of the classic game, which we cover in our best roulette casinos guide.

So can you beat it? On a perfect modern wheel, no. The biased-wheel trick that made Joseph Jagger rich is all but dead, because casinos now monitor, balance, and rotate their wheels constantly to kill any imperfection. No betting system beats the green zero, as we explain in our gambling myths piece. Roulette is a gorgeous game, the most elegant on the floor, but it is a game of pure chance with a fixed edge. Play the European wheel, bet for fun, and enjoy the most beautiful spin in the casino. Just don’t sell your soul for it.

Frequently asked questions

Why is roulette called the devil’s wheel?

Because the numbers 1 to 36 on the wheel add up to 666, the biblical number of the beast. This gave rise to a legend that the game’s secrets were obtained through a deal with the devil. It’s pure folklore, the sum is coincidence, but the eerie nickname has stuck to roulette for generations.

Who invented roulette?

The wheel grew out of a failed perpetual motion machine built by French mathematician Blaise Pascal in the 17th century. The modern single-zero game was shaped in the 1840s by François and Louis Blanc, who lowered the house edge and took it to Monte Carlo, making roulette the centrepiece of European high-society gambling.

Did someone really break the bank at Monte Carlo?

Yes, more than once. In 1873 engineer Joseph Jagger exploited a biased wheel to win a fortune. In 1891 Charles Wells broke the bank repeatedly on a pure lucky streak, inspiring the famous song, though he was later revealed as a fraudster and died penniless. “Breaking the bank” meant exhausting a table’s cash reserve.

Can you beat roulette with a system?

No. No betting system beats roulette’s house edge, which comes from the green zero, or the two green zeros on an American wheel. The biased-wheel approach that worked in the 1800s is dead, as modern casinos constantly monitor and rotate their wheels. Choose the single-zero European wheel for the best odds, and play purely for entertainment.

Related ChipReign pages

Best roulette casinos: where to play, including Lightning Roulette
Casino superstitions: more gambling folklore
Famous advantage players: the modern wheel-beaters
Gambling myths debunked: why no system works
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Responsible gambling hub: free, confidential help

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