In old versions of Hoyle's Games, I've run across diagrams of a double-zero roulette wheel with a different arrangement of numbers than that on today's double-zero roulette wheels - along with a diagram of an old American roulette wheel with three zeroes
and 28 numbers that I first saw in Scarne's Guide to Gambling.

I was curious about these old roulette wheels, so recently I started doing some Googling to find out more.

One thing I learned was that, in Europe, 0 used to be red, odd, and low; 00 used to be black, even, and high. I saw this rule attested in a book from 1829; a red 0 and a black 00 is consistent with the modern arrangement of roulette wheels, but so far
the earliest reference to that I've found is from 1862.

Thus, I suspect the arrangement of colors on the old 38-number wheel was basically the same as on modern ones - which means that different numbers were red and black. The sequence was sufficiently messy that the colors of individual numbers would have
only been indicated on the wheel, not on the layout the way they are today.

Of course, the house would have no advantage on the even-money bets if 0 was treated like any other red number, and 00 was treated like any other black number. In one old game book, and one book specifically about Roulette, though, what I suspected as
obvious was noted: when a zero "won" on an even-money bet, that was "no action".

I also learned that this was how the "E. O." game worked before Roulette came along, and so people would have expected the two zeroes to work that way.

Well, to my mind, this explains why something so complicated as the Prison Rule was introduced to the single-zero roulette wheel when the Blanc brothers created it for Bad Homburg in 1842. After all, if they were going to cut the house percentage in half
by having only a single zero... if they left the house percentage almost the same on the even-money bets, which were the most commonly played, that would spoil the effect!

Of course, later on, having a visibly red 0 and a visibly black 00 was confusing to people, and so this was dropped on the 38-number wheel, and those numbers both just lost on the even-money bets. But by that time, the Prison Rule was an established
practice for the 37-number wheel, and there was no need to change,

Also, I searched for more information about the American wheel with an Eagle.

I found a real photograph of one on the Web!

However, the one in the photograph had a completely different arrangement of numbers from that shown in the old game books.

http://www.icollector.com/Very-Rare-Traveling-Roulette-Wheel-Mason-Co-Chicago_i9931313

and also a different example, apparently, with the same arrangement:

https://new.liveauctioneers.com/item/37651885_civil-war-era-eagle-roulette-wheel-no-1-to-28

However, it _did_ have one thing in common with the one in the game books. The even numbers were red, and the odd numbers were black; the illustration in the game books, although it had a different arrangement, showed odd and even numbers in strict
alternation - although in its case, the 0 and 00 were flanked by numbers of opposite parity, like the Eagle.

Since the layout only showed even odds bets for red and black, not even and odd (or high and low) this makes sense.

Wikipedia also has an image of an old 37 number wheel with a different arrangement of numbers; again, if red and black alternate, they wouldn't be systematic on the layout, nor would they match what the old 38 number wheel had.

John Savard

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)