Boule
Boule is quite similar to roulette. A stationary rounded table has eighteen pockets, two for each number from one to nine. A ball is rolled into the table, which is essentially a cone in shape. The ball bounces around and falls into one of the numbers – the winning number. Players betting on the number are paid off at 7 to 1, although true chances are 8 to 1, for a house advantage of 11.11%. Players can also bet on red and black, odds or evens, high or low, for an even payoff. They lose on even bets when a five appears, making the true chances of winning only 4 of 9, for the same house advantage of 11.11%. The game was very popular in France prior to the introduction of slot machines in the late 1980s. Slot rooms and boule rooms in France do not have admission charges. The game was also played at the Crystal Casino in Winnipeg, Manitoba, through the 1990s. Until recently, it was the only game allowed in Switzerland, where the payout was only 6 to 1 for a single-number play, for a house edge of 22.22%.
Big Wheel (Wheel of Fortune or Big Six)
A big vertical wheel of fortune is a common sight at carnivals and charity casino events. The wheel of fortune is also popular in U.S. casinos but less prevalent in casinos of other jurisdictions. The mechanical wheel is spun by a dealer who also supervises betting activity on a table in front of the wheel. The wheel’s simplicity and exposure to a gambling crowd makes it susceptible to cheating, so it would be advisable not to play the game except in a regulated atmosphere. Casinos must be vigilant to ensure that the wheel is not compromised by players.
The wheel is about five feet across from top to bottom. It has fifty-four equally spaced sections that are separated by nails that are near the rim of the wheel. A strap of leather is mounted above the wheel, and it hits the nails as the wheel spins around. The friction of contact slows the wheel, and it stops with the leather strap settling on one of the fifty-four spaces – the winning space.
The spaces are designated by denominations of dollar bills. Twenty-three sections are marked with a $1 bill, 15 with $2 bills, 8 with $5 bills, 4 with $10 bills, and two with $20 bills. Two others are marked with a joker and a flag marking. The player bets on the category of bill he or she expects the wheel to hit. He or she receives an even money payout for a successful bet on the $1 bill, although the chances of success are only 23 of 54. This gives the house a 14.8 percent edge. A bet on $5 pays 2 to 1 for a casino advantage of 16.6%; other bets give the house an edge of from 14.8 percent to 22.2%. A bet on the joker or the flag is paid at 45 to 1. These odds advantages for the house make the big wheel a bad bet for the player. The simple nature of the activity and the symbolism of the wheel of fortune have sustained a modicum of popularity of the wheel among amateur players.
Espherodromo
Legal restrictions on gambling are not often followed to the letter. In addition to those who would confront the law with blatant illegality, there are those who seek to find nonconfrontational ways around the law. The roulette form of gambling is quite popular, so where roulette is in itself illegal, there are those who will seek to find other games like roulette that might survive legal challenges. Two of those games are espherodromo and golden ten. Espherodromo appeared in the city of Bogota, Colombia, where casinos were always on the edge of the law. Therefore entrepreneurs came up with a game that certainly did not look like roulette, but in format was a roulette-style game. (See description of the game in entry for Colombia).
Golden Ten
The golden ten game was offered to players in nonauthorized settings; however, its operators were quite successful in avoiding prosecution on the basis that their game was not a gambling game. The golden ten wheel game was instead advanced as a skill game. The game gained an especially viable hold in the Netherlands in the 1980s after the government tried a crackdown on patently illegal casino gaming. Operators came up with this new game, although some suggest it was invented by Germans. The game is called golden ten because it uses a wheel with numbers in the center around a circle; one of the numbers is marked zero, and the other is marked with a big golden X. There are twenty-four numbers on the wheel, so if it were a random-ordered game, the house would have an advantage of about 8 percent, as payoffs on single numbers are 23 to 1, whereas the expectation should require a payoff of 25 to 1. But those running the wheel claimed that the numbers, although falling randomly, could be predicted by the players. Indeed, the game was also called observation roulette.
The circular bowl for the game is stationary. A ball rolled into the smooth metal bowl makes slow, descending spirals downward until it hits the center area, where it bounces into one of the numbered areas or the area marked zero or X. The metal bowl contains two concentric circles on its sides, about one-third and two-thirds of the way down the sides. The circles are simply markings on the bowl that do not affect the roll of the ball. The player makes his or her bet after the ball has passed the first circle but before it crosses the lower circle. The player can watch the ball come out of the dealer’s hand and watch it cross the first circle line. By observing the rolls over and over, the player is supposed to be in a good position to “predict” where the ball will likely land. With successful predictions, the player becomes a skillful winner, not a gambler at all. Gambling demands that chance be a material part of the play on at least a meaningful part of the play. The casinos with golden tens provided lists of rules requiring players to make many observations before they tried playing. They wanted the players to be skillful. When legal authorities claimed it was a gambling game, the defenders of the game asked the government to prove that players were not using skill. One judge suggested that prosecuting officials would have to show that the players did not do better, or could not do better, than achieving the 92 percent expected payout. As the golden ten games closed down whenever police or government officials came into the premises, it was difficult to achieve such proofs. For over a dozen years the court officials allowed the game to be played and not harassed by the law. In the mid-1990s, judicial policies allowed a more effective enforcement of the law, and most of the games closed down permanently.
Was golden ten a skill game? When I interviewed one operator in Rotterdam on 20 July 1986, I asked whether indeed a skillful player could “beat the casino”. I was assured that one could. Truly, one could use skill and predict where the ball would fall. So I asked what would happen if a player came in and did predict over and over where the ball would fall. The operator paused a bit before replying slowly, “Well, we would have to throw him out.” (An option always open to illegal casinos). In truth they never had to do so, because no player could pick a winner by any other force than the force of luck.