While the concept of a spinning wheel of fortune is ancient, the direct, modern form of Roulette has a much clearer family tree. Before the game was perfected in the salons of 18th-century France, its essential components were being tested and popularized in the lively gambling houses of Italy. Two games, Biribi and Hoca, stand out as the immediate predecessors that provided the complete blueprint for the casino classic we know today.
The Betting Board: The Contribution of Biribi
Biribi, popular in the 17th century, was a lottery-style game of pure chance. The setup was simple but revolutionary for its time. It featured a large board marked with numbers, typically from 1 to 70. Players would place their bets on the number they believed would be chosen.
Instead of a wheel, the winning number was determined when the game’s banker drew a numbered token or ticket from a leather bag. If a player’s number was drawn, they would receive a handsome payout, often around 64 times their stake. While this offered a thrilling win, the high number of slots and the lower payout ensured a significant house edge, which led to the game often being outlawed. The crucial innovation here was the numbered betting layout, a direct ancestor of the green felt table we see in casinos today.
The Spinning Wheel: Hoca Takes the Next Step
Running parallel to Biribi, the game of Hoca (or ‘Hocca’) brought the concept one giant leap closer to modern Roulette. Like Biribi, Hoca used a numbered board for players to place their wagers. However, it replaced the bag of tickets with a mechanical device.
Hoca used a circular tray or a primitive wheel with 30 to 40 cups or indentations around its edge. A ball was rolled around the device and would eventually come to rest in one of the cups, determining the winning number. This combination of a spinning mechanical device and a ball to generate a random number was the final missing piece of the puzzle. It was, in essence, the first true roulette wheel.
The Blueprint for Modern Casino Roulette
When you combine the innovations of these two Italian games, the formula for Roulette becomes crystal clear:
- Biribi provided the concept of a structured, numbered betting board where players could place a variety of bets.
- Hoca introduced the dynamic, visual excitement of a spinning wheel and a bouncing ball to decide the outcome.
Together, they created the direct blueprint for Roulette. French innovators would later refine this model, reducing the number of slots, adding the zero to perfect the house edge, and polishing the rules. But the fundamental structure—betting on a numbered layout while a ball determines the winner on a spinning wheel—was born in the gambling dens of 17th and 18th-century Italy. These games are the essential “missing link” in the history of Roulette, connecting ancient wheels of fortune to the sophisticated casino icon we play today.