It’s a game of chance, apparently so simple on the surface but beneath, like the swan, it’s a seething mass of security and technology. Up to 38 coloured pockets for a single white ball to fall in to, a spin of the wheel that can make dreams come true. Well, the game certainly has a romantic appeal, a kind of ‘sexiness’ that few other games can match. Roulette equals glamour to most of the public, and this image is perpetuated even now in the media and movies.

Roulette has been around since the 17th century, and in its current form, first appeared in a Paris casino in 1796. The first zero hit the wheel in 1842, while the second zero (in the US) hit the wheel in the early 19th century.

Albert Einstein, it’s claimed, once said: “You cannot beat a roulette table unless you steal money from it.” An Englishman named Ashley Revell would disagree – he famously sold everything he owned including his clothes, flew to Vegas and bet everything on ‘red’ in the Plaza Hotel. His bet came good, and his money was doubled.

This is part of the game’s enduring appeal, no doubt. Even in markets where high volatility slots don’t perform so well, the perception of roulette is not one of a high volatility game, despite the fact that you can either win big or lose big. That’s part of the romance, that you can either make or break a dream on the table and it’s in the hands of the gods, so to speak, not your own, unlike card games where a measure of skill goes a long way. People love to know if they’re ‘lucky’, or if they can work out what the wheel’s going to do; people have systems and superstitions, but most of all when they’re playing roulette, they have fun.

It’s a great social game, and with a good dealer can be a huge draw for a casino. But there’s a lot to Roulette. A table needs cloth, a wheel, these days a billboard of some kind, and chips, and a whole lot more. What should you be looking for in your Roulette set-up, and what do the experts think?

Paul Sculpher is General Manager of Aspers Newcastle, a casino with 10 Roulette tables. There are 23 table games in total at the casino, but Paul says he has thinned out the Roulette tables to give slight preference to Blackjack. “At the weekends, when we’re busiest, Blackjack is a little easier to get into. Roulette is a bit more intimidating. The bulk of our daily trade is Roulette, but at the weekends, if I could have one more table it would be Blackjack.”

Is this a chink in the armour of Roulette, that it can seem inaccessible to the first-time player? Well, not really. Blackjack has the edge that most people have played some variation of it at home with just a deck of cards. Roulette, though, is universally recognised, and the basic rules are known (or quickly picked up) by most casino visitors: pick a number and put a chip on it. It can seem intimidating because there are usually crowds around the tables, and clamour, and noise, and of course there are many different bets, and these days, side bets are a factor as well. The basic game, however, remains the same.

Sculpher acknowledges the simplicity of Roulette’s appeal, saying: “Compared to the other games, you can stake small and win big, which you can’t do on any of the other games. It’s also a relatively social game. If you’re there with two or three other people, it’s fun.”

As a manager, Sculpher knows what he wants from his tables: stability, security and they have to fit with the decor of the casino. “I’ve had tables before that are wobbly, or that aren’t sufficiently well put together.

“Our tables are solid, don’t wobble and are appealing to look at. They fit into the style of decor we have here,” he continued. “We use baize layouts because we’re trying to give a quality offering rather than using synthetics which are much cheaper. We replace our layouts regularly and get them chemically cleaned.

“As for our wheels, we use bespoke wheels from Huxley’s which I believe were designed just for us. With a wheel, the first thing you’re looking for is security, because if you don’t have that, it doesn’t matter what they look like, you’re going to get ripped off at some point. The other bits and bobs, we go for what blends with the rest of our furnishings.”

According to Sculpher, the modern manager is almost spoiled for choice, as he remembers the days not so long ago when it was difficult to get a Roulette manufacturer to supply quality product to the UK, with TCS and Huxley’s dominating the scene. Now, things are very different, the market has opened up and every product needs USPs.

A table’s cloth is often overlooked by players. It’s one of those things you often only notice when it’s bad, a poor choice or just plain worn out. Martin Williams Casino Equipment specialise in cloths, and Gaynor Edwards is their designer. Gaynor says that with their customers, a cloth’s colour is generally chosen before MWCE becomes involved as the customer will already have a colour scheme working in their casino, or an idea of what they’re using for a new launch. The cloths they make all feature fire retardent backing, and the company’s two main cloths – Futura and Cotura – do not have directional nap. According to Gaynor, this means “no lint production on either fabric.”

The Futura layouts have a long life, up to about eight months, which is very good considering the battering roulette cloths take in a working day. But what characteristics does a cloth need? Gaynor says it should be “hard wearing, and have ‘washability’, with a good visual look so it can be seen clearly under the security cameras.” All practical, common sense points. Customers can of course want elaborations on the bedrock of common sense, which usually means some kind of personalisation, branding of their casino on a cloth. Gaynor explains: “Some customers have specifics in the design they want for their boxes, or a particular font they might need to go with their other tables. For some people, they want textures putting on their cloths if we’re doing digital, or their logo as a watermark. But the actual Roulette game itself doesn’t change, it’s just the aesthetics that change, the logos, that kind of thing.”

Chips play a huge part in Roulette, from the point of identifying a player or their winning bet with different colour chips, through to security and possible cheating. Progressive Gaming’s Tim Parker, Sales Director for EMEA, says the company’s RFID chips and TableLink should be ready for use in a player tracking sense on a Roulette table by the end of 2007.

“The issue really is finding an antenna which will cover the table. There’s only certain speeds of chips you would actually be able to manage that with, but hopefully later this year we will be able to fit RFID and TableLink in Europe through to track chips, for player tracking on Roulette. Obviously we can already track chips from a security point of view at a Roulette table, but if you’re looking for turnover, we will be able to do that later this year.”

TableLink can of course already be used on a Roulette table, with or without RFID. The idea of tracking players based on buy-in and colour et cetera is manageable and quite quick, and has been done by companies already without RFID. RFID will bring accuracy along with speed, though, and is therefore the Holy Grail for player tracking on a table game.

“The idea, the theory of tracking on a Roulette table is there, it’s proved. It’s just actually working out the hardware to back that theory up.”

The problem for RFID and Roulette at the moment is that the tables can be so large, and RFID antennae generally look for specific areas rather than a whole table area, but it seems it won’t be an obstacle for long.

PGI have also discovered an area where their expertise can be employed on a Roulette table – on a display screen. This is a growing market, and if used correctly can draw customers right to the table – and keep them there. The displays can be tailored to fit any wheel, explains Tim: “We’re not fixed to anybody, we’re more than happy to put our displays on any wheel. We have on-rim or camera-based readers that we can supply as well, if the customers just have a basic wheel without a reader. It depends on the customer and how far they want to go; whether they want to supply their own wheels with the readers, their own displays etc and just to take the software, or if they want us to supply everything.”

Isn’t this a diversification for a company like PGI though? Apparently not – it’s simply another application for their MediaLink software, a package that allows a casino to put together and control its own visual display media (plasmas, LCDs etc). Tim elaborates: “It both is and isn’t a diversification for us. It came about because we had all the information about players, games and everything else, so what we felt was the next generation would be media systems to allow casinos to interact with customers, be that a plasma screen or a table display. The MediaLink system as a whole will cover a whole operation, whether it’s plasmas or table displays. It just so happens it lends itself particularly well, a part of that, to be a stand-alone product. What makes MediaLink unique is that you can network all of your displays together and potentially, as well as just displaying your winning numbers, send marketing information that’s co-ordinated with plasmas and other promotions you have going on that would run on our back-office software anyway.”

Of course, PGI are not alone in making these displays, as Cammegh has a superb Billboard HD product – and are also world-renowned for making some of the best wheels in the business.

Andrew Cammegh is adamant that what is defined by the term ‘traditional’ Roulette has changed, as the most basic wheels are usually sold incorporating sensors and other technology, rather than the stand-alone wheel of the past.

As Andrew explains: “The traditional, manually operated wheel is our bedrock, it’s a great product. But these days it’s very rare to just sell a traditional product, such as a Cammegh Classic or a Cammegh Connoisseur. We sell plenty of those wheels, but it’s rare to sell them without cables or built-in sensors.

“At the moment, on our order book we have around 200 wheels, and a very low percentage (relative to our company’s history and past) are what we would call ‘traditional’ wheels, in that they don’t have the sensors built in or any other electronic attachment. The definition of traditional products now must surely incorporate that technology, as these are now the foundation generally of Roulette in the modern casino. We couldn’t talk about traditional Roulette, for example, without mentioning our Mercury wheel, which is the traditional form; it’s a classic wheel but with sensors giving no more bets, drop zones, all sorts of information. It links to electronic betting terminals, winning number displays and management systems.

“To have a discussion about the ‘traditional’ roulette, you have to now incorporate the electronic elements as they’re a fundamental part of the game now.”

Interestingly, Cammegh have an exciting project in trial at the moment. Andrew says: “We’re running a trial with an automatic wheel, the Slingshot II, running on a live table, which is manually operated by the dealer. There’s no chance of dealer collusion this way, or predictive sector bet or advantage play using hand-held devices.

“It’s interesting that we’re seeing a game steeped in history and tradition, the essence of casinos, a Roulette table, where the number generator in one place is the automated wheel sitting neatly on a live table.” It’s another variation on one of the world’s favourite table games, and there’s no doubting that the Slingshot II is a superb wheel. It’s a neat lateral move by Cammegh which brings greater security while keeping the social aspect of the game alive.

We’ll leave part one with Andrew’s words: “If you’re going to specialise in making Roulette wheels, you’ve got to know it from the granite bedrock right up to the top of the skyscraper. There’s no part of it that you can ignore; that’s what we do.”

Part two next issue includes Cammegh, Novomatic, GPI, TCSJOHNHUXLEY, Shufflemaster and Abbiati.

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