History
Ten questions on where the wheel came from and who tried to beat it, drawn from a pool of fifteen. Easier than the odds quiz and better at parties.
Pascal, Lablée, the Blancs, Jagger, Wells, Pearson, Dostoevsky, Thorp, the Eudaemons, García-Pelayo and the 26 blacksbetBlackEven-money bet on the 18 black numbers. French: noir.Read full →. Multiple choice, shuffled each time, with links to the History and Lab pages for anything you miss.
Scoring
10: you have read the History & Culture section twice.
8–9: well read.
5–7: you know the stories; the dates are on the timeline page.
Under 5: the History of Roulette page is a ten-minute fix.
Pascal’s spinning wheel.
D’Alembert’s fallacy in the Encyclopédie.
Paris; Lablée.
Homburg; the Blancs; single zero.
Monte Carlo.
Dostoevsky’s The Gambler.
Jagger.
Wells.
Pearson.
26 blacks.
Halmos’s proof: no system wins.
Thorp and Shannon.
The Eudaemons.
García-Pelayo.
Triple zero.
Questions
Because the history of systems is one answer: none worked. See History of Roulette Systems.
No. It is on the superstitions page, with the caveat that it is a story.
Comic relief
Fifteen dates, a dozen people, one wheel.
Sources
- Schwartz, D. G. Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling.
- Kavanagh, T. M. Dice, Cards, Wheels: A Different History of French Culture.