| In
Monte Carlo, playing roulette one summer evening
at a crowded table, I found myself continually getting
into an argument with a wizened old woman who claimed
that my winning bets were in fact hers. After a
half hour of this I left the table, since the croupiers,
knowing her as an old customer and not knowing me
at all, were indifferent to the situation. If different
colored chips had been used, the difficulty would
never have occurred. In American casinos the colored
chips stand for the basic minimum denomination of
the game unless players want to put a higher value
on their chips, in which case that color will be
put on the flat edge of the wheel with a button
or casino chip designating its value.
The European game, much slower than the American
game, features many flourishes by the dealers, particularly
when paying off winning bets, which is done not
with stacks of chips, but by "running them
out" across the table. And the dealers use
a rake rather than their hands to move the chips,
hence the expression "raking in the chips."
Even the mere changing of cash into chips is an
elaborate process, and at a crowded table no more
than thirty spins an hour can be expected. When
the table is fairly empty with little action, the
European wheel will get perhaps fifty spins an hour.
The nomenclature of roulette, which is a French
game after all, is in French throughout the Continent,
and in another section of this site is a glossary
defining those terms.
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