La Boule - Old French Version of Roulette

March 31, 2009

La Boule is an old French version of roulette, still available in many casinos in France, but rarely found outside the country.  The game is played in a concanve ‘bowl’ which has a number of pockets in three different colours, and 9 numbers offering different outcomes.  A fairly large rubber ball (at least compared to a normal roulette ball) is spun around the bowl, before dropping into one of the pockets.

In the same way as roulette, the different numbers correspond to different colours, 1,3,6 and 8 are black, 2,4,7 and 9 are red, and number 5 is yellow.  Similar to roulette the dealer will spin the wheel and ball, before calling ‘Rien ne va plus’ - no more bets.  Bets themselves are made on a table layout similar in some ways to a roulette layout, but of course with much less fewer outcomes.  Bets can be made on red or black, odd or even, low (1-4) or high (6-9), or on any of the single numbers.

The number 5 works much the same way in La Boule as a 0 or 00 does in normal roulette, and all bets lose if 5 is the winning number (except single bets made on it).  Because there are much fewer numbers than a standard roulette whell, the house edge on La Boule is a massive 11.11% on every bet - one of the reasons this game is known as ‘poor mans roulette’.  Payouts on single numbers are 7:1, and all other bets pay 1:1.

As far as I am aware no online casinos offer La Boule as a game, however due to the huge house advantage this is not such a bad thing, especially when there is no 0 roulette available now.  If you are ever in France though, why not try to find a casino there and see if they offer the game of La Boule.

Written by admin · Filed Under Roulette Variations 

Comments

2 Responses to “La Boule - Old French Version of Roulette”

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  2. KonstantinMiller on July 6th, 2009 11:52 pm

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