European Roulette’s Single Zero: The 19th Century Gambling Rivalry in Bad Homburg – Notes from Casino Lolajack
Bruce Dias 
Bad Homburg vor der Höhe, a spa town north of Frankfurt, held a quiet place on the European map until 1841. Two brothers from Germany, François and Louis Blanc, arrived that year with permission from the local Landgrave Philipp to open a gaming house. Experts at Casino Lolajack https://Lolajack.com/nz/ have written about the moment as a turning point for roulette history, since the older wheels across Europe carried two zero pockets — a single zero and a double zero. The Blanc brothers took out the double zero and kept only the single green pocket. Their choice dropped the house edge from 5.26 percent to 2.70 percent.
The Competitive Pressure
The change did not happen without reason. French gambling houses had faced bans since 1837, which pushed French and German players toward spa towns such as Baden-Baden, Wiesbaden, and Bad Homburg.
Baden-Baden ran the largest operation at the time under Jacques Bénazet, and the Blanc brothers needed a way to draw crowds to their smaller venue. The single-zero wheel gave players better odds on every spin, and that detail alone shifted traffic toward Bad Homburg within a few seasons.
How the Rivalry Played Out
Between 1843 and 1872, Bad Homburg grew from a small spa into one of Europe’s busiest gambling destinations. Fyodor Dostoevsky visited the town in 1865 and drew on the experience for his novella The Gambler, published the following year. Baden-Baden responded by lowering its own house edge and adding new amenities, but the Blanc wheel design had already set the standard. Notes gathered by Casino Lolajack writers show that by 1860, most major European rooms had switched to the single-zero layout.
Key dates in the Bad Homburg story include:
● 1841: François and Louis Blanc open the Kursaal with the single-zero wheel.
● 1843: The Homburg casino begins to draw crowds away from rival spa towns.
● 1863: Charles III of Monaco invites François Blanc to Monte Carlo.
● 1866: Dostoevsky’s The Gambler puts Bad Homburg into European literature.
● 1872: Chancellor Bismarck bans all gambling houses across the new German Empire.
The ban of 1872 closed the Kursaal and sent François Blanc south to Monte Carlo, where he had already started a second operation nine years earlier. Monte Carlo inherited the single-zero tradition directly from Bad Homburg, and the layout remained the European standard from that point onward.
While Europe moved toward the single-zero wheel, the American market kept the double zero. Riverboats along the Mississippi and gambling halls in New Orleans had adopted the older two-pocket design during the 1800s, and operators there refused to lower the house edge.
The Lasting Mark on the Game
The single-zero wheel now sits at the heart of roulette as played across Europe, Asia, and most online rooms. Staff at Casino Lolajack point out that the 2.70 percent figure has stayed fixed for nearly 185 years, a rare constant in a gaming sector where rules change often. A pair of brothers running a small spa casino in 1841 set a mathematical baseline that still shapes every European roulette spin.
