I want you to visualize a roulette table in your mind. No, seriously, go ahead and do it. Close your eyes if you have to, take a moment. It doesn’t have to be super detailed, but I’d like you to imagine it as closely as you can. You good? Okay, take a look at the top of the table and let me know what are the three colours you see. Did you spot them? For the more creatively challenged of you (hey, no worries, none of us are perfect), they’re red, black and green. Have you ever wondered why those colours in particular? After all, aren’t opposite colours on the spectrum, such as black and white or red and blue be more logical? Why did the people who invented roulette pick those particular colours, and if they didn’t, who did, and for what reason?
Are you ready for the kicker? Nobody knows.
Not a single piece of evidence has survived the 200+ years in which the game has existed in order to let us know why green, black and red were picked over literally any other colour! Hell, we don’t even know if they did, since nobody bothered to write down what the colours on the roulette table were back when it was first played, and the oldest surviving roulette table that we have in our possession is less than a hundred years old, so that’s not really a great indicator. You don’t believe me? Look it up, you won’t be able to find a concrete answer about any of this! Lots of theories exist, the most probable one having to do with the fact that black and red just look good (but then again, so do many other colours), which is why they were selected.
Thus far, we don’t have a concrete answer, and honestly, maybe it doesn’t really matter why things are the way they are… But I, for one, am extremely curious! I mean, sure, it’s not one of the greatest questions of the universe, such as why we’re here and what’s the meaning of life (to play videogames and 42, by the way), but it’s still something interesting to think about. If you’ve got any ideas, be sure to e-mail me!