The Forgotten Games of Chance: La Boule and Le Multicolore

If one examines in greater detail the history of the development of gambling around the world, one can notice one rather widespread trend: only some games have managed to adapt to the conditions of the modern gambling market and preserve their former popularity, as has happened, for example, with Baccarat, Sic Bo, and roulette. They have all undergone a long history of changes and are still popular among thousands of players in online and land-based casinos. The other games, which evolved in parallel with them, are mostly unknown or very local. The same has happened with the games La Boule and Le Multicolore.

La Boule or Poor Man’s Roulette

La Boule, from the French word for “ball”, appeared as a successor to the game called Petits Chevaux, which was popular at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. While the latter represents a kind of imitation of horse racing on a hippodrome, La Boule represents a wheel with 18 pockets into which a ball is launched. From Petits Chevaux, only the images of horses remain as decoration.

If you already had an association of La Boule with mini roulette, then you are somewhat right; indeed, there are similarities. The main similarity lies in its simplicity. And since simplicity can often be interpreted as practicality, it is not surprising that, with the emergence of La Boule, French resort casinos began to replace the outdated and more technically demanding Petits Chevaux with it. The conventional date for the emergence of La Boule is considered to be 1923; according to legend, it was created by a manager of one of the French casinos, who simplified the concept of Petits Chevaux and combined it with the already popular roulette of that time. Since the game in La Boule offered low stakes and was simple to produce, it quickly acquired another name, poor man’s roulette. And since the similarity with roulette is very obvious, let’s go through the rule set used in La Boule.

So, on the wheel, there are 9 cells, each numbered from 1 to 9. As in ordinary roulette, each number corresponds to a color; thus, 1, 3, 6, and 8 are black numbers, 2, 4, 7, and 9 are red, and 5 is yellow. Yes, the number 5 painted in yellow here corresponds to the zero in roulette and represents the house edge, more on that later.

The gameplay is still similar to roulette: the croupier announces the famous command “Rien ne va plus” and launches the ball (unlike in roulette, in La Boule it is rubber); the ball bounces and settles in a pocket, determining the winning number and color. Winners receive payouts according to the type of bet, and then a new round begins.

In terms of bet types, everything is also quite simple here and they can be divided into even-money bets, which include the well-known red/black, even/odd, and high/low. Their payouts correspond to the even-money bets we are familiar with in roulette, that is 1:1. The inside bets, however, are available only in two variants: plein and cheval, that is straight-up and split. The former has a payout of 7:1, and cheval only 3:1. I think here the advantage of roulette over La Boule is obvious. And the betting grid itself looks like this:

I have already pointed out that the number 5 in La Boule corresponds to the zero cell familiar to us in European roulette and represents the house edge. Therefore, let’s add a bit of mathematics and figure out what the house edge and the RTP of La Boule are. So, let’s assume that the usual formula for calculating the house edge in roulette is as follows:

Let’s apply it to La Boule. Remember that the player played La Boule in early 20th-century France and, therefore, used francs. So, the player places a bet of 100 francs on Black. We already know that the game has 9 cells, 4 of which are black; accordingly, the chance of winning is 4/9, and the chance of losing is 5/9. The value -100 is used in the part of the formula (Probability of Loss x Wager) because we are calculating the chance of losing and, since the player’s bet was 100 francs, in the event of a loss it is a negative value. Applying the formula, we get:

Accordingly, the house edge of La Boule is 11.11%, and the game’s RTP is 88.89% (100 - 11.11), which obviously makes this game unprofitable when compared with classic European, American, and French roulette. We will talk in more detail about the differences between these games later, and now let’s move on to the game Le Multicolore.

Le multicolore

If the similarities between roulette and La Boule are maximally obvious, then when speaking about the game Le Multicolore, everything is somewhat different. This game also emerged in the early 20th century in France and combined both elements of roulette and billiards. The reason for this decision was the fight against gambling by President Raymond Poincaré. In order to bypass, so to speak, the then regulation, they decided to combine roulette with billiards, since billiards is considered a game of skill rather than chance and therefore was not prohibited. As in the case of La Boule, Le Multicolore immediately became popular among the common people, and so it was quickly nicknamed “casino du peuple” (people’s casino) or “roulette du pauvre” (poor man’s roulette). The gameplay is quite straightforward; there are a total of 25 numbers, each of which corresponds to shallow cups. The numbers are painted in 5 different colors, with six Red, six Green, six Yellow, six White, and one Blue.

But unlike roulette or La Boule, only the numbers 2, 3, 4, and 24 are represented here. Accordingly, in each color group of 6 numbers, there are two marked as “2”, three marked as “3”, and one marked as “4”. The cell with the number 24, also called “star”, is painted in blue and represents the house edge of the game. The numbers for these cells were not chosen at random; in fact, each number represents a payout coefficient, that is, when landing in the cell marked “3”, the player receives a payout of 3:1, where 1 is the size of the bet. The highest payout belongs to number 24; accordingly, if this number wins, the payout is 24:1.

And here is the most interesting part, in my opinion. It is logical to assume that the player has several betting options, on color or on a number. But no, the player can only place a bet on a color or on the number 24. Accordingly, on the betting grid, chips can be placed on one of the 5 colored cells. For the blue cell, the payout will be 24:1 since it corresponds to the number 24. For bets on color, the payout will vary from 2:1 to 4:1. Accordingly, the payout odds in Le Multicolore are also variable. Let’s try to calculate, for a start, the odds for each bet. We use the formula:

We know that in Le Multicolore, there are a total of 25 numbers and 5 groups – Red, Green, Yellow, White, and Blue. Within the groups Red, Green, Yellow, and White, there are 6 cells each. Accordingly, the number of winning outcomes is 6, and the number of losing outcomes is 19 (25 - 6). Therefore, the odds of landing on one of the colored groups are 6/19 x 100% = 31.57%. And everything seems clear, but the nuance is that in Le Multicolore, not everything is like in roulette; we already know that within a color group, there are several possible outcomes with different payouts: two twos, three threes, and one four. Since we know that the probability of a color group appearing is 31.57%, let’s now calculate the probability of a specific result within a color group, using the following formula:

We obtain the following results:

• For the number 2: (2/6) x 31.57 = 10.52%
• For the number 3: (3/6) x 31.57 = 15.78%
• For the number 4: (1/6) x 31.57 = 5.26%

It remains only to calculate the chance for the “star” bet, corresponding to the number 24. According to the formula, we get: (1/24) x 100 = 4.16%. It seems that all this sounds a bit confusing and overloaded, so here are simply the tabular data with payouts and odds for all possible outcomes:

Now that we have sorted out the mathematics of the game Le Multicolore, it is time to understand how the process of the game itself occurs. It is also very similar to the ordinary process of playing roulette for real money. Players place bets on colors or on the number 24 on the betting grid, after which the croupier announces “Rien ne va plus”. And here is the most interesting part: remember that Le Multicolore combines roulette and billiards. At the moment of starting the round, a billiard cue appears. Using the cue, the croupier strikes the billiard ball of ivory. The ball rolls along the cloth track, rises up a small ramp, and eventually lands in the circular wheel. The rules require that the ball bounce off the far end (“make a stripe”) at least once before falling, in order to guarantee the impossibility of a direct hit. The wheel itself can either rotate or remain stationary (the game rules differ); when the ball loses momentum, it falls into one of the 25 colored cups. After which, the croupier announces the result and pays out the corresponding winnings.

La Boule and Le Multicolore in the Modern Context

It is not without reason that I devoted a large part of the article not only to the description of the games La Boule and Le Multicolore but also to their mathematical characteristics. This was done primarily in order to show the obvious superiority of roulette in comparison with these games. But to my surprise, the superiority of roulette concerns the players themselves, since we know that the house edge in European roulette is 2.7%, and in American roulette, it is 5.26%, which makes roulette in this respect more profitable for the players. After all, the house edge of La Boule, as we calculated, is 11.11%. Therefore, a logical question arises: why has roulette survived to this day, when in terms of house edge, such a game is less profitable for the casino itself?

It seems to me that the answer lies in the fact that, as I already wrote, both La Boule and Le Multicolore were often called "roulette for the poor" and were accordingly used in cheap gambling clubs. In larger casinos, or resort casinos, the standard roulette was more popular. Accordingly, over time, large land-based casinos occupied an increasingly large share of the market, pushing out small gambling clubs. This led to the fact that, in land-based casinos, only certain games remained, which influenced the formation of the landscape of modern online casinos. After all, the latter could only draw experience from land-based establishments; accordingly, in the realm of online casinos, slots, roulette, and blackjack appeared—in general, all those same games that were popular among players of land-based casinos.

Although there were attempts to revive La Boule online, they were not successful. On the internet, it is possible to find information about several RNG games in La Boule from IsoftBet and from Realistic Games; however, I was not able to find any demo versions or online casino versions of these games. I also did not find any attempts to create La Multicolore, although, in my opinion, such a game could have potential in live mode. But despite the absence of these games in online modes, they can still be found in some land-based casinos, so to speak, as a tribute to the past. For example, in the Barrière casino network, one can find the game La Boule, and in L’Imperial Club Paris, one can play Le Multicolore. Therefore, perhaps these games will not be forgotten, and over time, they will be able to obtain a well-deserved place in online casinos.