Casino & Poker

The History of The Wheel of Fortune

Dreamcatcher

It’s a casino game that nobody needs to learn how to play, it’s so simple. The Wheel of Fortune (or Money Wheel or Big Six Wheel) has been a famous part of many casinos for decades and carries the power to change lives in an instant. They’re long odds for the jackpot, but it doesn’t stop people putting down a little money in the hope it might just be them to take it home.

 

Ancient Origins

The idea of someone’s fortunes being decided by a wheel turned by a hand is not a new one. It outlives the casino, and even the modern world, in an allegory about the uncertainty of one’s fortune in life.

Ancient Babylonian first invented the concept, which was then adopted and developed by the Ancient Greeks before being called Rota Fortunae by the Romans. Consistently, the image is depicted as Fortune spinning her Wheel (sometimes blindfolded) and wherever a person lands on the wheel when it stops foretells how lucky they will be.

Theologians, leaders, and artists have all used The Wheel of Fortune to make sense of the unpredictability of life, which can seemingly change for no reason. It’s the symbolism behind every rose window in churches all over the world and often used as an allegory in art and literature, usually depicting the turn of misfortune befalling a hero. But the Wheel of Fortune was always meant to depict the ups as well as the downs in life.

 

Telling your fortune

With such a reputation for chance and divination, it’s not surprising that the Wheel of Fortune appears in a Tarot deck as one of the picture cards. Drawing The Wheel of Fortune foretells a great change coming, usually a period of good luck or something to help with your great destiny. That is if it is drawn the right way up. Picking it from the deck upside down means a bad change in fortune is coming your way.

 

Casino Variants

And then casinos struck upon the idea of playing with the interpretation of the hand of fate changing people’s lives forever. Except this time, it’s a dealer doing the spinning, and the change of fate is a huge sum of money.

The Wheel of Fortune or Big Six Wheel is divided into sections depicting different prizes on offer, with the lowest occurring the most and the higher values very infrequently, if only once. These segments are separated by pins which help slow the wheel down by clapping against the pointer at the top. Once they stop, there is no doubt who has won, and who is going home with nothing.

 

Dream Catcher

What kind of an online casino would we be if we didn’t have our own Wheel of Fortune game? Check out Dream Catcher in our live casino and see which of our lovely hosts is spinning the wheel today. The Dream Catcher crowd are well-known for their jokes and smiles, and you can interact with them and the other players via the live chat feature.

Is it a big holiday when you log into Dream Catcher? Then you know the studio will be lit up with all the appropriate decorations. Come back all year round to see it go from NYE fireworks to Easter Eggs to pumpkins to Christmas trees.

To place your bets, all you have to do is select which how much you are going to bet on which value is going to be on the pointer when the wheel stops. You can pick any number of payouts from 1x to 40x your bet, with the lower stakes appearing more often and the highest only once on the wheel. Then the host will spin with all their might and call out a big congratulations to all the winners.

Will your name be among them?