The unexplored similarities between rugby and roulette

You wouldn’t normally put rugby and roulette together. Sure, many rugby clubs do host casino nights from time to time as part of their fundraising efforts, but you’d hardly call roulette a foundational component of the sport.

However, as with most things, dive a little deeper and you’ll discover that there’s actually more that connects rugby and roulette than you might expect. And dive we did. In this post, we’ll take a closer look at where these two seemingly distinct games overlap. 

They Both Have a Long History

Both roulette and rugby have a long history. Indeed, if you accept the commonly accepted — though not confirmed — backstory of rugby, the sport recently celebrated its 200th birthday. As the story goes, the sport was invented in 1823 by one William Webb Ellis, who inadvertently invented rugby by picking up the ball during a game of football and running to the end. 

Whether that’s really what happened is unclear. All we know is that by 1863, boarding schools in the UK had decided upon the rules. We like to believe the Ellis story is true.

Roulette has a similarly surprising background. It was allegedly accidentally invented back in the 17th century by Blaise Pascal, who, in an attempt to create a perpetual motion machine, came up with the roulette wheel. The numbers and gameplay were added a little bit later and, just like that, the popular casino game was born. 

And Both Move With the Times 

Roulette and rugby are both historic games, but both have shown a willingness to move with the times. Today, most people play roulette online. Online versions of roulette are available thanks to Random Number Generators (RNGs), which mimic the randomness of a real-world roulette wheel. 

Rugby has proven itself to be one of the most forward-thinking, innovative sports in the world. Unlike football, which was slow to incorporate video assistants (and even now, can’t seem to get it right), rugby incorporates a wide range of technologies, including Hawk-Eye, TMO, and Referee Cams. Clubs also use GPS and other technologies as part of their training methods. 

There are Different Types of Each

Outsiders typically think there’s just one version of rugby or roulette. Both those in the know understand there are multiple versions. Roulette, for instance, is different depending on where you play it, with the game being slightly different in the United States than in Europe, though there are sites that have both versions of the online game. There are even more versions of rugby, the main one being the distinction between rugby union and rugby league. You can break it down even further to include Rugby 7s and variations such as touch rugby and rugby 10s. 

If you meet a rugby or roulette fan, a good opening question wouldn’t be, do you like rugby/roulette? Instead, which type of rugby/roulette do you enjoy? would be the better question to ask!

Player Analysis

OK, so that’s the broader similarities between rugby and roulette out of the way. What about the actual gameplay? One’s a sport and the other is a game, so there’s not that much that they have in common in terms of action. However, there is one area in which a roulette and rugby player overlap: making the right decision. A roulette player might weigh up the preceding numbers to pick a selection that feels right, while a rugby player must select the right pass or decision to make. However, in both cases, there’s a level of unpredictability that puts the outcome out of their hands.

Form Performance 

Finally, both a roulette and rugby player can be bolstered by their performance. A roulette player on a hot streak will feel more confident making their number selections, while a rugby player who knows they are in top form will be more likely to make plays that a player without confidence would probably hesitate to make.