History of Money Wheels is the History of Human Fate and Gambling

The money wheel that we know and love first rose to prominence as a game called Rota Fortunae, which the Roman soldiers, bored between battles, used to pass the time playing. They would use Chariot wheels or mark points on their shields and spin them around to create a gambling game.

Had one of the Roman soldiers thought to combine the game with a coin flip, we could have had Crazy Time!

However, after Roman times, the wheel of fortune as a gambling device fell into obscurity and only re-emerged in 1975. We had to wait until 2020 for Crazy Time to be released.

But first, let’s talk about the origins and the concept of fortune itself.

The symbol of  Fortune – The Goddess Fortuna

We have a concept of good and bad luck because of the Roman goddess Fortuna, the goddess of chance, fate, and good and bad luck. Gamblers know her as Lady Fortune or Lady Luck.

The Greek god Tyche predates the Roman god Fortuna. She is the goddess of fortune, chance, providence, and fate. She often holds a rudder and is tasked with guiding the world’s affairs.

Tyche was also seen with a ball, showing that fortune can roll anyway. Although Fortuna also had a ball, it didn’t have a lasting impact as a symbol.

Wheel of Fortune in literature and art

While the wheel of fortune is a Greek idea, the connection between human fortune and the wheel is Roman.

By the time Cicero wrote about it in his work ‘In Pisonem’ around 55 BC, the earliest recorded mention of the concept, the idea of the wheel of fortune was already a cliché.

In medieval literature and art, wheels of fortune were often used to emphasize a tragic event, the fall from grace of mighty figures, and to serve as a reminder that all earthly things are temporary. This was a commonly used theme.

In Niccolò Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’, published in the 15th century, Fortuna is said to rule only half of man’s fate, the other half of his own will. Machiavelli reminds the reader that Fortuna is a woman and favours a strong, ambitious, aggressive, bold approach. Fortune favours the bold (lat. audentes Fortuna iuvat), does it not? You can’t trigger that Pachinko bonus round unless you have an active bet!

The Tarot card

The Wheel of Fortune is one of 78 tarot cards and the tenth Trump or Major Arcana card in the Tarot deck. The Wheel doesn’t usually have inscribed lettering, but when they do appear, the four spokes of the Wheel have the letters T-A-R-O (clockwise), for tarot, and T-O-R-A (counterclockwise), for Torah (law), and also R-O-T-A, the Latin for Wheel.

Whether you get the Wheel of Fortune upright or reversed, it always signifies a change in fortunes and a warning that your fortunes can and will turn again.

Tarot cards were first created in Italy in the 1430s, with the Wheel of Fortune card modelled on the medieval concept of Rota Fortunae.

As Machiavelli said, only half your fortune comes from Fortuna – the other half is what you make of it. Periods of lousy fortune are a chance to step up and make things better. Likewise, periods of good fortune are a warning that your luck may run out soon.

If you believe this when you win big gambling, the correct thing to do is stand up and walk away.

The ‘Little Wheel’ is the first popular wheel of fortune

You probably don’t think of a roulette wheel as a wheel of fortune, and that’s precisely what it is. It is nothing other than a money wheel with 37 segments. Roulette means ‘little wheel’ in French.

The game originated in 18th-century France and quickly spread to gambling establishments. It was a combination of a 1720 gaming wheel, which evolved from Blaise Pascal’s 1655 wheel, invented during his quest to create a perpetual motion machine and the Italian game of Biribi.

Upright Carnival Wheels in the Wild West

Independently from French gamblers and Roman soldiers, American settlers devised their version of the money wheel.

In 1850, San Francisco had over 100 gambling houses, and the heyday of gambling in the West lasted until about 1910.

Card games were the most popular, with roulette being one of the rare exceptions.

Later, at the start of the 20th century, travelling carnivals had money wheels, such as the Big 6 Gaming Wheel made by the Evans Company in Chicago (pictured).

The Big Six Wheel has been playable legally in the United Kingdom since 2002, with a house edge that ranges from 1.9% to 19.2%, depending on which bet you make. Under the Las Vegas rules, the house edge is 11.11% to 24.07%.

In case you were wondering, there isn’t yet a Big Six live dealer game.

The Wheel of Fortune, 1975

Merv Griffin is the man responsible for our collective image of a money wheel, which is based on the numerous casino money wheel games operating today.

Merv wanted to create a hangman-type game where players choose letters to make up a word or phrase. He needed a way to add a random element to the game and thought of Roulette. Merv replaced the numbers on a roulette wheel with segments in a moment of brilliance, giving birth to the Wheel of Fortune game we now know.

The wheel had 24 segments, 23 of which had cash values and one Bankrupt segment. Later, the wheel also included the Lose a Turn segment, a Free Spin segment giving a player another spin for guessing a letter correctly, and other segments such as Wild Card, Gift Tag, and 1/2 Car. Many more have been used in the show’s various versions, spin-offs, and rip-offs.

The Wheel of Fortune TV show is about words, consonants, and vowels. The wheel provided a random element to the game, but it would have worked just as well without using a different set of rules.

The show is still about the puzzle and the player’s problem-solving ability. The wheel is seemingly secondary. Until…

Dream Catcher

On 7th February 2017, it all came together – Fortuna, the Roman soldiers, the frontier gambler, Merv Griffin, and Vanna White. Evolution Gaming released Dream Catcher.

The game had no bonus rounds—can you imagine the prehistoric world we lived in?

The 54-segment wheel had numbers 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 40, with two Multiplier segments, x2 and x7.

Okay, Betgames released a Wheel of Fortune game on 15th October 2014, so that’s technically the first wheel-of-fortune live dealer game, but you probably haven’t heard of it before reading this article. Evolution did and was inspired to create Dream Catcher, a game that brought us to where we are today.

That’s how it often goes. Google wasn’t the first search engine, and the iPhone wasn’t the first mobile phone. However, Google, iPhone, and Dream Catcher were the first that the mainstream audience loved.

Crazy Time

And then came the absolute hit, Dream Catcher, with four bonus rounds that can pay up to 20,000 times your bet. A genre was born.

On 10th June 2020, Evolution released Crazy Time, which has probably been the most popular live game show ever since.

Many would say this game gave rise to the live dealer niche and enabled every other development after it, including multiplier roulette, live slots, and everything else.

Crazy Time was the turning point.

Monopoly Live Dream Catcher Edition launched on 22nd March 2019, and that fantastic game is top-rated. Playtech released its Dream Catcher copy Spin A Win in 2018, but we all know Crazy Time is responsible for the breakthrough.

After Crazy Time and Beyond

At the time of writing in June 2024, there are 12 games released after Crazy Time. Two came within two months of the Crazy Time release – Pragmatic Play’s Mega Wheel and Playtech’s Adventures Beyond Wonderland.

A year later, Pragmatic Play released their hit Sweet Bonanza Candyland, which, along with Crazy Time and Adventures Beyond Wonderland, would form the holy trinity of money wheel games for some time.

The trend picked up in late 2022, all of 2023, and early 2024 as more games were added. We also added a new player in OnAir Entertainment with their Majestic Wheelshow.

At the time of writing, there are 17 money wheel live casino games in existence. There will definitely be more stand-alone money wheel games and more implementations of money wheels into hybrid games.

There is no doubt about it: live casino money wheel games are here to stay.