Belonging to the Casino Rewards group, Strike It Lucky is a Microgaming casino and is unusual as it is Flash and does not require a download. Each game at the casino loads independently and quite quickly. The games themselves appear to be slow which would suit the novice player or those of you who are more patient! We also found that the casino session timed out repeatedly when trying to open a new game and also if we left the table or machine for more than a few minutes. This results in having to login again and becomes more than a little annoying. We must stress that these timeout problems could be particular to our set-up and proxy arrangement and we advise you to try it out for yourselves.

We cannot advise that any of the games were notably “loose” but Blackjack was noted to deal us a 7 on opening cards of 14 and an 8 on cards of 13 on several occasions which made a change from it happening to the dealer all the time.

There is no music in the casino or ambient noise such as murmured voices or glasses clinking which we thought detracted from a casino atmosphere. The only sounds were a few beeps on winning or losing and the dealer’s “push” at the Blackjack table.

Our $1000 free chips became $1350 after Blackjack, $1525 after Cyberstud and gradually reduced through games such as Roulette, Red Dog (great fun!) and various slots. Although, after over an hour’s play on a number of games, we still had $805 in the bank. This is obviously not representative of all experiences at Strike It Lucky but overall we feel that the games are fair and not noticeably or unduly biased towards the house.

Roulette is said by some to have been started or invented way back in 1655 by the French scientist Blaise Pascal, during his monastic retreat, and first played in a makeshift casino in Paris. Other historians claim however that a French monk invented it in order to help break some of the monotony of daily monastery life. Still others say it originated in an old Chinese game whose object was to arrange 37 statuettes of animals in a "magic square" of 666 (but they fail to describe the method of play) They add that the game was later played in Tibet, and eventually by French Dominican monks. One of these monks is said to have transposed the statuettes into numbers from 0 to 36, and arranged them haphazardly along the rim of a revolving wheel. Since the early French roulette wheels of the 1800s had both the 0 and 00, this theory does not sound plausible. The history of roulette thus remains a bit shrouded in mystery. Claims and counter-claims over the years have not helped to solve many of the riddles and missing links surrounding the game, and undoubtedly, the true origin of the game will remain a mystery forever. The modern version of the Roulette wheel did not appear until around 1842 when Frenchmen Francois and Louis Blanc are said to have invented the single "0" roulette game. Eventually, the game was brought to America. However, the single "0" modification was rejected in the United States and roulette history was altered forever with American roulette wheels being made standard with the two zeros "00". Although both the double zero and single zero wheels originated in France, the double zero became known as the "American Wheel," because it was accepted with open arms and survived in the states. The popularity of the single zero wheel had supplanted the double zero wheels in Europe and consequently was dubbed the "French Wheel." Roulette is the oldest casino game still in existence today.