Russian roulette

For other uses, see Russian roulette (disambiguation).

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A revolver, as used in Russian roulette

Russian roulette is a potentially lethal game of chance in which a player places a single round in a revolver, spins the cylinder, places the muzzle against his or her head, and pulls the trigger. "Russian" refers to the supposed country of origin, and roulette to the element of risk-taking and the spinning of the revolver's cylinder being reminiscent of spinning a roulette wheel.

History

The term "Russian Roulette" dates back to a 1937 short story of the same title:

‘Did you ever hear of Russian Roulette?’ [...] With the Russian army in Romania, around 1917, some officer would suddenly pull out his revolver, remove a cartridge from the cylinder, spin the cylinder, snap it back in place, put it to his head and pull the trigger.^[1]

Variations

Variation 1: Player(s) take turns spinning and firing the revolver so that each successive turn has an equal probability of failure. Assuming a common six-round cylinder, the probability of getting shot after spinning is approximately 1/6. (This is affected by weight of the bullet, direction spin and angle the gun is held at while spinning the cylinder.) The game could continue indefinitely and gamblers could presumably only wager on which players will survive and how many turns the game will last.

Variation 2: If playing without respinning, the initial probability of the first player being shot is 1/6 (16.6%), but the probability of being shot increases every time the trigger is pulled. The second player has a 1/5 (20%) probability of being shot, and the probability of the player on the third attempt is 1/4 (25%). If the gun has not fired after five turns, the probability of being shot on the sixth turn with a 6 chambered gun is 1/1 (100%) (assuming the cartridge works). However, when the probability that each player will actually have to take a turn is factored in (100% for the first player, a 5/6 chance for the second, a 2/3 chance for the third and so on), the odds of losing actually end up the same for every player - 1/6 (assuming that there are six players).

Variation 3: Players stand in a circle all facing in one direction, staring at the back of another's head. They load the revolver with a single bullet, spin, and place the muzzle of the gun against the back of the person's head in front of them. All persons fire at the same time, those who didn't get shot, formed a smaller circle and repeated the cycle again, till there is only a single person left standing.^{[citation needed]}

Notable incidents

Numerous incidents have been reported regarding Russian roulette.

In his autobiography, Malcolm X says that during his burglary career he once played Russian roulette, pulling the trigger three times in a row to convince his partners in crime that he was not afraid to die. In the epilogue to the book, Alex Haley states that Malcolm X revealed to him that he palmed the round.
On December 24, 1954, the American blues musician Johnny Ace killed himself in Texas after a gun he pointed at his own head discharged. Many sources, including the Washington Post,^[2] attribute this to Russian roulette.
John Hinckley, Jr., the man who attempted to murder President Ronald Reagan in 1981, was known to play Russian roulette, alone, on two occasions.^[3] Hinckley also took a picture of himself in 1980 pointing a gun at his head.^[4]
PBS claims that William Shockley, co-inventor of the transistor and winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics, had attempted suicide by playing a solo game of Russian roulette.^[5]
On October 5, 2003, psychological illusionist Derren Brown took part in a game of Russian roulette on British television Channel 4. The stunt was broadcast with a slight delay allowing the program to cut to a black screen if anything were to go wrong. Also, the final firing of the gun was not shown, as the gun had gone out of camera shot. A statement by the police said that they had been informed of the arrangements in advance, and were satisfied that "at no time was anyone at risk".^[6]
The BBC programme Who Do You Think You Are? on 13 September 2010 featured the actor Alan Cumming investigating his grandfather Tommy Darling, who he discovered had died playing the game Russian roulette while serving as a police officer in Malaya. The family had previously believed that he had died accidentally while cleaning his gun.^[7]

In Popular Culture

The Deer Hunter, starring Christopher Walken and Robert De Niro, famously features Russian roulette in arguably one of the most well-known scenes in film history.

In Magic & Mentalism

Variants on the plot have popularly, but only occasionally, been demonstrated by a handful of famed stage illusionists and mentalists. They include:

Derren Brown
Matt the Knife
Hans Moretti
Maurice Fogel
Bob Cassidy
Simon Drake

References

^ George Surdez, "Russian Roulette," Collier's Illustrated Weekly 30 Jan. 16, 1937; "Russian roulette n.", Oxford English Dictionary.
^ "Really Old School", Washington Post, December 25, 1998.
^ Garbus, Martin (2002-09-17) [2002]. Courting Disaster: The Supreme Court and the Unmaking of American Law (hardcover ed.). Times Books. ISBN 978-0-8050-6918-1. http://books.google.com/books?id=2b0HP0PCNzAC&pg=PA135&lpg=PA135&dq=john+hinckley+russian+roulette#v=onepage&q=john%20hinckley%20russian%20roulette&f=false. Retrieved 2009-12-24.
^ http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hinckley/hinkleygun2.jpg
^ Transistorized!, Public Broadcasting Service, 1999.
^ "Roulette gun stunt 'a hoax'". BBC News. 2003-10-07. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3169388.stm. Retrieved 2007-09-02.
^ BBC1 13 September 2010.

13 (movie)