Russian roulette

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For other uses, see Russian roulette (disambiguation).
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A revolver, as used in Russian roulette.

Russian roulette (Russian: Русская рулетка Russkaya ruletka) is a lethal game of chance in which participants place a single round in a revolver, spin the cylinder, place the muzzle against their head and pull the trigger. 'Russian' refers to the supposed country of origin of the game and roulette to the element of risk-taking and the spinning of the revolver's cylinder being reminiscent of spinning a roulette wheel.

The form of the game can be as varied as the participants or their motives (displays of bravado, suicide etc.), but typically a single round is placed in a six-shot revolver resulting in a 1/6 (or approximately 16.67%) chance of the revolver discharging the round. Regardless of any player's position in the shooting sequence, his initial odds are the same as for all other players. The revolver's cylinder can either be spun again to reset the game conditions, or the trigger can be pulled again. Using revolvers with fewer chambers or increasing the number of rounds are variations that increase the risk of being killed in any given round of play.

Contents

[edit] History

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Legends abound regarding the invention of Russian roulette. Most of these, predictably, are set in Russia or occur among Russian soldiers.

In one legend, 19th-century Russian prisoners were forced to play the game while the prison guards bet on the outcome. In another version, desperate and suicidal officers in the Russian army played the game to impress each other.

Whether Tsarist officers actually played Russian roulette is unclear. In a text on the Czarist officer corps, John Bushnell, a Russian history expert at Northwestern University, cited two near-contemporary memoirs by Russian army veterans: The Duel (1905) by Aleksandr Kuprin and From Double Eagle to Red Flag (1921) by Pyotr Krasnov. Both books tell of officers' suicidal and outrageous behaviour, but Russian roulette is not mentioned in either text. If the game did originate in real life behavior and not fiction, it is unlikely that it started with the Russian military[citation needed]. The standard sidearm issued to Russian officers from 1895 to 1930 was the Nagant M1895 revolver. A double-action, seven chambered revolver, the Nagant's cylinder spins clockwise until the hammer is cocked. While the cylinder does not swing out as in modern hand-ejector style double action revolvers, it can be spun around to randomize the result. It is possible that Russian officers shot six and kept the seventh cartridge live. Due to the deeply seated rounds unique to the Nagant's cartridge and that the primers are concealed, it would be very difficult to tell from the outside where the live round was and which were spent; this would add to the uncertainty of the results.

Russian roulette was made famous worldwide with the 1978 movie The Deer Hunter, which features three soldiers who are captured during the Vietnam war and forced to play Russian roulette as their captors gamble on the results. Their captors demand an especially brutal variation of the game: the game is played until all but one contestant is killed. Several teen deaths following the movie's release caused police and the media to blame the film's depiction of Russian roulette, saying that it inspired the youth.[1]

[edit] Variations

It is assumed, probably solely based on some cinematic depictions, that two players either take turns spinning and firing the revolver so that each successive turn has an equal 1/6 probability of failure or that the players simply take turns without spinning the cylinders until one is shot. If playing with more than two players, still without re-spinning, the later players can better predict their odds when it becomes their turn. With six players and a six-shot revolver without respinning, the chance of a lethal shot for a player who goes first is 16.67%, second 20% , third 25%, fourth 33.33%, fifth 50%, and sixth 100%, with the assumption of course that none of the previous shots have been lethal.

In the former case, where they respin the chamber, the game could continue indefinitely and gamblers could presumably only wager on which players will survive and how many turns the game will last.

In the 1970s, National Lampoon magazine offered a variant called "Polish Roulette" which was played with a semi-automatic pistol. This type of handgun only has one chamber and automatically feeds a round when cocked, making a 100% chance of the gun firing when the trigger is pulled. A man in Texas won a Darwin Award for playing this version of Roulette.

[edit] Notable Russian roulette incidents

Numerous incidents have been reported regarding Russian roulette. Many are teenagers, with some players as young as 14.[2]

  • British author Graham Greene claimed that in his youth he often played Russian Roulette as a means to provide "excitement and get away from the boredom." But he later decided that "it was no more exciting than taking aspirin for a headache."[3]
  • 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.[citation needed]
  • 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 [4] attribute this to Russian roulette, though witnesses to the shooting have claimed it was actually an accident after Ace had been playing with his weapon.
  • John Hinckley, Jr., the man who attempted to murder President Ronald Reagan in 1981, was known to play Russian roulette, alone, on two occasions. Hinckley also took a picture of himself in 1980 pointing a gun at his head.[5]
  • 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.[6]
  • On October 5, 2003, psychological illusionist Derren Brown played Russian roulette on British television Channel 4. The stunt was broadcast live with a slight delay allowing the program to cut to a black screen if anything had gone wrong. The stunt was condemned by some as being irresponsible, and a statement by the police that they had been informed of the arrangements in advance and were satisfied that "at no time was anyone at risk"[7] made it clear that the incident was a hoax. However, it was proved on the prerecorded segment of the program that at point blank range even a blank cartridge is potentially lethal, and may cause concussion to the head, deafness or burns.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ http://www.snopes.com/movies/films/deerhunt.htm
  2. ^ Holly Strother, Curiosity about guns can kill, April 1, 2003.
  3. ^ A Writer at Work, 15 August 1969, Radio 4, BBC website.
  4. ^ "Really Old School," Washington Post, December 25, 1998
  5. ^ http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hinckley/hinkleygun2.jpg
  6. ^ Transistorized!, Public Broadcasting Service, 1999.
  7. ^ "Roulette gun stunt 'a hoax'". BBC News. 2003-10-07. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3169388.stm. Retrieved on 2007-09-02. 

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_roulette"
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