Russian roulette

For other uses see Russian roulette (disambiguation)

Russian roulette is the practice of placing a single round in a revolver, spinning the cylinder and closing it into the firearm without looking, aiming the revolver at one's own head in a suicidal fashion, and pulling the trigger. The number of rounds placed in the revolver can vary, though as a rule there will always be at least one empty chamber. As a gambling game, toy guns are often used to simulate the practice. The number of deaths caused by this practice is unknown.

History

Legends abound regarding the invention of Russian roulette. Most of these, predictably, take place 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.

The earliest known use of the term is from "Russian Roulette", a short story by Georges Surdez in the January 30, 1937, issue of Collier's Magazine. A Russian sergeant in the French Foreign Legion asks the narrator,

"'Feldheim… did you ever hear of Russian Roulette?' When I said I had not, he told me all about it. When he was with the Russian army in Rumania, around 1917, and things were cracking up, so that their officers felt that they were not only losing prestige, money, family, and country, but were being also dishonored before their colleagues of the Allied armies, some officer would suddenly pull out his revolver, anywhere, at the table, in a cafe, at a gathering of friends, remove a cartridge from the cylinder, spin the cylinder, snap it back in place, put it to his head, and pull the trigger. There were five chances to one that the hammer would set off a live cartridge and blow his brains all over the place. Sometimes it happened, sometimes not."

Whether Czarist 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 Petr 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. The standard sidearm issued to Russian officers from 1895 to 1930 was the Nagant M1895 revolver. A primitive double-action revolver, the Nagant's cylinder spins freely 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. However, it holds seven cartridges not six, which throws some doubt on the accuracy of the reference in Collier's.

The only reference to anything like Russian roulette in Russian literature is in a book entitled A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov (1840, translated by Vladimir Nabokov in 1958), where a similar act is performed by a Serbian soldier: the dare however is not named as "Russian roulette". Russian officers did play a game called "cuckoo" with a Nagant revolver, whereby one officer would stand on a table or a chair in a dark room. Others would hide and yell "cuckoo" and the man with the gun would fire at the sound.

In the 1978 movie The Deer Hunter, the game is also depicted as being played in Vietnam. According to one website claiming to offer insight into the practice of Russian roulette, Valerie Douglas, whose father's cousin and father were in the Vietnam War states that Russian roulette occurred both for gambling and murder. [1] 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 youths. There is also an interesting Russian roulette scene in the Japanese film Sonatine, directed by Takeshi Kitano.

A semi-automatic pistol, unlike a revolver, will automatically load and fire a round if it has any rounds remaining. There has been at least one Darwin Award resulting from an attempt to play Russian roulette with such a pistol. This variation is sometimes referred to as "Polish roulette,"—a bigoted play on the stereotype of Polish people being of low intelligence—though its actual origins are disputed.

Another variation that is known is the practice of having all chambers of a revolver filled but one and is sometimes referred to as Belgian roulette.

"Russian Poker" is a variation of Russian Roulette - the difference being that in Russian Poker, one's opponent places the gun up to the other person and pulls the trigger.

Notable Russian roulette incidents

Reality

On December 24, 1954 the American blues musician Johnny Ace shot himself to death in Texas playing Russian roulette in a dressing room before a concert.

John Hinckley, Jr. was known to play Russian Roulette, alone, on two occasions (although neither time he pulled the trigger was the bullet in the firing chamber). Hinckley also took a picture of himself in 1980 pointing a gun at his head.

On February 28, 2000, Rashaad, A 19-year-old Houston resident attempted to play Russian roulette with a semi-automatic pistol, apparently unaware that the mechanics of the game change with a weapon other than a revolver. However, the Darwin Award sources are often suspect. [2]

On June 12, 2001, Clinton Pope, a 16-year-old young man with a criminal record who had been drinking and smoking marijuana for the night, fired a bullet into his face while playing Russian roulette before his friends in St. Petersburg, Florida, U.S. He was sent to a hospital and was in critical but stable condition.[3]

On March 29, 2003, Evan Below, a 14-year-old boy, shot and killed himself while playing Russian roulette with a .38-caliber revolver in the kitchen of a friend's house in Casper, Wyoming, U.S. The weapon was taken by the houseowner's son from his mother's bedroom.

On August 7, 2004, Samantha Goodson, 16, shot her boyfriend, Michael Gerald Henry, 18, dead while they were playing a version of Russian roulette in a house in Jamaica, Queens, New York, U.S. She was charged with manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon.

On August 23, 2004, a 25-year-old Greek soldier, Antonis Syros, was shot in the forehead by a revolver that had held a single bullet at the gates of an Olympic village at Mount Parnitha in Athens, Greece. He was playing Russian roulette "jokingly" with Christos Chloros, a policeman, while he was standing guard.

On April 14, 2006, a 16-year-old teen from Peoria, Arizona shot himself to death while playing Russian roulette on his porch with a friend.

In addition to these specific incidents, it has been alleged that William Shockley, co-inventor of the transistor and winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics attempted suicide by playing a solo game of Russian roulette [4].

Entertainment

Russian roulette is featured heavily in The Deer Hunter (1978), where the main characters are forced to play Russian roulette as prisoners of war and one of the characters almost becomes addicted to it.

On October 5 2003, famous mind control magician Derren Brown played Russian roulette on British television Channel 4. Even though the stunt was apparently being broadcast live, it was broadcast on a slight delay and if anything had gone wrong the programme would have cut to a black screen. 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" made it clear that the incident was at least partially a hoax. However, it was proved on the prerecorded segment of the programme that at point blank range even a blank cartridge may cause concussion to the head, deafness or burns. Exactly what precautions Brown took to avoid this are still unknown.

In Season 3 of the television program 24, main character Jack Bauer is forced to play a game of Russian roulette when taken prisoner. Actor Kiefer Sutherland preceded the episode with an announcement from the Americans For Gun Safety Foundation, addressing the issue of gun safety. This episode originally aired on November 25, 2003.

In a Season 3 episode of the television show The X-Files titled "Pusher", Fox Mulder is forced to play Russian roulette when under mind control. He first pulls the trigger at the man controlling him, then himself, and at the end tries to shoot Dana Scully, but turns the gun back to the pusher and fires the only bullet.

In the movie Bad Day on the Block starring Charlie Sheen, his character forces his neighbors to play Russian roulette.

In the film 187, characters played by Samuel L. Jackson and Clifton Collins Jr. play Russian roulette by placing two rounds into a revolver and agreeing to take an equal number of turns even if one dies first.

In the Bugs Bunny cartoon Ballot Box Bunny, the original ending - which was censored in America until release on DVD - showed Bugs and Yosemite Sam playing Russian Roulette after both lose a mayoral race.

In the Australian true crime book entitled "Chopper: From The Inside" the book's author Mark Chopper Read boasts about playing Russian Roulette with criminal elements of Melbourne's Vietnamese community in a chapter called "Russian Roulette with rice eaters". As accounted in the book, Chopper had an advantage, because his revolver was much better balanced than the standard revolvers, and if he spun it the correct way, he'd get a much lower chance of dying, and made some money this way.

The comedy film High School High contains a russian roulette scenario.

In the videogame Conflict: Vietnam, the tenth mission, titled "Russian Roulette", opens with American POWs forced to play Russian Roulette.

In the bestseller Fandorin book The Winter Queen, the book begins with an apparent loner playing the game. But all is not as it seems.

In the 2005 film Tzameti a version of the game is played.

The young character Major Ocelot in the bestselling videogame Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater Played a different version on other characters. It involved Juggling three Colt Single Action Armys, one of which had a single round in a random chamber. Each time a gun was in his right hand, he would pull the trigger. This would be done six times in order to test how lucky the person was. Another version was played in which he and his opponent would each have one gun, but only one of which had a bullet in a random chamber. Both players would then take turns firing at one another.

Toy gun version

Equipment

The primary piece of equipment used to play modern Russian roulette is a toy gun that has a 1/6 probability of activating when the trigger is pulled. The gun may be a dedicated device, or it could be a video game light gun connected to a computer programmed for Russian roulette simulation.

Play

All players put money in the pot. Each player in turn points the gun at their head and pulls the trigger. If the gun activates, the person holding the gun is eliminated from the game. The last player remaining wins the pot.

Odds

Assuming a six-shot revolver and that each hole is equally likely to be under the hammer, the probability of losing in the first round is 1/6. If the cylinder isn't spun after each shot, the odds of losing are 1/(6 − n), where n is the number of previously played games. Thus, the odds of losing start out as 1/6, then 1/5, then 1/4 etc. After 4 games, the chance of losing is 1/2, and then becomes 1, guaranteeing a loss in the sixth round. Because of this, there can be some psychological advantage to going first in this variant, as the odds of losing increase each time the trigger is pulled. The odds of losing are however equal for both players.

If the cylinder is spun after every shot, the odds of losing remain the same, 1/6 each time the trigger is pulled; in this case, in a two-person to-the-death game, it is better to go second (if the first person loses, the second person wins, even if he would have lost on his next move — this is equivalent to the house advantage in blackjack, where the house wins if the player busts, even if the dealer himself also is going to bust).

See also

• Roulette

External links

• The Deer Hunter death roll
• Teen Wounded Playing Russian Roulette
• Man, 18, Dies in Russian Roulette
• "Russian Roulette" Olympics Death
• Kablamo, a tongue-in-cheek board game with a Russian roulette theme.
• Gimp Roulette, a Shockwave webpage game that simulates Russian Roulette.