Russian roulette has been a buzzword for several decades when it comes to chance or taking chances. Russian roulette is played by leaving one bullet in the cylinder of a revolver, spinning it, and pointing the revolver to the head. Out of 5 empty cylinders and 1 bullet, there are 3.5 chances that the gun will discharge, without spinning the cylinder between pulls. If you spin it in between pulls, the probability goes up to 6.
While Russian roulette can be life-threatening, roulette for high rollers is definitely safe and you may want extra cash. The game has claimed many lives, both young and old, famous or regular folks, all over the globe. Who would have thought or created this deadly game?
George Surdez
The name and game Russian roulette can be attributed to writer Georges Surdez . The name Russian roulette first came out in his 1937 short story or the same title, which came out in Collier’s magazine . In his story, the game is called for a revolver with 5 chambers with a bullet and 1 empty chamber.
Georges Arthur Surdez was a Swiss writer born in 1900. As a young boy growing up in Biel, Switzerland, he already loved reading books. He was into history, fairy tales, and action adventure stories. His helped him not to focus on his father’s wifeizing and drinking. His family migrated to the US in 1912 and the attended school in New York. As he didn’t know the language, he was bullied as a kid, dubbed as a weirdo. The further found solace in his books and deepened his interest in the Foreign Legion.
He used to be a clerk
Before he got into writing, he worked as a clerk and an independent clerk. Pulp stories picked up so, between 1921 to 1922, he used his free time to write short stories. By October 1922, his short stories finally got published by Adventure magazine. Argosy picked up and published what Adventure magazine dropped. It was not until the published short story, A Game In the Bush , was able to leave his job and write full time. The short story was spinned into a movie called South Sea Love in 1927.
He married Edith McKenna in 1922, a school teacher. He got naturalized in 1928. After touring Africa and Asia, they were with the Great Depression in the US in 1930. Georges’ commissioned works diminished so he had to try something else to make ends. In 1933, Collier’s magazine published A Job in the Legion and other legion stories were commissioned. In 1937, Georges wrote a short story about French legionnaires in North Africa entitled Russian Roulette . The name has been used by Russians since the 1920s but it was the first time it was seen on print.
When World War II happened, pulp stories and Legion stories were no longer selling like hot cakes. Georges had to scrape by. His wife left him in 1943 and they were later divorced. He persisted in his writing while not as prolific as before. He came out with an autobiography before he died in 1949.