Russian roulette
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Russian roulette is a name given to potentially the most lethal form of gambling
Participants of Russian Roulette place a single round in a chamber of a revolver. The game is usually depicted being played with a revolver with 6 chambers, and once the round is placed, the cylinder is spun rapidly and then closed (put back into the gun) so that the identity of the loaded chamber is unknown to everyone. The player then places the revolver to his temple (head) and pulls the trigger, accepting a one in six chance of death. The game is played for various reasons, often as a form of high-stakes gambling before a crowd of betters, or sometimes as a show of bravado before a witness or as a form of less-culpable suicide, performed alone or with others. Russian Roulette is a highly secretive practice, and the number of deaths caused by it is unknown although likely to be negligible as the game owes more to myth than reality.
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