“It was at the request of Raymond Poincaré, president of the Republic from 1913 to 1920 that Paul Painlevé, mathematician and politician, designed the Multicolore. Indeed, it was necessary to put an end to the clandestine games in Paris1.
If bets were allowed on games of chance, they were prohibited on games of skill like billiards, so Paul Painlevé imagined a game that would be both a casino game like roulette and a game of skill like billiards.
This new game was aimed at people who could not go to casinos, too posh, hence its nickname "casino of the people". ( from Wikipedia)

Le Multicolore is a game that features charateristics of Roulette, and it is common in French cercles. Le Multicolore is played on a large gaming table with a wheel in the top.The wheel is divided into 25 shallow cups. Each cup is assigned a color :six green cups,six red cups, six white cups and one blue cup. Each cup has a different number- one cup of each color is assigned the number 4, two cups are assigned the number 3 and two cups are assigned the number 2. The single blue cup on the wheel is assigned the number 24. The numbers are used to determine the player’s payout... Players place their bets on the colored segments on the table. A croupier strikes with a cue stick ( similar from those from billard) an ivory ball that runs along the table into the wheel, and falls into one of the cups.The winners are the players who bet on the same color as that of the cup in which the ball stopped.The payout depends of the number signed on that cup. If number is the 2 receives 2 times the bid , etc.)


A Muticolore table and benches ( Cercle Central)


A Multicolore table more modern ( Cercle le Multicolore- Reims)
A DIFFERENT AND FUN GAME
It is a game played only in French Cercles and French Billiards academies.
The players are seated on a bench around the Multicolor table and there are employees who walk around the benches collecting e paying the bets.
A croupier dressed up in a tuxedo and white gloves throws the ball with the help of a pool cue.
I had the opportunity to play Multicolore at Cercle Central in Paris. It was funny.
The game gradually became less used as it required a large space just to have a table in operation and needs several people to run the game.

I won these jetons on Cercle Central Multicolore

Jetons from CERCLE MULTICOLORE- REIMS ( now closed)
Photos of the jetons from CHIPGUIDE