Casino Tourbillion: Playfulness is a complication

Life is a game. It deserves a gamesome timepiece. Casino is on par with the lifestyle offered by the Casino de Monte-Carlo or the high stakes room at the MGM Grand. This clean, lean and sleek roulette watch is dressed in rose gold and a black onyx dial, an unadulterated expression of Jacob & Co.'s cheerful nature and ingenuity. Playing with watchmaking classics, doing away with conventions and propriety, Casino sets a unique tone in today's horology. 

Based in the most thorough technical paradigm, Casino features Jacob & Co.'s first-ever flying tourbillon located caseback-side, with high-end finishings and sophisticated material details. Leaving its entire expression space to a fully functional, free-spinning roulette, complete with 37 pockets and a white ball, Casino is designed for chance, hopes for luck and brings supreme exhilaration. 

In 2019, Jacob & Co. launched one of the most successful versions of the Astronomia. Astronomia Casino has been manufactured in surprisingly high quantities given how specific and costly it actually is. As an integral part of the Astronomia collection, it offers a 10-minute rotating platform, a triple-axis tourbillon, a magnesium Earth globe and a spinning 288-facet, Jacob-cut diamond. Jacob & Co. has managed the design and technical feat of adding a fully working roulette to this already highly functional ensemble. The module which operates that roulette, its signature complication, has been plugged inside Jacob & Co.'s new complication timepiece Casino, thus giving it a unique personality. Casino is an expression of playfulness, the art of taking chances and incidentally, the love of gambling. 

Pure lines 

The Casino case takes its inspiration from the original Roulette timepiece by Jacob & Co., the Astronomia Casino. Yet its dimensions, shape, movement and construction are entirely new and dedicated to this specific piece. The 44-mm case body is crafted out of 18K rose gold and thoroughly polished. The caseband is curved, the bezel steep and the sapphire crystal generously domed, all of which creates a single harmonious line. It's fitted with four full and wide lugs, whose shape initiates the black alligator strap curve. These angles and this elaborate construction aim at slimming down the Casino profile and make for a more comfortable and ergonomic fit with wrists of all sizes. 

One of the attributes Casino shares with its forbearer the absence of a crown. Time-setting and winding are both operated with bows placed against the caseback. Seen from above, Casino is therefore as smooth as possible given the presence of an essential appendage : the Roulette pusher at 8 o'clock. The pusher itself is square and large so as to offer the best finger contact possible. To blend it with the Casino overall case profile, it's surrounded by a long, crescent-shaped crown guard.

Pure luck

This pusher is the heart of the Casino as it operates its signature function, elevated to the rank of an actual watchmaking complication. Casino is a genuine Roulette game. Once laid out flat on a table, it operates as a fully random game of chance. The pusher propels the wheelhead, complete with 37 pockets, 1 green, 18 red and 18 black. The mechanical construction of this movement part rests on a set of ceramic ball bearings of extremely high quality. The wheelhead spins with high speed and very little friction. 

Meanwhile, a white ceramic ball bounces inside Casino. It flies throughout the lower part of the dial and flange, which is fitted with eight diamonds-shaped deflectors. Randomization is at its best and makes the Casino a true portable game, not just a testament to the wearer's love for Roulette, taking chances or any other symbol they may see in Casino. 

Pure luxury 

The gambling establishments Jacob & Co. used as an inspiration for Casino are the likes of the high-stakes room at the Bellagio and the plush carpeted floors of the Monte-Carlo Casino. The finishings and details of this timepiece set the same tone. The hours and minutes dial is made of a single slab of black onyx, mirror-polished and fitted with applied, 5N gold indices. Their kite-shape is a nod to the kite-cut sapphires, used in several Jacob & Co. creations. 

The black PVD flange contains eight diamond-shaped deflectors, which aim at rising the variance level of the roulette game. The wheeltrack flange, that small wall at the foot of the upper side of the dial, is mirror polished, like on an actual roulette, and leaves a small space between the dial and the sapphire crystal. A space large enough for the entire dial and wheeltrack to act as one continuous ensemble, but small enough for the ball to stay down and end up in one of the 37 pockets. 

Pure sense of details

Although Casino offers a familiar face to those who already know Astronomia Casino, caliber JCAM51 is an entirely new creation. The Roulette module rests on a last generation base calibre, with a comfortable and week-end-in-Vegas-proof power reserve of 72 hours. It's regulated by a flying tourbillon located on the back side of the case. 

Its carriage ushers in a new Jacob & Co. design as its arms are engraved and lacquered in the exact same way as the wheelhead. This black and red pattern is also laid out on two applied plates, screwed on the caseback on either side of the bows acting as winding and time-setting crowns. The numbers appear in the same order as the ones on the opposite side of Casino. 

The sense of exhilaration and excitement that has become Jacob & Co.'s unique signature reaches a new level. The sleek, black dial of Casino has tuxedo-like appeal. The Roulette complication is Vegas-worthy. And the understated yet highly symbolic tourbillon signals the true high watchmaking nature of Jacob & Co.'s watchmaking.