Someone here was asking me about how to beat roulette a while ago. I don’t remember who, so anyway, here’s one way.
Don’t try it in the U.S. or you’ll end up in jail for several years.
[quote=“MaPoSquid”]Someone here was asking me about how to beat roulette a while ago. I don’t remember who, so anyway, here’s one way.
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I’m amazed they got away with it - OK, they didn’t technically bring a computer into the premises, but I would have thought the use would have been enough for the casino to claim its money back.
I’ve heard roulette has been beaten in the past, by people (+team mates) essentially watching hundreds/thousands of spins to pick up any underlying imbalance in a particular wheel so you know which ‘sectors’ are more likely to come up. Don’t know if it’s true, but it’s what I’ve heard. I think they rebalance the wheels regularly now to prevent that.
[quote=“daasgrrl”][quote=“MaPoSquid”]Someone here was asking me about how to beat roulette a while ago. I don’t remember who, so anyway, here’s one way.
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I’m amazed they got away with it - OK, they didn’t technically bring a computer into the premises, but I would have thought the use would have been enough for the casino to claim its money back.
I’ve heard roulette has been beaten in the past, by people (+team mates) essentially watching hundreds/thousands of spins to pick up any underlying imbalance in a particular wheel so you know which ‘sectors’ are more likely to come up. Don’t know if it’s true, but it’s what I’ve heard. I think they rebalance the wheels regularly now to prevent that.[/quote]
Yes, it’s very true. The best-known for wheel-bias is Dr. Roy Walford – oddly enough, my aunt worked for him for a while at UCLA. It was rumored that he won enough in one summer of play in Reno to buy a house and put himself through medical school.
Later, a group of tech geeks built computers for it (1970’s), immortalized in the book “The Eudaemonic Pie”. (My copy is in storage in Seattle, sadly.) (Walford is mentioned in it out of historical interest; from the amounts mentioned, it’s likely that he really did win enough to do what the rumors claimed.)
In every jurisdiction that I know of in the U.S., these folks would be in jail now. I guess the law in Britain doesn’t cover the specifics of what they used. Surprising . . . but I wish I’d known that before they did it.
Why should there be laws against trying to win? You mean that in the US it’s illegal to beat the odds, when the odds are stacked against you to begin with!
I heard (don’t know if it’s true) that card-counting is also illegal, which means that using your intelligence to improve the odds is illegal. So you’re left relying on chance, when the games are structured so that the casino will always win.
There’s no point in playing if you’re not allowed to try and win.
I heard somewhere else (and again, I don’t know if it’s true) that the rules of craps were revised in the fifites when someone figured out that some of the bets were actually more likely to pay out than to lose. Anyone know anything about this?
Only if you get caught - I’m sure MaPo will have something to say on this matter 
Incidentally, Bringing Down the House (MIT card counters) is a really fun read.
The Eudaemonic Pie sounds very interesting - will definitely have to keep an eye out for it.
I’ve got a system I worked out myself, I’ve just tested it again in my head and it works EVERY time, basically it goes like this:
If you toss a coin and it is heads, you know the next time it will be tails, because you have a 50% chance either way, and the first time used up the chances of it being heads, so it must be tails.
And if it’s tails, the next time it will be heads.
It’s foolproof, simple statistics
This post is satire
[quote=“daasgrrl”]
The Eudaemonic Pie sounds very interesting - will definitely have to keep an eye out for it.[/quote]
Unfortunately, I think it’s out of print; you can still get it from used bookstores, however. It’s fairly cheap, too (I think I paid five bucks (USD) for my copy).
It’s easy to win – don’t play when the odds are against you. Play only when the odds are in your favor.
The laws in the U.S. prohibit any sort of “device”. While they don’t usually mind pencil and paper, even a calculator can get you jailed.
False, at least in the U.S. You’re allowed to use your mind. One guy used a set of rosary beads to keep the count, and got hassled for quite a while – “device” law again.
You’re allowed to try on your own. But I agree with the first part of your statement, before the “if”.
I never heard that about craps, and I think it’s unlikely – it’s a straightforward game without too many possibilities. The reason blackjack and baccarat are/were beatable is because of the huge number of possibilities and the inability to analyze the games when they were first formalized.
Casinos have made errors on a number of games, which allowed knowledgeable gamblers to make some decent money. There was one called “sic-bo”, basically a weird modified roulette with three balls, where the company that produced the game put the wrong payout on the table felt. People made quite a bit at it.
It used to be possible to count cards at baccarat, but the casinos implemented the “commission” scam on the dealer bets to make it impossible to get an edge that way.
There have been a few other experiments that cost the casinos a few bucks.
I just realized what the change was to craps. They did make a change, but not the sort you’re probably thinking of.
When mainframe computers first became available, a mathematician figured that he could analyze the rolls to find defects in the dice, possibly resulting in gaining an edge – just like Walford did (manually, with a straightforward chi-square test) for roulette.
He went in and played, and literally called his lab with the results from a payphone. He lost, because the casino figured out something was up and started replacing the dice on him. The theory was valid, but unlike roulette wheels, dice were cheap and plentiful.
Nowadays, you pick three dice from a set of five (or more), and they swap them from time to time anyway.
One of my favorite stories is about how Augusta Ada Byron and Charles Babbage figured out a “fool proof” method of betting on horses with their new Analytical Engine, the first computer. Then they proceeded to lose all their money.
Here is a way to win roulette without any devices or cheating:
Start with e.g. 10 dollar and play on a color, say red. If you win, you get double (20), winning 10. Start again from 10.
If you loose, bet double of what you lost. E.g. you put 10 down and black came up. Now put 20. If you win, you just won 10 dollar. Start again from 10. Say you loose on you bet with 10, 20, 40 and 80 dollar - put down 160. If you win, you get 320 - this gives you still a win of 10 (160-10+20+40+80 = 160-150 = 10).
Thus you only need enough cash to sustain a few rounds of loosing. Of course you can play with $100 at the start but then you must bet 200 if you loose (followed by 400, 800 etc.) …
Simple, really.
[quote=“Rascal”]Here is a way to win roulette without any devices or cheating:
Start with e.g. 10 dollar and play on a color, say red. If you win, you get double (20), winning 10. Start again from 10.
If you loose, bet double of what you lost. E.g. you put 10 down and black came up. Now put 20. If you win, you just won 10 dollar. Start again from 10. Say you loose on you bet with 10, 20, 40 and 80 dollar - put down 160. If you win, you get 320 - this gives you still a win of 10 (160-10+20+40+80 = 160-150 = 10).
Thus you only need enough cash to sustain a few rounds of losing. Of course you can play with $100 at the start but then you must bet 200 if you loose (followed by 400, 800 etc.) …
Simple, really.[/quote]
Yes, very simple, except that it doesn’t work.
I’m too tired to go over the long version, but the short version is: you don’t have infinite money, and the casino has a finite betting limit anyway. So if nothing else, edge effects will kill you.
Look up “Martingale system” on Google if you want the full tutorial.
Forgot to say re the craps thing, the only thing I’ve heard - again, unsubstantiated - is that it is the game with the lowest house edge if played according to ‘standard’ procedure (ie not including the potential for card counting at blackjack).
MaPo is right, of course - it is actually the use of devices which is illegal, but if they notice they can bar you (some places) or cut the deck near the middle, which makes counting impossible. I think.
You don’t have to bet infinite, perhaps enough money to sustain 8 or 9 rounds of losses will do.
But if that system would be entirely fool-proof - do you think I would be sitting here and posting it instead of sitting in a casino and getting “rich”?
Anyhow, I don’t really gamble and do not want to encourage anyone to do so.
Blackjack is still less, if played according to basic strategy. But that’s no fun since you’re basically playing like a robot. (Then again, some people actually like slot machines, go figure.)
Craps is about a 2% house edge, IIRC. Blackjack depends on the number of decks and rule variations, but is typically -0.85% to +0.1% (yes, positive player edge off the top of the deck – single deck, LSR, RSA – usually only offered as a special promotion at very small casinos).
Not impossible, but pointless.
You don’t have to bet infinite, perhaps enough money to sustain 8 or 9 rounds of losses will do.[/quote]
Doesn’t work, doesn’t work, doesn’t work. Try it if you don’t believe me.
Look, the long version is, it is statistically impossible to obtain a positive result from a series of negative-expectation bets. There is never a situation in roulette (short of using a computer to track the ball, or finding a wheel with sufficient bias to be profitable) where you can obtain a positive expectation bet. Never. Period. Simply varying your bet cannot work, because it has no effect on the expectation of the next spin of the wheel.
Blackjack is positive-expectation, if played properly, because you can calculate when the player has an advantage, and increase your bet according to the advantage, thereby cancelling out all the negative-expectation bets that you had to sit through to get to an advantage bet. But there is never such a situation in roulette.
If you want, look at the real limits. A typical one is $5 minimum, $2000 maximum – a range of 400:1. You are thus limited to less than 2**9, or nine bad bets in a row before you lose your limit-max bet. That sort of streak will happen more often than the number of times you will win enough chips to cover such a loss. The net effect is, you are guaranteed to lose when playing a Martingale system.
Hey, I am, and (aside from politics ) you have more sense than I do. The risks are high and the working environment is extremely unpleasant.
Generally good policy, believe me!
You don’t have to bet infinite, perhaps enough money to sustain 8 or 9 rounds of losses will do.
But if that system would be entirely fool-proof - do you think I would be sitting here and posting it instead of sitting in a casino and getting “rich”?
Anyhow, I don’t really gamble and do not want to encourage anyone to do so.[/quote]
Wise words 
Mathematically, the house has an edge at roulette. Altering the amount you bet doesn’t change that, in the long run you will lose. unless you bring your cellphone Your system is mentioned often and it has one glaring disadvantage: streaks occur in random events. a losing streak could find you facing a 50/50 bet large enough to make you uncomfortable. in fact it is quite likely to happen sooner or later.
i read a book recently called “bringing down the house” about mit students who set up card counting teams to beat blackjack and did well at it. they mentioned that mant casions are now using continuous shuffling machines to beat counters.
casinos in the us are private property and can bar anyone they like. known card counters are routinely barred.
That’s funny. Many horse racing systems have been devised but no mechanical system can account for all the potential variables in horse racing.
The best gambling games are ones like poker where the house taks a cut of the action for providing the game. Thus you match your skill and your cash against the other players. If the skill is there the possibility of winning is also. Horse racing falls in this category also, though the track takes such a large cut of the action that the skill level needed to win is quite high. In games like blackjack and craps where the house sets the odds, losing in the long run is a mathematical certainty–unless you can find a way to tilt the odds in your favor, ie card counting or a cellphone.
Well, and the other thing is, it’s not a 50/50 bet. Euro wheel has 37 spots: 18 red, 18 black, 1 green (0). Your odds are 18/37 to win 2, or -2.7027027027…%.
American wheel has 38 spots, 18 red, 18 black, 2 green (0, 00). Your odds are 18/38 to win 2, or -5.2631578947368421052631578947368421052…%.
I haven’t seen any of the three-zero wheels, although I’ve heard they are out there. 18/39, or about -7.6923%
Well, and the other thing is, it’s not a 50/50 bet. Euro wheel has 37 spots: 18 red, 18 black, 1 green (0). Your odds are 18/37 to win 2, or -2.7027027027…%.
American wheel has 38 spots, 18 red, 18 black, 2 green (0, 00). Your odds are 18/38 to win 2, or -5.2631578947368421052631578947368421052…%.
I haven’t seen any of the three-zero wheels, although I’ve heard they are out there. 18/39, or about -7.6923%[/quote]
right, should have said 45/50 bet
Yeah, what Tempo Gain said. It’s not illegal to count cards, it’s just that American casinos always reserve the right to choose who they’ll play with.
The thing that kills me about the original article is this, if I understand it correctly. The wheel is spun, the laser reads the ball’s motion, feeds this data via link to a computer, which in turn calculates a landing spot and then notifies …the bettor?
And all this is done before the wheel has completed 3 full revolutions?
That’s like, real fast, no? :s
Christ, the casino musta found it real easy to spot this ‘system’, just look for the Eastern Europeans always scrambling like hell to get a bet in before the wheel gets around 3 times. (granted, they did win a lot before the casino got a clue - but still, jeebus)
I always thought the bumps on the roulette were put there to decrease the odds of making these velocity related guesses on roulette. Ball hits bump, hops in the air and there goes the continuous path needed for the calculation.
I’ve seen some Western Casino with that DaXiao dice game these days. You basically guess if the sum of 3 die are big or small. There are combination bets as well. If I can train to wiggle my ear, I’m sure I’ll beat the house on that game. :loco:
Play the slots machines. Why waste good brain cells in a game that were invented in the house favor?