Beating Roulette With Computers & Lasers 219
MeerCat writes "The BBC are reporting that a group of gamblers who won more than £1m at the Ritz Casino by using laser technology have been told by police they can keep their winnings.
A laser scanner linked to a computer was allegedly used to gauge numbers likely to come up on the roulette wheel.
Of course this could be Labour spin to try and get people excited about the idea of cheating at mega casinos"
Re:Labour spin? Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
Previous Article (Score:3, Informative)
Roulette Scam [slashdot.org]
Amazing that they did get to keep the cash, at least slashdot kept up on a story for once.
Re:Labour spin? Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
Though recently they backed off from the idea by reducing the number of initial casinos to about six (I cant remember the original number) as there are fears here that they'd cause more crime and more poverty in the surrounding area due to the envitable rise in gambling addiction.
Re:MIT (Score:5, Informative)
The famous MIT story is that teams didn't use any kinds of computers. You don't need to use computers to beat blackjack either. But they did get kicked out of casinos since they're private property and they dont like cardcounting. The fact it's legal is irrelevant.
Not the first to try (Score:5, Informative)
see
The Eudaemonic Pie [thomasbass.com]
or "The Newtonian Casino" as the UK print was called
Re:MIT (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Didn't break the law! (Score:3, Informative)
rj
A slightly more detailed article (Score:5, Informative)
And some theory [newscientist.com] behind it from the previous slashdot article.
Re:Of course no law was broken! (Score:4, Informative)
Read the "Eudaemonic Pie" by Thomas Bass (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This is probably pure ignorance but (Score:3, Informative)
Slot machines and card games, however, while stacked in the favor of the house because if they weren't it wouldn't be hard for employees to figure out how to beat the system and if a casino is afraid of anything, it is the employees cheating either to help a friend win or to get money themselves. At a casino the cameras are looking at the employees just as much as the customers. More than once surveilance called us up asked us what we were doing.
And again, at least in Indiana, if you aren't tampering with equipment, there is no law against using gambling aides. However, if you get caught you will get kicked out and probably banned.
Re:This is probably pure ignorance but (Score:5, Informative)
Your preception of what they did is wrong. What makes the roulette wheel work is that no one, with the naked eye, can measure the initial conditions well enough to predict the outcome. From the articles discussed in various links, the group apparently used a laser to measure spin rate and other variables when the roullette wheel was set in motion. Then a computer estimated the final position of the ball. They had a brief window in which to do this. Bets must be placed before the wheel spins three times. If the reports are true, they could do this on a completely fair wheel.
In other words, they were NOT looking at long term averages and saying, for this wheel, the ball lands an unusual number of times on 6. They were looking at the initial conditions of the spin and used to physics to say on the spin, the ball will likely land here. They reduced the odds from 1 in 32 to 1 in 6.
Re:Labour spin? Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
Gambling in casino's in the UK is restricted to private casinos, where you have to register as a member 24 hours before being allowed to make any bets. There are betting shops (bookies) which allow people to make bets on races, but they have to keep the inside of the shop obscured (usually by posters) to avoid anyone falling to temptation. Many pubs and nightclubs have the odd slot machine (fruit machine) with the spinning reels, but they don't really rake in more than maybe 300 pounds a week, and have to have the theme changed every 4-5 weeks, otherwise the punters lose interest. There's also the traditional beach arcades, where you could play various skill games for a pound coin.
The Labour party was caught out with some dodgy visits to and from the Los Vegas casino owners, over the "tightening of gambling laws". The argument goes that since the Internet is allowing people to gamble from home or work, they need new legislation to ban the slot machines from pubs/night clubs, and that these should be replaced by dozens of new super-casinos able to set up all across the UK, especially in deprived areas. The Labour party spin is that this would allow the average UK member of the public to share in the glamour of high society gambling (image of men in tuxedo's and women in elegant evening gowns), although in reality the casinos would simply have hundreds of electronic slot machines linked up for national prizes.
Given the land shortage in the UK, there are far more practical uses for regenerated industrial sites. These include health and fitness centres, shopping malls, conference centres, office blocks, mixed-income housing, with casinos right at the bottom of the list. Especially since there is no real public demand for more casinos.
And there is also a growing public suspicion that New Labour seems to disregard anyone or any business who atttempts to earn a basic living (let alone make a fortune) from honest hard work, but is only interested in people who are prepared to recklessly gamble their own money eg. the obsession with getting "young people" to become entrepeneurs, or getting experienced senior managers to remortgage their homes in order to set up their own companies, or having multi-millionaires buy out companies with declining sales, and simply rebrand everyone and everything with uniforms and company logos.
Re:Labour spin? Huh? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This is probably pure ignorance but (Score:3, Informative)
It's been done, against the house! I remember reading about an engineer that used the non-random aspect of the real-world imperfect table to locate a table within the casino that had a bias. He used this and may have broken the bank.
Jeez, just googled for it, found it! From this [thegoodgam...uide.co.uk] page:
Re:Of course no law was broken! (Score:5, Informative)
When visiting Las Vegas, I always end up in the back where the high stakes poker tables are. You pay the rake to the casino and unload thick wads of money from other "unsuspecting" tourists who have seen poker on TV
Re:Of course no law was broken! (Score:1, Informative)
Speaking as someone who was played roulette (and won hundreds of dollars at it); I must say this is false. If you play the outside of the table, the chances of winning are quite good. Wager on black/red, odd/even, you have a 50/50 chance of doubling your bet. Those are excellent odds. The key is after your get a good stack of chips, just set it aside and pretend it doesn't exist. You can turn $20 into $200 in a short amount of time if you play smart. You must know when to walk away. Like my brother told me; 'The two things you'll never see in a Casino are a clock or a window'. They are designed to keep you playing and losing.
Re:Of course no law was broken! (Score:3, Informative)
Face it, anyone who gambles in a casino "to win" is a mug. Although the odds are a bit better than lottery, so are the stakes.
Two exceptions: Poker, where you're trying to find bigger mugs than yourself, and blackjack, where you can theoretically get an edge on the house. In practice, it's difficult, tedious, and a career that will be terminated as soon as you get successful.
Re:Of course no law was broken! (Score:5, Informative)
Betting on one number has 1 way to win, but 36 ways to lose. But the house pays odds as though you had a 1-in-36 chance of winning, not 1-in-37. So, the house has an advantage over you - in the long term average, they pay out $36 for every $37 they take back. You can easily work out mathematically that all the other bets (ie, splitting a chip across 2 adjacent numbers etc) work out to exactly the same house advantage. (it's about 2.7% or something)
In fact, short of actually using technology to predict the outcome or to affect the outcome of the spin, there is NO betting scheme, algorithm, pattern or method of placing bets on a roulette wheel that leads to any difference in the house's advantage over you.
You are absolutely correct, however, in your assertion in that you must know when to walk away with your winnings. An even more important skill is to know when to walk away after losing.
(In the USA, the presence of the '00' on the wheel actually doubles the house advantage again)
And finally, a corollary to your assertion that you have won hundreds of dollars at roulette: You have also, on other occasions, lost hundreds of dollars at it.
I'm in the Gaming Business right now (Score:3, Informative)
A wheel dealer with about 1-2 years experience, is generally good enough to hit quadrants (groups of 9 #'s) and sectors (groups of 6 #'s). The casino I work for wants about a spin every 90 seconds under a full table (12 players). If you are a dealing during busy hours all the time (evenings) that is still 1200 spins a week.
I know of 2 dealers, each with about 10 years of experience, that are capable of hitting numbers about 1/3 times.
Remember to tip your dealer. We are more than happpy to give away the casino's money if you help us too.
If you are cheap asshole, don't be surprised when they change out dealers on you. All of a sudden your numbers stop hitting, (anything you play will stop hitting).
Interesting note, The board ( the display of the numbers that have come up in the last 10-15 spins) is ranked the biggest improvement in gambling technology in 20 years by most casinoes.
"Oh, number is going to hit next"
Suckers love flashing, colorful lights. (Slots fall here too)
The roulette table has no memory, each spin is a new event.
Oh, the stories I could tell after only 6 monthes, I really have a bad out look on the human race as whole from these experiences.
It is fun to play a game that you are statically stacked to win for 8 hours a day! If I don't like you , I take your money.
Clarification of 100+% games... (Score:4, Informative)
Many casinos run games like poker, where you play against the other *players*, not the house. The house still wins, because they take a rake off the top. The players (in aggregate) still lose, because the house ends up with more money than it started with...
However, any individual player can consistently win, and Vegas doesn't care - he's taking money from other players, not the house.
(That said, there are some slots that give >100% return. Just not many.)