Beating Roulette With Computers & Lasers

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"

MIT

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't a bunch of MIT kids a while back use computers to count cards in several Vegas casinos? They ended up being banned from every casino's blackjack table.

Labour spin? Huh?

[PHPgawd]

Of course this could be Labour spin to try and get people excited about the idea of cheating at mega casinos.

Can somebody tell me what this means? Why would Labour (which I assume to mean the UK Labour Party) want to get people excited about cheating at mega casinos?

U.K. Gambling perceptions

[Anonymous Coward]

As an American living in the U.K. I can say that Britain's perception of their gambling is distorted. Sure poker's big in the U.S., and the last few decades have had a dramatic increase in casinos but, the U.K. seems to think that the rest of the world's addicted to gambling and they're responsible. Blair's mega-casinos; case in point.

The truth is there are slots machines in tons of roadside stops, sports betting shops (ladbrokes, etc) on busy corners, and national lottery ads [adverts] pervasive on t.v. America, (nevada aside) treats gambling much more as a kind of entertainment; in the U.K. it's more about gambling.

I don't doubt there're gambling problems across most cultures, just, I see very little legitimate entertainment in roadside slot machines. It seems to be preying on those with problems.

Re:Labour spin? Huh?

[StateOfTheUnion]

. . . 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.

Why would mega-casinos cause gambling addction to rise in the UK? . . . a country where there are bingo parlors, casinos, slot machines and bookmakers (bookies for you yanks) already legal and seemingly found throughout the country.

Are we somehow to assume that the siren's call of a megacasino is somehow more compelling than that of the bookmaker and bingo parlor located round the corner?

This is probably pure ignorance but

[panurge]

Isn't the whole point that this would not be possible if the house had a completely fair wheel? It could not be beyond the wit of engineering to produce a roulette wheel whose outcome, if not random, had such a small deviation from randomness that it would take a very long time to detect it. In any case, provided the non-randomness is below a quite high level, players will lose in the long run. They will lose faster in the US, land of the double-zero, but they will still lose.

If it is possible to win by detecting non-randomness then the wheel, or the process for using it, is bent.

My main objection to casinos is not that they provide a place for gambling - people will do this, and it is probably better that they do this in a way subject to some sort of regulation - but that reported incidents suggest they do not run fair games, and that the stacking of the odds on e.g. fruit machines is probably intended to fuel gambling addiction. It's like the alcohol industry producing alcoholic fruit drinks to get kids hooked, or just about any strategy of the tobacco industry. If the casino gets caught by someone using statistical analysis, the law should not protect them from their own dishonesty.

Re:Labour spin? Huh?

[Garak]

Here in NF, Canada we have problems with gambling addiction and VLT's in the back of bars. The VLT's are goverment regulated cash cow for all parties except the people playing them ofcourse.

Every bar has a few video lottery terminals in the back and they are very accessable for people to use day to day. Rather than going to a big mega casino which usually requires a special trip its right there. And thus it the VLT's are easy to get addicted to.

I've only ever used them once, I put in $2 and pulled out $20 and I haven't used them since. I'm not going to push my luck.

UCSC, not MIT

[Hognoxious]

The roulette shoe computer is here. [wearcam.org]. UCSC, MIT ... that's near enough for government work.

Not to be negative,

[mindstrm]

but stories about how "the only time I played I put in $2 and made $20" help fuel that gambling addiction.

It's the few people who win at casinos that give the rest hope.

Re:MIT

[Ayaress]

I'm banned from Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort for card counting. Just basic deck-weighting, nothing fancy. Usually if they think you're card counting, they offer you free drinks. They always watch gamblers who aren't drinking (espeically if the drinks are comp) extra closely, and they will at the very least take away your notes or calculator, if not ask you to leave.

Re:MIT

[matth1jd]

One should also note that Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort is notorious for not paying out much as they should for their slot machines. I wouldn't be suprised if they ask anyone trying to get a leg up to leave.

Even though they are fined by the feds for not paying out they just eat the fines and come out on top anyways.

I spent a part of my collegiate career at that casino since it was right down the road

--J

THis is so sweet!!

[Foktip]

THis is what happens whe you dont pay mathematicians or engineers enough. THey go and do something insane, and everyone else doesnt know what to make of it, heheheh. Seriously though, developing that kind of program - to calculate the precise number of rotations on a spinning wheel - is the perfect example of high level engineering. I've done many questions like that only instead of Gambling wheels, it was vehicle wheels. Once you know the accelleration and the velocity at time 0, you just use standard energy equations. If you want to get fancy with your program you could figure out the oil used and the shaft used, and add in the known values for friction, etc (all this is available in charts/tables). THen all you need is the time for one full rotation, the size of the wheel and its weight (initial conditions) which you could find after two test runs with the laser velocity/accelleration finder. After that, you could make, say, a device that all you do is click a button when it starts spinning, click again after half a rotation or a full rotation, then it displays the winning number on a screen. Then, if you have an electrical engineer around, you could make into its own embedded device with a screen, about the size of a watch. Voila - El Cheaterwatch. The best thing since the Black Box. Who needs the ability to make free phone calls when you can win millions of dollars gambling, booyah.

They let cheaters keep the money???

[Anonymous Coward]

So what's next, oh wise British lawmakers? Marking cards on Carribean Draw legal? Pre-arranging with the dealer to load a baccarat shoe with front-faces legal? Soft-spinning a Sicbo wheel legal? Collusion in poker legal?

These are cheaters, plain and simple. Why would we think them any different?

Now do this with a stock camera phone

[Animats]

Now that the basic principles are understood, it should be possible to reprogram a camera phone with a fast processor to do the same job.

It has to find and register the wheel, which is an object of known form. Lane Hawk [evolution.com] could do this. It then has to find and track the ball, which is not too hard (try the Lucas-Kanade feature tracker in OpenCV) and extract position and velocity. Given that information, prediction is possible.

Now that 3D game capability is going into camera phones, there's enough processing power in phones to consider this. It can all be done with passive sensors. You don't need lasers.

Simple rules change

[Anonymous Coward]

Even allowing electronic assistance, the casino can get their edge back with a simple rule change: all bets are frozen as soon as the ball is in play. The scanner relies on clocking the ball speed, and cuing the bettors before bets closed at third pass of the ball. It's akin to casinos shuffling the deck for each hand of 21, which puts the card counters out of business.

A less ethical method is for the casino to randomly switch the balls for each round, having an assortment of light and heavy balls. Or for the dealer to learn how to put a little "English" on the ball, using back spin and top spin to randomize the ball's time-of-flight (it doesn't take much).

If all else fails, the casino can deal with the big winners the old fashioned way: switch on the hidden electro-magnet hidden under the table. Any crooked gambling house knows how to rig a roulette wheel!

Re:Of course no law was broken!

[whorfin]

It is not illegal to count cards in your mind. However, the casinos have the right to refuse to allow you to play for any reason (and being a successful card counter is one that they think is a good reason). All they can do is escort you from the property, and if you resist or refuse, they can charge you with tresspass.

The Nevada state courts ordered a casino to pay [findlaw.com] a card counter who won a small pile of cash there, which the casino had refused to pay. That pretty much sums up the legality, I believe.

Re:U.K. Gambling perceptions-Math Failures.

[whorfin]

Umm...You may think that math precludes gambling, but I believe that you'll find many of the more 'serious' gamblers are people well-versed in math, who beleive that their deep ability to quickly calculate their momentary odds provides them an advantage. One of my friends has a masters in mathematics from a highly prestigious university, and is the most dedicated gambler I personally know.

If you don't have an intuitive knowledge of odds calculations, you will likely do poorly at poker, because 'knowing' what your opponents could have, and luring them into betting when *you* know they have a much lower chance of winning than you is the best path to winning.

Re:Of course no law was broken!

[Jardine]

Statistically, no matter how you play, the house eventually wins at roulette.

Statistics only work reliably over long periods of time. Let's say you roll a 12 sided die. Each side has a 1 in 12 chance of coming up. Now let's say that 1-5 represent black, 6 and 7 represent 0 and 00, and 8-12 represent red. The odds are even more against you than in roulette, but it's still quite possible to win 3 or 4 times in a row and then quit.

Overall the house still wins and it's more likely to win than you but it's not improbable to come out ahead in the short term. The key is to quit while you're ahead.