A High-tech Wheel of Fortune 371
tcp writes "The BBC is reporting that the London police have detained three people, for allegedly beating the roulette wheel at a London casino. Using a cell phone, a computer and a laser scanner, they were able to predict where the roulette ball would land, winning more than 1.5 million dollars in the process. This technique was not new, and as I recall was the plot of a movie once. The suspects have not been charged yet. The UK has been behind in bringing their gambling laws to deal with new hi-tech threats unlike the US and Las Vegas."
Re:I know... (Score:5, Informative)
Even the most basic of card counts gives you a slight advantage (1/4 to 1/2%), however. You have to be very patient and wait for a good shoe, however.
Chris
Bringing Down the house (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How bizarre! (Score:5, Informative)
If you know the wheel speed and the entry quadrant of the ball then you can calculate the probability of the resulting quadrant.
Since the table is laid out in numerical order, with groupings that do not allow betting on wheel sectors, you have to quickly spread chips across the numbers that this system selects.
This must all be done very quickly. It has been done before without the phoone/camera - but yoy still need a spotter to communicate with the person placing the chips.
Three things that make this a short term proposition - you need a spotter and a gambler and a covert means of communication , you need to have the ammo to bet consistently for a long time, it is easy to detect - start winning consistently at roulette and a lot of eyes will be watching.
Eudaemonic Pie (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Idiots. (Score:5, Informative)
Any analysis looking for individual card counters would turn up nothing interesting going on... and trying to determine that a team was in play posed the problem of identifying team members while there was noise from other casino customers moving through the same tables.
Eudaemonic Pie not Bringing Down the house (Score:5, Informative)
It's about some kids who did this back in the 70s.
The article interviewed one of them.
Roulette isn't random, you have to have a real ball released at a real time and place at a real velocity.
Same for the wheel.
Been done before in 1873 (Score:5, Informative)
Beating the odds on a roulette wheel has been done before and was done most famously by "the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo" Joseph Jaggers [wikipedia.org]. He made $450,000 which in 1873 was a LOT of money.
AFAIK in order to circumvent predicting the numbers by this method, the casinos regularly move the wheels from one table to another. The act of moving the wheel throws the predictors off aswell as changing any possible bias in the wheel.
This newer technique seems better, although it seems that you have to know the coefficient of friction between ball and wheel which I suppose could vary enough between each wheel to throw of your calculations.
Re:how is this possible? (Score:2, Informative)
The first wearable computer was invented to cheat (Score:5, Informative)
Other details (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Tipping the odds ...(have billions of $?) (Score:5, Informative)
This is true, but you need to have amounts of money approaching or exceeding the capitalization of the casino (the ratio of the sizes is important). IIRC, big casinos are usually capitalized at over $10 billion to avoid the problem of losing streaks. With a only a slight advantage and a modest starting stake, too many random walks of bets end in gambler's ruin. And if you pick a tiny casino, then the most you can win is modest. (And if you pick any casino, they will throw you out if you win too much.)
Re:Physics can solve anything if it has all the in (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I know... (Score:3, Informative)
I dont think card counting is really an issue anymore as *VERY* few casinos still play with one deck. Most play with 6 - 8 decks at once which lowers the gain from card counting to almost nothing.
Doesn't work. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:read "the eudaemonic pie" by thomas a. bass (Score:4, Informative)
This was done at the only time it could be done, as casinoes eventually caught on to others with "shoe computers". They were taken to a back room and their equipment "confiscated".
You could actually buy shoe computers ready made for this purpose in the early eighties.
Casinoes now (and have had for quite some time) equipment that can detect your shoe computer via the hash it generates. Also there are scramblers that generate an RF field that can cause computers to glitch.
I believe the shoe computer in the book was based on the venerable 6502 microprocessor (at least at first anyway).
Wearable computers are all descended from this.
Re:You can still bet after the ball is released? (Score:2, Informative)
Probably the most common form of player cheating and the easiest to attempt is a method called "past posting". This technique originated at the racetracks some years back.
As soon as a winning horse was evident (well in the lead), the bettor would hurry to the ticket window and place a bet on that horse. Likewise with roulette, when the ball comes in for its final landing, the dealer will look down, for a moment, to see what the winning number is. At that instant, a player with a keen eye and adroit hand can place or move his bet to the winning number. Games run by one dealer are most susceptible to this form of chicanery. The cheat may remove losing bets in part or in whole, place winning bets or switch losers onto the winning number. One example would be a right-handed player standing at the center of the table and betting on "black." Of the even-money wagers, black and red are the only ones that are adjacent to each other. If black comes in then great! He'll relax and wait for his pay off. If "red" comes up, he'll lean over the table and very quickly and precisely tap his bet from black over to red in a fraction of a second. This stratagem requires nerves of steel and a quick, concise maneuver. The dealers and pit are well aware of this technique and are watching for it. The first time you get caught, you might escape by claiming ignorance. You didn't hear the dealer say "No more bets." After that, you're asking for a security escort to a back room!
Source [roulette2002.com]
Re:You can still bet after the ball is released? (Score:3, Informative)
When the ball comes to rest on a number, the croupier places a marker on the chips resting on that number to prevent anyone from placing more chips on the winner.
~Philly
Re:A friend of mine had a job at the casino (Score:4, Informative)
Utter, utter bullshit.
First, there are metal studs on the wheel into which the ball occasionally runs. These pop the ball up a little bit and cause it to run down to the numbers more quickly.
Secondly, the ball is launched before betting begins. Unless the mark always bets on the same numbers, how is the dealer supposed to know on what number to put the ball?
A casino has nearly guaranteed profit, and lots of it, from a perfectly honest wheel. Every bet available has a house edge of 5.26%. Why would you cheat the guy who is "winning REAL big" when you can chip away at his winnings gradually perfectly legally?
Finally, the last place a casino would put such a person is anywhere near a roulette wheel. Such a person could have a confederate making bets on pre-selected numbers in a completely undetectable way.
Hierarchy of jurisdiction in the United States (Score:2, Informative)
Clarification for the record:
The U.S. Congress oversees regulation of interstate commerce and those aspects of commerce within states that interstate businesses' lobbyists claim interfere with interstate commerce. The states such as Nevada regulate commerce within a state, and states can delegate responsibility for specific areas to the individual counties or cities within a state. Thus, casinos in Las Vegas have to follow three layers of law: federal law, Nevada law, and Vegas law.
Re:Why were they detained ? (Score:1, Informative)
Moreover, they have problems even with you using nothing but your own brain to improve your odds (indeed, they don't care to have you improve your odds at all). Perhaps you've heard of their distaste for 'card counting'?
It can, theoretically, get you only the tiniest of an advantage vs. the house. Assuming you don't screw up in all that time playing you'd have to do to get anywhere (which is by no means a small task). And they still don't like or allow it...
The Honeymoon Machine (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, that movie is actually one of my favorite classical comedies. It's called The Hoenymoon Machine [go.com] starring Steve McQueen. The movie tells the story of three navy men who develop a scheme to win at the roulette tables in a Venice casino. At first, their plan goes off without a hitch until Navy Admiral Fitch gets involved and suspects an invasion. It only complicates things that McQueen is dating the Admiral's daughter. Ofcourse, it's a 60s romantical comedy, so in the end everything goes fine and no know gets hurt or jailed or anything.
The Navy officers in the movie actually use a Radar scaner, and a phone to perdict how to win in the roulette. Considering that these guys that are being busted in the UK also more or less used the same technology, I wonder if they actualy got the idea from this movie.
Re:$1.5*10^6? (Score:1, Informative)
Especially on the suckers game of roulette. To win big, you either have to spend a very long time and be very lucky, or bet against 35:1 odds and be incredibly lucky.
This page sums it up nicely [wizardofodds.com].
Re: Physics can solve anything if it has all th... (Score:3, Informative)
QM does indeed throw in a level of uncertainty. No-one's quite sure what effect that uncertainty has on the large-scale world; it seems that quantum effects generally get lost when summing over the large numbers of particles we humans deal with. (Unless we do something clever to expose them -- hence lasers, silicon chips, &c.)
But chaos theory is something else. A chaotic system is still perfectly predictable if you know the starting positions and velocities with total accuracy. Instead, chaos theory looks at what happens when you don't know them; it describes how the initial tiny inaccuracies can get larger and larger until they dominate.
So systems like the weather are unpredictable mainly because we can't measure the conditions perfectly, regardless of whether the universe is predictable or not.
Re:Why were they detained ? (Score:2, Informative)
Unless there is a specific law barring using calculating devices... it's probably not illegal. nevada has such specific laws.
As long as you are not interfering with the game in some way, or obtaining information you are not supposed to have (like another player's hidden cards).. you are not cheating.
Casinos in most places can, however, bar anyone they like from playing. If you win consistently, you will be gone.
Re:Card Counting is mostly Bunk (Score:5, Informative)
They assume a random distribution of the cards at shuffle. This is so far from the truth it is unreal. Each casino has a different way to shuffle the shoe. It does redistribute the cards, but it is not at all random. Since casino has its own shuffle any strategy will be casino-specific. The distribution of high and low cards gets slowly shifted at each shuffle. At the beginning of the day every deck is in a pre-set order. Each shuffle modifies that order in a predictable way. If you have a card counting strategy, it would be best to include, as part of your strategy, the number of times a shoe has been shuffled. When they break open new decks of cards, the shuffle count starts anew.
First off: shuffle tracking and card counting are two separate matters. Shuffle tracking identifies high and low card slugs, by counting the show, and then tracks those slugs through the shuffle in order to take advantage of them. Card counting is a mathematical system to keep track of how many high/low/neutral cards have come out of the shoe (depending on the system). Then, using this running count and the remainder of cards left in the shoe a card counter can determine the advantage at that moment, wheter for the player or house, and adjust his betting strategy. When a dealer shuffle and a new shoe begins, all of the cards have been put back in, and the count starts again. It doesn't matter how many times, or what way this deck has been shuffled.
Any experienced dealer will tell you that a shoe has a "flow" to it. The shoe will either be rewarding the house or the players. When the dealer shuffles the cards, they can either shuffle in a way that generally preserves the flow or shuffle in a way that generally reverses the flow. This does not work 100% of the time, but it does work.
Really, and what is exactly this flow? A slug of high cards, or is it just a bunch of good Karma on the cards? How exactly does this dealer ex-wife of yours shuffle cards in order to maintain "the flow". I, and many other gaming professionals, would be very interested to learn more about maintaining "the flow" of a shoe during a blackjack shuffle.
The dealer cannot target a particular player, but they can target the table as a whole.
Again, I would really like to learn this trick. I have yet so any demonstatable techniques for a dealer to target a table so that they all lose. Does she summon the goddess Rita who will smite all these nasty players, or does she just send some bad Karma their way?
Sorry if I am so sarcastic, but these are just ridiculous old wives tales, akin to if she floats, shes a witch!!!
Re:Las Vegas (Score:5, Informative)
BBC News last year [bbc.co.uk], Australian last week [news.com.au]. I sent the story in, I thought they would be too prudish to publish. I was right.
Under UK law it is considered prostitution but prostitution is not and never has been illegal in the UK. Soliciting an act of prostitution is illegal however. It is far from clear that this was technically soliciting in the meaning of the act.
Prostitution and internet soliciting have actually been widely tollerated by the police in the UK for about ten years. The police would rather be in the business of regulating brothels than dealling with street walkers.
There is another police angle that I have a personal connection with. I used to work in a computer shop at the weekends. It was not in a very good location and it closed down sometime after I left. After a while the shop became a 'massage parlor'. This operated without complaints for a year until a girl was murdered by one of the clients. As the law stood (still stands in fact) a single girl working on her own is not a brothel, but two are. As a result the city council and the local police decided to tell the local establishements that from now on they would not enforce the brothel-keeping law. They also tolerate Web sites which give little doubt as to their true purpose. Oh and the shop is now a very expensive financial services advice place catering to 'high net worth' individuals.
The other reason that the virginity auction is unlikely to be prosecuted is that the event was a staged protest at the cost of school fees. The government does not want this to become a saga, particularly as they have proposed complete legalization.
Re:My theory of roulette (Score:3, Informative)
you need about 100$
Wouldn't you need about $775 dollars to do this?
At any rate, someone else has already pointed out you have about a 1 in 24 chance of losing all $775 and a 23 in 24 chance of gaining $25.
If you repeat the game four times in a row (to win $100), you'll increase your chances of losing $775 to about 15.4%, or around 3 in 20.
So, If you walk into a casino with $775 twenty times, be prepared to extract about $1,800 from the casinos in twenty little chunks, but for the casinos to extract $2,225 from you in three big chunks.
Don't worry about it too much, though. If you take a friend to twenty hollywood movies, you'll end up spending about the same. And, unless it's a really good movie, you probably won't enjoy it as much.
Norm Packard (Score:2, Informative)
The book The Eudaemonic Pie [tinyurl.com] is about the roulette team,
and the book The Predictors [tinyurl.com] covers Prediction Company's exploits.