Albert Einstein is known to have said “you can’t beat a roulette wheel unless you steal money from it”.
Nonetheless, the many even-sum bets in roulette have prompted many players over the years to attempt to beat the game using one or more variations of a Martingale strategy, where the player doubles the bet after every loss, so that the first win covers all previous losses, and allows a win equal to the original bet.
As the Martingales article shows , this betting strategy is fundamentally flawed in practice and the near universal consequence in the long run is considerable financial loss. Another strategy is the Fibonacci system, where bets are calculated based on the Fibonacci sequence. Regardless of the particular progression, no strategy can statistically overcome the casino advantage.
Although not a money-making strategy, Los Angeles Times editor-in-chief Andrés Martinez described an enjoyable roulette betting method in his Las Vegas book titled “24 / 7 ”. He calls it “dopey experiment”. The idea is to divide its funds intended for roulette into 35 units. This unit is wagered on a given number for 35 consecutive moves. So, if the number comes out during these moves, the player wins their original bankroll and can continue playing with the house money. However, the probability of winning over the 35 moves (with a double zero wheel and 38 squares) is only (1 ∠‘(37/38) 35) * 100% = 60.68%.
There is a misconception that green numbers are the “house numbers” and that by betting on them you “gain the house advantage”. In fact, it is true that the house advantage comes from the existence of these green numbers (a game without green numbers would be statistically fair); however, they have no more and no less chance of getting out than any other number.
Engineers have tried on several occasions to overcome the house advantage by predicting the mechanical performance of the wheel, most notably Joseph Jagger in Monte Carlo in 1873. These plans work by determining the numbers where the ball has the most chance of s ‘Stop. Claude Shannon, a mathematician and computer scientist known for his contributions to information theory, undoubtedly built the first laptop computer that could do so in 1961.
In an attempt to prevent such exploits, casinos monitor the performance of their wheels, and rebalance and realign them regularly to ensure that the results of the spins are as random as possible.
More recently, Thomas Bass, in his book The Eudaemonic Pie 1991 (published as The Newtonian Casino in England) claimed to be able to predict the performance of the wheel in real time. The book describes the exploits of a group of hackers, who called themselves the Eudaemons, who in the late 1970s used computers hidden in their shoes to win at roulette by predicting where the ball would land. .
In the 1930s, some professional players could consistently gain an advantage in roulette by looking for the spurious wheels (easy to spot at the time) and betting against the larger stakes.
In the early 90s, Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo used a computer to model roulette wheel trends at the Casino in Madrid, Spain. By betting on the most probable numbers, with members of his family, he managed to win more than a million euros over several years. A court ruled in his favor when the legality of his strategy was called into question by the casino.
In 2004, it was reported that a group of two Serbs and a Hungarian in London used a scanner hidden in a cell phone connected to a computer to predict the area of the wheel where the bullet was most likely to land. stop. They were arrested and then released without charge as there was no evidence that they had technically interfered with the casino equipment.