The article mentioned the book The Eudaemonic Pie by Thomas Bass. This was recommended to me back in the late 80s by my favorite professor in undergrad. It is quite good, a rare book that I go back and read every year or two.
A Gambler Who Beat Roulette
51–60 of 142 posts
Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
It wasn’t that they won; the article explains that plenty of people walk out with designer bags full of money. It’s that these folks won in a statistically hugely unlikely way, and that alone is pretty damning evidence that something is off. It’s usually just a matter of finding the smoking gun. Although it’s unpleasant that the casino and police assumed it was cheating and not a defect in the game itself (in what tu…
> It wasn’t that they won; Of course it was! If they had lost using the same method there would have been no issue. > It’s that these folks won in a statistically hugely unlikely way, and that alone is pretty damning evidence that something is off. That's the casino's problem though, not law enforcement. Statistically unlikely equates 'we haven't seen this before' and that should not be enough reason to arrest people…
This isn’t subjective.
If I gamble once, and only once, with a lot of money at very high odds, I might get very lucky and win a fortune.
But despite small odds of a massive pay out, the odds would have been very low, but not infinitesimal.
Whereas, if I consistently win much more than I lose over many bets, across seversl visits, and a group of people can do this, the odds of that happening rapidly become virtually zero.
Or in mathematical or scientific terms, confidence that pure chance is being broken far, far, far exceeds a 6-sigma threshold. It’s proven.
But legal proofs, for making judicial decisions of guilt or culpability, usually require an explanation of how it was done.
Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
It wasn’t that they won; the article explains that plenty of people walk out with designer bags full of money. It’s that these folks won in a statistically hugely unlikely way, and that alone is pretty damning evidence that something is off. It’s usually just a matter of finding the smoking gun. Although it’s unpleasant that the casino and police assumed it was cheating and not a defect in the game itself (in what tu…
> It wasn’t that they won; Of course it was! If they had lost using the same method there would have been no issue. > It’s that these folks won in a statistically hugely unlikely way, and that alone is pretty damning evidence that something is off. That's the casino's problem though, not law enforcement. Statistically unlikely equates 'we haven't seen this before' and that should not be enough reason to arrest people…
> That's the casino's problem though, not law enforcement.
In most jurisdictions where gambling is legal, it is carefully regulated and those regulations include not cheating.
Which does make it a law enforcement issue.
In places where cheating is not a law enforcement issue, it is a mafia-enforcement issue, which is even worse.
Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette
#54>Tosa, Marjanovic and Pilisi returned to the Ritz at 10 that night, as promised. This time they were led to a private room where a squad from the London Metropolitan Police was waiting. An officer politely informed them they were under arrest on suspicion of “deception” and led them away to be interviewed at a nearby police station. Once the gamblers were out of earshot, Wootten urged the cops to check their shoes an…
The article says they generally bet "neighbors" bets which cover 5 out of 37 numbers. It also says they had win streaks of as many as 13 in a row. The odds of that happening randomly are (5/37)^13, or 5 in 1 trillion. Casino security was certainly correct that this was not normal play. I don't know why they made so many small bets. They should have come in, made like 3 huge bets, and walked out.
I think the article actually says something slightly different -- which changes the math a lot.
Yes, they placed these "neighbors" bets, but it sounds as if they had several of them in motion on each spin. If they're covering an average of three clusters per spin, our random odds become (15/37)^13, which is approximately 1:125,000. Still plenty of grounds for suspicion, but if the casino is open for action all year and hosting 1000 or more roulette betting episodes a night (i.e. 13 spins/player), something this improbable SHOULD happen several times a year.
Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette
#55if these are the people i think they are, they practiced a ton to train themselves to be able to identify the underlying physical aspects, in effect memorizing how to do everything the computer would nominally do. if you know wheel rpm plus an estimate of the speed the croupier throws the ball, you can get a pretty good physics sim of where the ball lands.
There's a similar urban legend about craps. That with enough practice, you can get good enough at throwing the dice at the exact right place to get, again, not a visible advantage, but a just ever so slightly higher statistical advantage. Sounds impossible, but looking at the level of skill a world class athlete has encourages me to believe in this urban legend.
There are trick shot with dices that will get you what you want. I have seen retired cheaters (real ones, not magicians pretending to be ones) use them and consistently get the number they want (requirement to bounce on surfaces make things harder but not impossible).
Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette
#56Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
I oppose efforts to legalize gambling not because I dislike gambling but I oppose the theft that we call legalized gambling.
Interesting fact: As far as I am aware, it’s illegal to gamble at the casino in Monte Carlo unless you are a foreigner (I.e. it is not legal for citizens of Monaco to gamble there). Probably because the country isn’t actually bringing in any new money if locals gamble. There really is no reason to legalize gambling casinos. It is just an inefficient way of moving money around. It doesn’t actually create new value for…
> Probably because the country isn’t actually bringing in any new money if locals gamble.
That's almost certainly not the reason. They want the revenue but not the societal ills from gamblers.
Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette
#58>Tosa, Marjanovic and Pilisi returned to the Ritz at 10 that night, as promised. This time they were led to a private room where a squad from the London Metropolitan Police was waiting. An officer politely informed them they were under arrest on suspicion of “deception” and led them away to be interviewed at a nearby police station. Once the gamblers were out of earshot, Wootten urged the cops to check their shoes an…
That jumped out at me too. You could lose 500K in a casino and nobody would bat an eye but win 500K and suddenly the police is involved and the casino refuses to pay out. Personally I think if they can't prove that you are cheating that you should be allowed to continue to play as long as you feel like and the casino stays afloat. What's good for the goose should be good for the gander. The police automatically sidin…
> That jumped out at me too. You could lose 500K in a casino and nobody would bat an eye but win 500K and suddenly the police is involved and the casino refuses to pay out.
You have to win small. As another poster put it below, the role of the player is to lose.
Anecdotally, I used to travel to a coastal city 650km away every two weeks for around 5 years. My Saturday afternoons during this time were usually free and I was bored. For two months I spent those Saturday afternoons (til around midnight) sitting in the casino noting the frequency of each pie slice of the wheel on as many different roulette tables that I could simultaneously view (between 6 and 8 at a time).
Divide the wheel into 5 pie slices (one will be a different size from the rest) and make 5 columns on a small page - one for each pie slice. Each time that slice "wins" (no matter what the number is) simply make a checkmark in that column. Over time this forms a histogram. If any one of those columns is an outlier, then that wheel is biased.
I found one biased wheel (casino had maybe 14 tables in total?), which remained unfixed and remained biased for the next 13 months or so, and I repeatedly just placed small bets on all numbers in that slice that was biased.
I made a respectable amount of money (about 40k ZAR) over 13 months.
I have no illusions that had I been placing maximum bets on each spin, I'd have been escorted out of the casino after the first visit.
Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette
#59Article starts out lame but then gets very good. Worth reading all the way through. In the 1980s some nerds figured out how to use hidden computers to beat roulette, by placing bets after the ball is already spinning and the computer can time its movement to predict (nowhere near perfectly, but well enough to have a statistical edge over the house) where it will land. There is a fantastic book about the adventure, ca…
+1 the book is entertaining (esp for engineers). Also was released under the title "The Newtonian Casino".
Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
The same theft is present in the lotteries and those are more often than not national affairs with the common pot as the beneficiary. Have you ever seen a wealthy person play the lottery?
Lotteries don't even have the semblance of legitimacy that allowing church bingo parlors does; they're exclusively an optional tax on the poorest members of society. Then again, so many of our sin taxes are.
From "Who is buying Powerball and Mega Millions tickets?" [1]
> The survey showed the most frequent lottery players earn between $36,000 and $89,999. About 56% of that group bought tickets in the last year. Fewer of those making under $36,000 bought tickets, only 40%. About 53% who make above $90,000 bought a ticket.
[1] https://money.cnn.com/2018/01/06/news/powerball-mega-million...