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A Gambler Who Beat Roulette

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Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette

#71

Post by rdtsc »

MrMember wrote: post #10

>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…

Just think of the casino as the mafia who also own or are friends with the law enforcement. Many really do have that connection. Then it makes sense. It’s pointless to seek fairness or point out unfairness. It’s naive to assume there is any.

Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette

#72

Post by deeel »

ackbar03 wrote: post #19
bradreaves2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claude Shannon[1] claims he did something similar in the early 60's, proving it worked in Vegas. He and his collaborator Ed Thorpe quit playing well before the legitimate businessmen who ran the casinos could realize they were winning too much and have a friendly chat with them about it. For more, see: https://boingboing.net/2017/07/27/wearable-computing.html [1] If the name doesn't ring a bell, he discovered that Bo…

The story was about Claude Shannon. And Ed Thorpe was the father of modern day hedge funds or something

There is a good interview with Thorp around his quantitive strategy he developed after beating Las Vegas: https://thunderclapresearch.com/a-conversaation-with-ed-thor...

Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette

#73

Post by majormajor »

Nevermark wrote: post #52
jacquesm wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 z…

Six standard deviations is 1 in 2 billion per Wikipedia here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68%E2%80%9395%E2%80%9399.7_rul....

Ok that's pretty crazy, let's lower it a notch, throw out the sigmas, just talk about 1-in-hundreds-of-millions odds.

The article doesn't actually list the odds of their winning streak, but I'd wager a casino is gonna be suspicious well before the "one in a hundred million" level of streak.

Powerball can get there, e.g. 1-in-292M per here https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/08/powerball-dr...

So how many bets across how many visits does it actually take for it to be "proven"? Like, people can win powerball, someone may have had that 1-in-300-million casino run too. If they're independent events, you expect it to happen randomly eventually! Some poor lucky bastard will probably face a lot of questions one day.

I dunno, I guess if you want to win a fortune gambling, do it all in one bet, since getting lucky all at once vs getting less-lucky-but-for-a-longer-time is gonna attract a lot of scrutiny. ;)

(I kinda suspect, though, that a lot of people who were down the path of that 1-in-300M luck playing roulette would stop while they're ahead at some point. If you hit on 00 in roulette three times in a row do you go for a fourth?)

Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette

#74

Post by QIYGT »

MrMember wrote: post #10

>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…

Indeed the police and courts exist mostly to help rich people keep their money.

Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette

#75

Post by QIYGT »

pmoriarty wrote: post #43
jfk13 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To encourage more betting, in the excitement of the moment when the wheel is spinning one way, the ball is circling the other way, and the outcome is mere seconds away... Slow things down, require all bets to be placed before the croupier spins the wheel and throws the ball, and you'll have taken away some of the mystique and the adrenaline of betting on this bouncing, glittering thing that's happening right now in f…

How can customers be assured the casino isn't using a magnet or some other cheating device?

Why would the casino need that, when they can have anybody who wins arrested?

Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette

#76

Post by dfxm12 »

eloisant wrote: post #18
ryandrake wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Casinos are pretty pathetic. They claim to run an honest game, and if you lose, they are totally fine with keeping your money. But, if you consistently win, and it looks even slightly statistically improbable, the casino turns into a crybaby health insurance adjuster, going over the rules/law with a magnifying glass to find something, anything that lets them avoid payment. At worst, the ones run by less savory organi…

More concerning is that the police and judges will follow on the casino's requests.

Siding with capital is par for the course for LE and courts though.

Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette

#77

Post by llamataboot »

In a previous life as an advantage gambler (there are always edges somewhere, but you better know you actually have one and know why you know and your risk of ruin etc), I would say that "how can we keep exploiting this below the radar" is as common of a discussion topic as "what is there to exploit"

Card counting is a perfect example - you absolutely can count cards in the right type of blackjack, and you absolutely can get an edge and casinos absolutely know this and can ban you no questions asked if you are tagged as an advantage gambler.

Always rubs me a bit the wrong way actually, given that by its very nature the casino is advantage gambling 99% of the time whether you know it or not...

Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette

#78

Post by pmoriarty »

vuln wrote: post #49
pmoriarty wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can customers be assured the casino isn't using a magnet or some other cheating device?

Gambling regulations and board certify / audit these machines / tables, etc?

How can the consumer have confidence in any of those?

Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette

#79

Post by vuln »

pmoriarty wrote: post #78
vuln wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gambling regulations and board certify / audit these machines / tables, etc?

How can the consumer have confidence in any of those?

How do consumers have any confidence in the FAA, EPA, FDA, or any other entity that performs checks and balances?

Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette

#80

Post by elihu »

jacquesm wrote: post #21
MrMember wrote: post #10

>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…

> 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.

I think it should be within the casinos rights to decline to continue to take bets when something is happening that they don't understand and is far outside of their expectations of statistical probability.

To quote Buster Scruggs: "Can't no one compel another man to engage in recreation."

I do think they should be obligated to honor the bets they actually made, though.

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