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A Gambler Who Beat Roulette

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Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette

#121

Post by Terretta »

bradreaves2 wrote: post #5
throwaway81523 wrote: post #2

Article 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…

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…

Yes, the article goes into that with photos and everything.

Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette

#122

Post by wruza »

Waterluvian wrote: post #96
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…

This reminds me of the cheating scandal in chess. They don’t actually have any proof of cheating beyond it being statistically near-impossible for Niemann to play such “perfect” games.

The report also contains lots of information on sudden skill jumps and other abnormalities in his logged chess history. It’s not a proof either, but at this level they make sure their decision is not based on a single set of coincidences.

Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette

#123

Post by mjklin »

javajosh wrote: post #16
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…

The pillars of society are based on the ordinary. When something extraordinary happens, it shakes those pillars and there will be a reaction whether or not it is just. And yes, casino operators are known for a level of self-restraint, basic decency and fairness roughly equivalent to pawn brokers and payday loan operators. Business is predatory when satisfying "customer demand" damages the person, you end up doing bus…

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices” - Adam Smith

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracies_against_the_laity

Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette

#124

Post by late2part »

toast0 wrote: post #93
jacquesm wrote: post #22

Earlier 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?

> Have you ever seen a wealthy person play the lottery? I am one. Although, I only enter once per drawing, and only when the pot is large enough that I can pretend it's +EV. There's a lot of games where I can't even pretend it's even close to reasonable odds, and I don't get much entertainment, so I'll leave those alone. I do think casinos tend to be regulated to pay back a way higher % than lotteries though.

I don't think this EV means what you think it means :)

Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette

#125

Post by toast0 »

late2part wrote: post #124
toast0 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you ever seen a wealthy person play the lottery? I am one. Although, I only enter once per drawing, and only when the pot is large enough that I can pretend it's +EV. There's a lot of games where I can't even pretend it's even close to reasonable odds, and I don't get much entertainment, so I'll leave those alone. I do think casinos tend to be regulated to pay back a way higher % than lotteries though.

I don't think this EV means what you think it means :)

Look, when the lump sum jackpot is greater than cost to play * number of possible selections, and I assume that only I will win, then it's a good move to play. The trick is not looking at the financially nonsense sum of payments advertised total. Anyone who was taken business finance knows you can't add a dollar today with a dollar in a year; they're not the same unit; but it makes a better advertised number, so there you go.

Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette

#126

Post by vikingerik »

joshyeetbox wrote: post #89
reducesuffering wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> exception of maybe blackjack where the odds can theoretically be equal Better than equal. Most Blackjack is -0.6% EV playing basic strategy, but with counting, each true count is an extra ~0.5% of EV, leading to big betting on high count hands with EV of 1-3%. Of course, that's why casinos kick out counters. They're literally "too good" at the game, and they don't want that.

I thought casinsos started using multiple decks (like 6) and auto shuffled between games now so that counting was pretty much impossible?

Counting works fine with 6 decks. And they don't shuffle after each hand - that would slow down the game so that not as many hands will get played.

Counting works but the way to profit from it is easily detected. You have to bet big when the count is favorable, and a casino will see that and stop you.

The MIT Blackjack Team beat this, with the strategy to have one player at the table who would bet small while counting cards, incurring the expected slight losses to the house edge, and signal a teammate to jump in and bet big (like $5k per hand) when the count was favorable. Casinos now know to stop this - if you walk up to a table and want to bet big, they will require you to wait for the next reshuffle (or just reshuffle immediately.)

Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette

#127

Post by vikingerik »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #45
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…

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.

You make small bets in a scheme like this to avoid the possibility of enough bad results wiping you out to zero so you have no capital to start again. Suppose you have $100 and can flip a coin to lose $1 on heads or win $2 on tails. The highest expected value per flip is to bet all $100. But you shouldn't do that since you have a 50-50 chance to go to zero and be unable to continue. You should bet something like 1/8 of your bankroll each time so you can survive a streak of bad luck.

I also wouldn't trust that "13 in a row" reporting from something like this. That's likely exaggerated or misreported or misremembered from an unreliable witness for the sake of the splashy story.

Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette

#129

Post by hilbert42 »

55555 wrote: post #119
hilbert42 wrote: post #111

Brilliant at roulette they may be but their strategy seems shit. Why on earth did they make themselves so obvious? Softly, softley catchy monkey. Win less over a much longer time. I really am at a loss as to why they acted so. They were on a good thing, and with care they could have kept at it for years.

In the article it is clear that he's been doing this for more than a decade. I think the main protagonist has probably profited tens of millions of dollars in direct winnings.

OK, if it was show-off time that's fine and makes sense. Still, if I'd had such fortune and skill I'd prefer to fade away quietly. :-)

Re: A Gambler Who Beat Roulette

#130

Post by PeterStuer »

I found some roulette operators are so routined from the number of times they have spun the wheel and lauched the ball over the years that the movement of grabbing the ball, turning back and swinging the wheel, and launching the ball has become so engrained as to actually shift the odds.

It is not that you can predict the next number from the previous, but the next quadrant on the wheel given the previois outcome is not completely random.

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