A High-tech Wheel of Fortune

Las Vegas by ungulation · 2004-03-27 10:48 · Score: 3, Funny

unlike the US and Las Vegas ahhh yes... the country of Las Vegas

Re:Las Vegas by boarder8925 · 2004-03-27 11:20 · Score: 3, Funny

the country of Las Vegas
It was on the Internet, so, then it must be true!

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Keep your eyes to the sky.
Re:Las Vegas by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-27 13:55 · Score: 3, Funny

i didn't expect the spanish inquisition....
Re:Las Vegas by Zeinfeld · 2004-03-27 15:57 · Score: 4, Informative

URL? Why wasn't it considered prostitution?
BBC News last year, Australian last week. 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.

--
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/

Why were they detained ? by Timesprout · 2004-03-27 10:48 · Score: 4, Insightful

I cant see the problem here. Tough on the Casino if there is a problem with their roulette wheel

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Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe

Re:Why were they detained ? by lukewarmfusion · 2004-03-27 10:53 · Score: 4, Interesting

The problem wasn't with their wheel - it was the fact that the players brought in equipment and used it to cheat.

Some other obvious cheating examples:
-Bringing in cameras and linking them so a player can see his opponent's cards.
-Using a device to let you predict/influence the roll of the dice.
-Hacking a slot machine to produce winning pulls

The point? It's not a flaw with the casino or their equipment - it's a bunch of jackasses trying to cheat.
Re:Why were they detained ? by kwandar · 2004-03-27 11:11 · Score: 5, Insightful

But, they didn't cheat. The croupier turned the wheel and released the ball. All they did was "predict", albiet with the help of some equipment. Isn't that what gambling is about? Predicting?

As the article states, the casino can avoid prediction, by simply spinning the wheel faster.
Re:Why were they detained ? by mr_tenor · 2004-03-27 11:12 · Score: 5, Insightful

I have mod points, but I feel the need to reply here, though it sounds like flamebait.

The 3 other "obvious" emaples you cite are cheating - they circumvent the rules of the guessing competition. Why do you label the actions mentioned in the story as cheating? No rules have been circumvented. All that is being done is making use of the information which is available to everyone in a clever way.

A similar thing happens with card counting in blackjack - all you do is play the game in a smart way instead of blindly guessing. However, the casinos don't want people to do anything other than blindly guess because it means the odds can be tipped in their favour instead of in favour of the house.
Re:Why were they detained ? by jrockway · 2004-03-27 11:29 · Score: 3, Interesting

I don't want my tax dollars to be spent prosecuting "cheaters". I don't give a flying fuck if someone rips off those cheats (the casinos). The casinos can use their paid security guards ("loss prevention engineers") to kick/ban cheaters. That's fine with me. They can spend THEIR money so they can make money. They CANNOT spend _my_ money so that they may be profitable. How could anyone disagree!?

And if a cheater ends up in a dumpster, that's murder. Whomever did that should be executed. I don't mind paying for that.

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My other car is first.
Re:Why were they detained ? by WalksOnDirt · 2004-03-27 11:45 · Score: 3, Insightful

Casinos love card counters, most of them that is.

Counting cards is hard, and a lot harder when you are actually in the casino than when you are practicing at home.

Most card counters are easily spotted, but only the few who are able to win get banned.

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a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
Re:Why were they detained ? by mlippert · 2004-03-27 11:48 · Score: 3, Insightful
Actually I don't even think all of those other methods of cheating are actually cheating.
Some other obvious cheating examples:
- Bringing in cameras and linking them so a player can see his opponent's cards.
- Using a device to let you predict/influence the roll of the dice.
- Hacking a slot machine to produce winning pulls
Cheating involves breaking the rules of the game.

The 1st example is cheating because you the rules specifically forbid you from circumventing your opponents ability to prevent you from seeing his cards.

The 2nd example is both cheating and not cheating. A device that influences the roll of the dice is cheating, a device that helps you predict the roll of the dice is not.

The 3rd example is also clearly cheating because hacking a slot machine is clearly changing the rules of the game. However having a device that could let you know if a slot machine was close to paying off would not be cheating.

Mike
Re:Why were they detained ? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-27 12:00 · Score: 5, Interesting

As a roulette dealer myself, I can assure you that this is a conceivable position but not an agreeable one. Spinning the wheel faster does cause the frets to have a greater influence on the ball, but its still statistically going to stick to that section.

As well, as the article notes, PLAYERS don't like it! There are only so many rule changes you can make in the interest of cheat reductions before the legitimate players get fed up and leave. (One of these is disallowing blackjack players to increase the number of hands they play mid-shoe). As an aside, in the Province of Alberta, casino dealers are to stop betting two ball revolutions BEFORE THE DROP, not after the spin commences. As in many gambling areas, the regulations must be changed: the casino can't just create rules (even sensible ones) out of the blue.

For this reason, speeding up the wheel and reducing bet times are not good ideas. It will prevent cheating, because the legitimate players will stop playing and the game will be shut down!

The best way to prevent wheel tracking I've found is just to constantly (every spin) change the speed of the wheel and the ball. I like to let the wheel slow and then push it with the ball just before I spin. This would require these cheats to constantly re-compute, increasing the likelihood of detection.
Re:Why were they detained ? by John+Hasler · 2004-03-27 12:36 · Score: 3, Insightful

Even if it was cheating, so what? Why should they be arrested? It's the casino's problem to detect cheaters and throw them out (and perhaps sue them for damages). It's a private matter between the casinos and their customers. If the casinos can't handle it, tough shit.

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Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Re:Why were they detained ? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-27 13:03 · Score: 5, Interesting

gl4ss wrote:

predicting implies that there would be some way to determine the outcome

That's the point really. There is a way to predict the outcome. Like a lot of games, it is not a game of pure skill, it has an element of chance and an element of skill in the form of predicting where the ball will land. Just like blackjack is a game of chance and skill. The skill comes in when you try to predict what cards are going to be dealt based on statistics and your knowledge of what cards have been dealt so far. Of course, the casinos consider people who are too good at "counting cards" to be cheaters as well.

The problem here is that the argument that you cannot use technological devices to help you in gambling is a slippery slope argument. I've never heard of a casino banning anyone for glasses or contacts, even if they help people see better and therefore enhance their natural gambling skills. What about future visual aids. Lets say you have a low resolution artificial retina for blind which cannot see as well or in the same way as a normal retina and makes up for it by, for example, using a computer to track motion and plotting courses for objects in Heads Up Display? Or how about if it allows the user to rewind their vision to specific bookmarks, allowing them to supplement their memory (helpful in remember what cards have already been dealt, for example). Are the disabled going to be banned from future casinos?

All this is really beyond the point in my opinion. Random redistribution of wealth at casions is stupid. Redistribution of wealth based on exceptional skill at gambling is considered cheating by the casinos. The government, when they allow private gambling to interfere on their own gambling monopoly, seem to agree with the casinos in these matters. So, the end result is that, on the whole, the only people who actually win at casinos are the odd successful gambler, the cheaters who do not get caught, and the casinos themselves. In other words, casinos are dumb. I guess I hold the view that people should be allowed to gamble if they want to, but I think they are stupid to do so.
Re:Why were they detained ? by mindstrm · 2004-03-27 14:05 · Score: 3, Insightful

No, it's not cheating.

They are using public information available to everyone. That is not cheating.

They are in no way influencing the outcome for everyone else.

Using hidden cameras to view other player's poker hands is cheating.. the game is based on the fact that you can't see other players cards.

Unethical? Casinos are unethical in the first place, many would argue.

Counting cards at blackjack is not cheating. Neither is using the same system with a computer instead of your brain... however, the latter is illegal in Nevada. It is still not, however, cheating.

It may very well be that the law where these guys pulled this stunt has nothing in it that bars observing the game or computer assistance. So long as they in no way tampered with the outcome of the game, it's not cheating.
Re:Why were they detained ? by the.pornlord · 2004-03-27 14:37 · Score: 4, Insightful

Counting cards is quite possible with multiple decks. Using a basic plus/minus system you can gain quite an advantage over a 6 or 8 deck shoe.
For a casino that uses and 8 deck shoe (+.58% H/A) and allows doubles after splitting (-.14% H/A) you are playing a game with a .44% house advantage. If you play perfect basic strategy with no deviations you reduce the house advantage to 0.
While playing this shoe, if you use the high/low count system, and have a true count of +2 you are actually playing at a .5% PLAYERS advantage. While .5% doesn't sound lilke much, this is slightly more of an advantage than the house usually has. If you are using a 5 unit bet spread you can actually beat the house.
There are thousands of books on counting out there, I suggest that you check out a few and see what can really be done.

I know... by lukewarmfusion · 2004-03-27 10:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

Don't gamble.

If you can find a way to improve your chances, it's probably against the rules. The only game I'm aware of that has a better than 50% chance of winning (against the house, that is) is blackjack.

Winning big (and often) on roulette raises eyebrows right away. They could have at least tried to beat a game that wasn't quite so obvious.

Re:I know... by mrscorpio · 2004-03-27 10:51 · Score: 5, Informative

There isn't a better than 50% chance of winning if you don't count cards. If you play absolutely perfect non-card-counting strategy, your chances of winning are 49 1/2%.

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
Re:I know... by LostCluster · 2004-03-27 10:55 · Score: 5, Insightful

A game with a .25% advantage in favor of the player would still require a high number of games be played before the player is assured victory. The game could take a random walk unfavorable to the player, just like some lucky people can win big despite playing blackjack poorly according to book logic just because they happened to hit a random walk in their favor.
Re:I know... by mrscorpio · 2004-03-27 14:09 · Score: 4, Interesting

You don't have to count them all. Just two groups.

Group 1 - cards 5 or less
Group 2 - 10's or face cards

When you've counted a significantly higher number of group 1's than group 2's, increase your bet - more high cards gives the player better odds, and vice versa.

I did this in Vegas with a 2-deck shoe that they cut 22 cards out of at shuffle and won $290 at a $5 table...I would bet $20 on the first hand of a shoe and $10 - $20 on a somewhat favorable to very favorable shoe thereafter, and $5 every other time. I didn't even count the whole deck, just each hand. With about 21 cards per hand at a six-player table, if I got a +5 or better inbalance, I ramped up my bets. And it worked like a charm, I probably won 75% of my big bets and lost 75% of my small bets (give or take), therefore netting me profit in the end.

Chris

Tipping the odds in your favor... by centralizati0n · 2004-03-27 10:49 · Score: 4, Interesting

Remember, once you have a large enough amount of capital, any advantage over 50% is garaunteed to make you money. IIRC, the Wired article on the MIT blackjack card counters said that they had quite a "low" advantage over the casino (one that seems insignificant to a lot of people), but because of the money that was invested, they were able to win over the casino in a big way.

Re:Tipping the odds in your favor... by Sponge+Bath · 2004-03-27 11:36 · Score: 5, Funny

... once you have a large enough amount of capital, any advantage over 50% is garaunteed to make you money.
If you have that much capital, then to hell with the gambling. Go get some hookers!

that's new... by ruebarb · 2004-03-27 10:49 · Score: 5, Interesting

I've seen computerized card counters - but being able to read a roulette wheel, that's something...

some people who would consider themselves professionals do the same thing by eye - make a guesstimate based on when the roulette employee releases the ball - but to do it with computers - well, that's just wrong :)

but if it ain't illegal, it'll be hard to prosecute - it's like counting cards...not illegal, but you'll get your butt booted from the casino pronto -

RB

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ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee

Re:that's new... by LostCluster · 2004-03-27 11:19 · Score: 5, Interesting

It depends from jurisdiction to jurisdiction what casinos are allowed to do with players they don't like, such as card counters...

In Las Vegas, for example, they can simply tell a card counter they're no longer welcome there and force them to leave. In Atlantic City, they cannot, but they are allowed to annoy a card counter out of their casino with tactics such as a shuffle after every hand.

Physics can solve anything if it has all the info by LostCluster · 2004-03-27 10:50 · Score: 5, Interesting

Randomness is really sometimes just a proxy for "too complex to be understood". Afterall, in any form of mixing bin, all of the balls inside do have to obey the laws of physics. If you knew the starting positions and details about all of the activities that are going on in the bin, you could possibly solve for which ball is going to be the one selected.

That's why it's essential that some details of the mixing situation should not be disclosed to the public while betting is still going on. I think what makes most daily blower-bin based lotto games unpredictible is the fact that the exact to-the-nanosecond time at which the bin is opened is being determined by a presenter who is also responsible for talking at the same time. Therefore, they can't possibly have enough control of their hands know what exactly their influence on the outcome is going to do. Since nobody else can really predict down to the fraction of a second what the presenter is going to do, everybody's on a level playing field.

I think the ultimate solution to this roulette wheel issue will be to call a stop to betting before the ball and wheel are put into motion. Therefore, by the time the information needed to determine the result of this spin is available, it will be too late to act upon it.

How bizarre! by Sitnaltax · 2004-03-27 10:50 · Score: 4, Interesting

If the wheel was less than perfectly random, it is the casino that was cheating, not the patrons. So why are they the ones who have been detained?

Re:How bizarre! by evil_roy · 2004-03-27 10:58 · Score: 5, Informative

It's not about the wheel being less than perfect. This sort of problem becomes obvious.

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.

Bringing Down the house by scrimpygamer · 2004-03-27 10:52 · Score: 5, Informative

Anyone ever read the book "Bringing Down the House" by Ben Mezrich? It's an excellent read and follows the theme of this story (people beating the casino / gambling system). I think it's a little bit more sophisticated in that the characters in the book were more involved in social engineering / hacking and weren't reliant on machines to help accomplish their goal. Might be offtopic but I thought people might like to read it. I really enjoyed it :)

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- I never know what to write for these things... -

hungarians by boldi · 2004-03-27 10:53 · Score: 4, Interesting

Actually their said one beutyful girl was from Hungary with two serb guys. They said they used a mobile-shaped laser-scanning device, but they don't know if it is prohibited.

http://index.hu/tech/tudomany/ritz040323/
in hungarian.

Later they said, that this device cannot exist, as such a device would be least a pc large and needs a calibration of some hours and at least NASA technique to make it.

So at last, they said, that there are a number of people who actually can figure out what is the winning number from the spinning of the wheel by her own eye.

The article also mentions, that after all, they don't really need to now the EXACT target of the ball, if they can close out 2 numbers, they can earn an average of 3% per round.

So anyway, it's a weird weird story with SCI-FI elements...

Well you know one thing by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-27 10:54 · Score: 5, Funny

British gambling laws from 1845 are currently in the process of being redrafted to bring them up to date with 21st Century gaming.

I bet it's illegal to duel in the casino & you have to leave your hired help in the coat room.

Idiots. by Coryoth · 2004-03-27 10:55 · Score: 4, Interesting

You don't win big when you've got a good scam like that. It's tempting, but really, you just shouldn't do it, it's a dead give away.

Worst case I ever heard of: A guy who had worked on PNRGs for casinos (yes, way back when such things were deemed good enough) decided to cash in, so he got together with a friend and wrote a quick program to sync in the the PRNG given a reasonable number of inputs. The PRNGs were mostly (and still are sometimes!) used for the keno games. He had his friend up in the hotel room with a laptop, and phoned up the numbers from a few rounds of keno. They got what seemed to be a reasonable sync, so he put a massive amount of cash predicting the next 10 numbers in order (which has stupendous returns (naturally)). Bang, up come all 10 numbers, in order. The police arrested his accomplice in the hotel room about 10 minutes later...

Jedidiah.

--
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts

Re:Idiots. by LostCluster · 2004-03-27 11:01 · Score: 4, Informative

One of the key elements of the MIT Blackjack scheme was that taken as individuals, each member of the team behaved like a typical casino customer. The spotters played a consistant value at the tables they were playing. When they spotted good cards due, instead of increasing their own bets like an individual counter would, they signaled for a "whale player" to come in and make a few big bets, which is what rich people tend to do at a casino as well.

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 by HughsOnFirst · 2004-03-27 11:02 · Score: 5, Informative

The book you want to read is "eudaemonic pie"
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.

A friend of mine had a job at the casino by melted · 2004-03-27 11:13 · Score: 4, Interesting

And guess what, he was the guy who throws the ball. He says that he could throw the ball with such a precision that it would fall within a very small range of numbers from the target and most of the time it would fall onto whatever number he wanted. There are at least a few folks like this in any casino. Floor manager brings them in when someone starts winning REAL big to "reduce the odds".

He said the only way to win on roulette more or less reliably is to play against the guy who has more money than you. If the guy selects some numbers or colors, put your money onto opposite colors and numbers that are far from his numbers if possible. The guy will throw a ball in such a way as to screw the guy who put the most money into the game. :-)

Re:A friend of mine had a job at the casino by chezmarshall · 2004-03-27 12:11 · Score: 4, Informative

And guess what, he was the guy who throws the ball. He says that he could throw the ball with such a precision that it would fall within a very small range of numbers from the target and most of the time it would fall onto whatever number he wanted. There are at least a few folks like this in any casino. Floor manager brings them in when someone starts winning REAL big to "reduce the odds".

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.

Re:Physics can solve anything if it has all the in by FyRE666 · 2004-03-27 11:14 · Score: 5, Insightful

If you knew the starting positions and details about all of the activities that are going on in the bin, you could possibly solve for which ball is going to be the one selected.

Unfortunately though, we live in an analogue World. It's impossible to specify the exact position of anything in relation to anything else ;-) So although you may be able to predict the positions of the balls over a very short space of time, the inaccuracies would mount until your predicted results bore no resemblance to reality...

--
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.

read "the eudaemonic pie" by thomas a. bass by drfireman · 2004-03-27 11:17 · Score: 4, Insightful

Thomas A. Bass wrote a pretty good book on this. I think it's out of print at the moment, but Amazon seems to list it as shipping, so who knows. It's called "The Eudaemonic Pie." It's a far better book than the recent Mezrich book on blackjack. The teams Mezrich describes were basically working some old and well-known techniques that they didn't themselves invent (despite Mezrich's heroic efforts to make them seem like geniuses). The folks described in the Bass book are much more interesting people, doing much more interesting things. The Bass book has good hack content, the Mezrich book has little if any.

As an aside... If you really want to play an advantage game in a casino, try a game where you don't play against the house. Like poker.

Re:read "the eudaemonic pie" by thomas a. bass by eclectro · 2004-03-27 11:32 · Score: 3, Informative

Highly entertaining read. You can find if here

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.

--
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"

Fuck Em by Monkelectric · 2004-03-27 11:18 · Score: 4, Insightful

Does anyone have ANY sympathy for the gambling industry? Living within 100 miles of 8 or so indian casinos in southern california, I have seen first hand that gambling is as destructive as drugs, alcoholism and tobacco.

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Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley

Been done before in 1873 by niittyniemi · 2004-03-27 11:19 · 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. 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.

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The Machine stops.

The first wearable computer was invented to cheat by voodoo1man · 2004-03-27 11:21 · Score: 4, Informative

at roulette, by Edward Thorp and Claude Shannon.

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In the great CONS chain of life, you can either be the CAR or be in the CDR.

Re:Tipping the odds ...(have billions of $?) by G4from128k · 2004-03-27 11:22 · Score: 4, Informative

Remember, once you have a large enough amount of capital, any advantage over 50% is garaunteed to make you money.

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.)

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Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.

Re:Physics can solve anything if it has all the in by mdwh2 · 2004-03-27 11:23 · Score: 3, Informative

But you can't get all the information (uncertainty principle), and in any chaotic system, even small errors in the initial state will blow up exponentially.

It's all about ball control... by jsinnema · 2004-03-27 11:24 · Score: 5, Interesting

Ball Control

Although no casino will admit to its existence and very few dealers will nod in acknowledgement, this method is very powerful and easy to disguise. One cannot deny that a roulette event is heavily influenced by a human dealer. After all, it is the dealer who kicks up the rotor speed and launches the little white ball isn't it? These actions definitely affect where the ball will land. And after years of repeatedly spinning, the dealer develops what athletes call "muscle memory" or a consistent delivery system. I will admit it to you right here, as someone who has dealt the game of roulette, SOME DEALERS CAN CONSCIOUSLY INFLUENCE THE RESULT OF THE GAME. There, I said it! I know that deflectors may knock a ball off its original course or the ball may spatter when it crosses onto the rotor and hits a pocket fret, but even if a skilled dealer could navigate around the heavily bet sectors on the wheel only 10% of the time, the casino's edge would be 100% for those spins! The house's edge would then be [(9) x 5.26% + (1) x 100.00%] all divided by 10. This averages out to a whooping 14.73 % edge! To further add to this dilemma, there is no way to prove that the dealer is trying to cheat you, unless you can read minds! My general observations have led me to believe that "male" roulette dealers are more territorial. If you begin to win steadily at their tables, they feel challenged and may spin against you... that is unless you're a shapely female wearing a low-cut dress. I've also seen first-generation immigrants working as dealers, who are staunchly loyal to their new employers. If the issue of ball control troubles you, you can simply wait for the dealer to spin before placing your bets. You might actually turn this technique in your favor. If you recognize a skillful dealer and can build a rapport with him or her, you may be able to exploit their ability. One way to induce a dealer into hitting your number is to bet a sector or continuous section on the rotor of say, five pockets. Place a toke out for the dealer on the number situated at the sector's center. The dealers seem to appreciate a crack at collecting 35 times their original toke if they exhibit some control. If they miss your center number by one or two pockets, then you still win on the neighbors contained in that sector.

Source

Re:Physics can solve anything if it has all the in by RogerWilco · 2004-03-27 11:29 · Score: 4, Insightful

Your comment is only valid in a linear process. You always have some measuring error, if only the size of an atom. in a linear process this is no big problem as small measuring errors only give a small deviation in the result. In non-linear processes a small variation can have a large difference in the result. This behaviour described by chaos theory mathematics.
The most famous example is the weather, were a butterfly flapping it's wings in the Amazone could theoretically cause a violent storm in Brittain. This mathematician in the first Jurassic parc film also tries to explain it, using drops flowing down from a hand.

I think balls in a bin are a chaotic process.

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RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor

Casino Hacking by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-27 11:29 · Score: 5, Interesting

The greatest hack I ever pulled off involved an online casino. The casino used a Java applet for the gaming - everything from Blackjack to slot machines. Bored on a weeknight, I downloaded the Java applet (JAR file) to my computer and used a java decompiler to restore the original source code. Unfortunately, the code was obfuscated, but what I found next surprises me to this day. The java applet was using the client machine to generate the random numbers used in many of the games, namely the slot machine. I modified the code slightly to increase the chances of winning on the slot machine and then recompiled the code. There was a small problem, however. The code was written so that a response from the client to the server was sent indicating how much was bet, the payout and the winning combination (or hand). Thus, it was possible for them to statistically analyze my gamblings and calculate that I was winning more than I should have been. So instead of winning of the slot machine, I would win at Blackjack by modifying the code to display on screen what the dealer's cards were, and what the next card in the deck was. Thus, it was possible for me to decide on when to hit and when to stand. I will not tell you how much I won but I will tell you that I have never been caught.

I don't think this is right... by evilviper · 2004-03-27 11:38 · Score: 4, Interesting

I don't think it's right for casinos to do this.

You might as well outlaw all ways that people try to give themselves better odds. Those who go to certain slot machines (that have been loosing for a long time) should be illegial, since it is a way people try to improve their odds.

People playing blackjack should be thrown out if they stay at a pre-set number (eg. 17 or 18).

My point is that it should not be illegial to beat the house... But that seems to be the way it is. There is no consistency in the rules of what is and is not acceptible at a casion, EXCEPT that you are doing something wrong if you win.

Counting cards with a computer could be reasonably considered illegial, but how about those that do so without computer assistance?

People should be able to sue a casio that throws them out (when they are winning) without any proof that they are cheating.

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Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant

Laws to protect obsolete business by Sloppy · 2004-03-27 11:39 · Score: 4, Interesting

Will it be illegal for people with "seeing aids" to gamble in a casino?

The problem is that any of this "cheating" is illegal at all. Gambling is based on the premise of lacking information, but technology is making information easier to get.

So what we have here are laws that are designed to protect an obsolete business model from technology. And yet: these laws have nothing to do with protecting anyone from force or fraud.

Wait a minute .. why isn't it fraud?

It's not fraud because the little gambler never asserted that he promises to remain stupid and not make use of information, or to not do anything that will help him. (What's next, are you going to make it illegal to cross your fingers and pray?) It's not like the other consenting partner in the gamble, isn't making use of a shitload of information and technology against him. And it isn't as though the other partner doesn't doesn't already have odds on their side. So the very premise that 'fairness' has somehow been compromised, is laughable.

The fact is: some forms of gambling have been made obsolete, and we're propping them up with legislation. That doesn't smell good, to me. And it sets a really lousy precedent. If gambling can be propped up, then other industries can be, too.

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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.

Information and games of 'skill' by The+Monster · 2004-03-27 11:48 · Score: 4, Interesting

the casino can avoid prediction, by simply spinning the wheel faster

Here's the problem in a nutshell:

The whole calculation would need to have been completed in just a few seconds, as the dealer cuts off betting after the ball has rolled three times around the wheel.

If the casino would change this rule ever so slightly, and cut off betting before the ball is released, there would be no way anyone could predict where the ball would go. Casinos don't want to do this, however, because it slows down the action, reducing the rate at which money can be extracted from the customers, and quite possibly the interest in the game. Perhaps cutting off at two revolutions would be a good compromise?

Historical quirk: I live in Kansas City, KS. Across the state line in MO there are riverboat casinos that were originally approved under the language that mentioned 'games of skill'. At that time, video draw poker was legal, because of the skill involved in deciding which cards to hold, and which to discard, but not the run-of-the-mill slots (which have since been allowed by changes in the law). At that time, this method of winning at roulette, or card counting at the blackjack table, could not have been opposed by the casinos because they had to maintain the legal theory that skill was involved in these games. The boats in MO quickly adopted rules for the number of decks in the shoe, how far into it a reshuffle is done, and the delta between minimum and maximum bets, so as to make counting irrelevant. I believe those rules remain in effect today...

...because it's easier to just make the method of 'cheating' ineffective than to try to figure out who's doing it.

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[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.

In other news... by bartwol · 2004-03-27 11:53 · Score: 5, Funny

"This technique was not new, and as I recall was the plot of a movie once."

In other news, a team of three people were instantaneously transported from Teaneck, New Jersey to Istanbul, Turkey. Most onlookers were unimpressed, having seen this technology in use for years on Star Trek.

Sheesh.

<bart

A Patch For This Exploit by John+Hasler · 2004-03-27 12:07 · Score: 4, Interesting

Give the croupier a dozen or so balls of varying density and elasticity but identical appearance. Have him select one at random for each game.

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Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.

You can hack with cable TV games too... by SmackCrackandPot · 2004-03-27 12:17 · Score: 3, Interesting

You can also hack many of those games that are available on satellite/cable networks. In those games where the entire game state is displayed on the screen at the same time, it's possible to grab a frame off the screen, analyze it (convert the screen image into a logical representation), run it through an emulator and use a small amount of AI to find the optimum solution. At the very least, you avoid having to fork out money every time you want to play the game. The real benefit is when there is a prize. Then you only need to play the game twice (first time to get the levels, second time to enter the optimum solution) to get a return for your money.

Boohooooo! by Skwirl · 2004-03-27 12:25 · Score: 3, Funny

It's no longer equal footing, and the casino is going to be ripped off.

Oh, please, won't someone think of the casinos!?!

Re:Card Counting is mostly Bunk by H310iSe · 2004-03-27 12:42 · Score: 4, Interesting

Anyone who talks about gambling and 'flows' raises my warning bells - sensing the flow, or finding patterns, in what is essentially a chaotic system is part of what ppl like about gambling, and a strident belief in one's flow sensing abilities is part of the reason why ppl loose so much money.

Still, interesting story... back jack dealers can feel a flow of a deck for or against the house and can change that flow with specific shuffles? You have to find something to back this up, it's just too fantastic. But very cool sounding none the less.

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closed minded is as closed minded does

(-1, dorky) by c.emmertfoster · 2004-03-27 12:58 · Score: 4, Funny

Bah, the solution is obvious. The casinos just need to start using subatomic particles as Roulette balls, so that you would have to build a Heisenberg Compensator to cheat like this.

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We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!

Re:Card Counting is mostly Bunk by the.pornlord · 2004-03-27 15:17 · Score: 5, Informative

This post is mostly bunk. If your ex-wife was really a blackjack dealer, she was a truly clueless one.

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:Are oppotunity costs similar to opportunity cos by The+Only+Druid · 2004-03-27 18:26 · Score: 3, Insightful

Actually, the irony of your post is that your claim about gambling (that you always lose) belies your actual lack of understanding of the relevant concepts of economics here.

Its obviously true that over a long enough period of time, all of the games in a casino have a probability spread that benefits the casino over the player (although some games are as low as 51% to the casino). However, the very same math shows us that at different times the results of gambling will favor either the casino or the gambler (that is, at point A the gambler may be low, at B the gambler be high, whereas at C he's way down). The real trick to gambling (and I know, incidentally, two men who are professional poker players, i.e. they make all their income gambling) is to recognize when you're too deep in to recoop your losses (and thus, to bail out), but also to recognize when you're sufficiently high up so that you're statistically likely not to get any better. The good gamblers know how to quit, and in doing so they ride the same probabilities that the casino does.

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"Stumble before you crawl"

Ideas/Criticism? by limekiller4 · 2004-03-27 20:06 · Score: 3, Interesting

Quick, some math and/or physics major tell me why stopwatch-ing some number of spins and averaging the center 50% mean wouldn't give you these values.

For example, if you found these values for one rotation:

2.4s
2.8s
2.4s
2.2s
2.0s
1.9s
2.6s
2.3s

...you might order them:

1.9s
2.0s
2.2s
2.3s
2.4s
2.4s
2.6s
2.8s

Drop the two extremes (I know I said 50%, sue me):

2.0s
2.2s
2.3s
2.4s
2.4s
2.6s

Then average them to arrive at 2.65s.

Wouldn't this eliminate the need to know the mass of the ball and the friction of the track?

Couldn't you then just covertly cross reference the thrown speeds with the actual winning quadrant (1/2, 1/4, whatever) to get yourself a prediction matrix?

I'm not trying to pretend that these are viable methods, I'm just thinking of them as they come into my head and thinking that there must be something wrong with 'em.

Thanks in advance for the replies.

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My .02,
Limekiller

Casinos LOVE this type of thing. by ljavelin · 2004-03-28 00:13 · Score: 5, Insightful

Casinos LOVE this type of thing.

Why?

Because the PRESS claims that with a little smarts, the average guy can beat the casino! If you're really smart and really quiet about it, you can beat 'em and become rich beyond your wildest dreams!

Therefore, you get a lot of quasi-smart losers into the casinos, all who have the fantisy of "out-smarting Vegas". Those people proceed to lose all kinds of money as they "hone their smarts".

This is exactly how casinos attract people who are "too smart" to waste their time gambling.

Card counting, roulette prediction, psuedo-random numbers of elecontrics-based slot machines - they're all an ADVERTISEMENT designed to attract those who imagine that they're super-smart enough to tilt the odds. Of course, it simply isn't true.

The casinos in Vegas would love you to come to Vegas and attempt to put your super-smart skills into action... just as long as other players don't see you "attempting to cheat" - the casinos don't want you to scare any other customers away.

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