Slashdot Mirror
Beating Roulette With Computers & Lasers
MeerCat writes "The BBC are reporting that a group of gamblers who won more than £1m at the Ritz Casino by using laser technology have been told by police they can keep their winnings.
A laser scanner linked to a computer was allegedly used to gauge numbers likely to come up on the roulette wheel.
Of course this could be Labour spin to try and get people excited about the idea of cheating at mega casinos"
The UK Labour party intends to legalise large "American style" casinos, which are currently illegal in the UK. The bill faces stiff oposistion.
Though recently they backed off from the idea by reducing the number of initial casinos to about six (I cant remember the original number) as there are fears here that they'd cause more crime and more poverty in the surrounding area due to the envitable rise in gambling addiction.
No
The famous MIT story is that teams didn't use any kinds of computers. You don't need to use computers to beat blackjack either. But they did get kicked out of casinos since they're private property and they dont like cardcounting. The fact it's legal is irrelevant.
see
The Eudaemonic Pie
or "The Newtonian Casino" as the UK print was called
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
It was in a cell phone
And some theory behind it from the previous slashdot article.
Except in Nevada where using electronic calculating devices to assist casino play is illegal.
Your preception of what they did is wrong. What makes the roulette wheel work is that no one, with the naked eye, can measure the initial conditions well enough to predict the outcome. From the articles discussed in various links, the group apparently used a laser to measure spin rate and other variables when the roullette wheel was set in motion. Then a computer estimated the final position of the ball. They had a brief window in which to do this. Bets must be placed before the wheel spins three times. If the reports are true, they could do this on a completely fair wheel.
In other words, they were NOT looking at long term averages and saying, for this wheel, the ball lands an unusual number of times on 6. They were looking at the initial conditions of the spin and used to physics to say on the spin, the ball will likely land here. They reduced the odds from 1 in 32 to 1 in 6.
Can somebody tell me what this means? Why would Labour (which I assume to mean the UK Labour Party) want to get people excited about cheating at mega casinos?
Gambling in casino's in the UK is restricted to private casinos, where you have to register as a member 24 hours before being allowed to make any bets. There are betting shops (bookies) which allow people to make bets on races, but they have to keep the inside of the shop obscured (usually by posters) to avoid anyone falling to temptation. Many pubs and nightclubs have the odd slot machine (fruit machine) with the spinning reels, but they don't really rake in more than maybe 300 pounds a week, and have to have the theme changed every 4-5 weeks, otherwise the punters lose interest. There's also the traditional beach arcades, where you could play various skill games for a pound coin.
The Labour party was caught out with some dodgy visits to and from the Los Vegas casino owners, over the "tightening of gambling laws". The argument goes that since the Internet is allowing people to gamble from home or work, they need new legislation to ban the slot machines from pubs/night clubs, and that these should be replaced by dozens of new super-casinos able to set up all across the UK, especially in deprived areas. The Labour party spin is that this would allow the average UK member of the public to share in the glamour of high society gambling (image of men in tuxedo's and women in elegant evening gowns), although in reality the casinos would simply have hundreds of electronic slot machines linked up for national prizes.
Given the land shortage in the UK, there are far more practical uses for regenerated industrial sites. These include health and fitness centres, shopping malls, conference centres, office blocks, mixed-income housing, with casinos right at the bottom of the list. Especially since there is no real public demand for more casinos.
And there is also a growing public suspicion that New Labour seems to disregard anyone or any business who atttempts to earn a basic living (let alone make a fortune) from honest hard work, but is only interested in people who are prepared to recklessly gamble their own money eg. the obsession with getting "young people" to become entrepeneurs, or getting experienced senior managers to remortgage their homes in order to set up their own companies, or having multi-millionaires buy out companies with declining sales, and simply rebrand everyone and everything with uniforms and company logos.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
That is why you need to stay away from all the bad games. Only play on 100%+ payback systems or play where the house don't have the advantage.
:) Never left Las Vegas without a nice paycheck, so to speak, but I never play slots, roulette or any other game designed to give the casino an edge. If you lose money in a casino, you have nodbody but yourself to blame. learn about the various games before you play and know which ones give the best chances of payback or stear clear of all the sucker games.
When visiting Las Vegas, I always end up in the back where the high stakes poker tables are. You pay the rake to the casino and unload thick wads of money from other "unsuspecting" tourists who have seen poker on TV
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
The chance of winning on the outside of the layout is 18 out of 37, as there is a 0 that makes all outside bets lose.
Betting on one number has 1 way to win, but 36 ways to lose. But the house pays odds as though you had a 1-in-36 chance of winning, not 1-in-37. So, the house has an advantage over you - in the long term average, they pay out $36 for every $37 they take back. You can easily work out mathematically that all the other bets (ie, splitting a chip across 2 adjacent numbers etc) work out to exactly the same house advantage. (it's about 2.7% or something)
In fact, short of actually using technology to predict the outcome or to affect the outcome of the spin, there is NO betting scheme, algorithm, pattern or method of placing bets on a roulette wheel that leads to any difference in the house's advantage over you.
You are absolutely correct, however, in your assertion in that you must know when to walk away with your winnings. An even more important skill is to know when to walk away after losing.
(In the USA, the presence of the '00' on the wheel actually doubles the house advantage again)
And finally, a corollary to your assertion that you have won hundreds of dollars at roulette: You have also, on other occasions, lost hundreds of dollars at it.