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Cheating At Roulette May Be Legal In UK

nuke-alwin writes, "A hidden device that appears to give an advantage to roulette players may be legal in the UK when the gambling industry is deregulated next year. The device — which consists of a small digital time recorder, a concealed computer, and a hidden earpiece — uses predictive software to determine where the ball is likely to land. It has been tested by a government lab, which found that 'the advantage can be considerable.' It will be up to casinos to spot people using such devices."

7 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. Casinos wont permit them by Phil246 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They may be legal but it doesnt mean casinos have to let you in with them, or to allow you to continue playing should you be caught with one.

    1. Re:Casinos wont permit them by Tony+Hoyle · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Precisely.. why should cheating at roulette be a matter of law? If they catch you they can eject you. If they don't.. well that's their problem - nothing the state should be worried about.

  2. Re:Easy way out by jcr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Simpler than that: the house can just set a rule that all bets have to be down before the croupier releases the ball.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  3. method by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Actually, casinos have a very simple method to sense if you are cheating: you are winning.

  4. Re:Oh, casinos will know by antifoidulus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No there is no skill for roulette, but the payoff for one game can be considerable, many, many times what you can win in blackjack(provided you pick a number, not a color). Therefore you don't need to win nearly as many times to make significant amounts of money without raising lots of suspicion, and you can always go hit up lots of casinos in one night before anyone catches on.

  5. Re:Oh, casinos will know by Kierthos · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, they do. And it's not sometimes. It's pretty much all the time, these days. They might be competing with each other for tourist bucks, but they all have a mutual vested interest in not being fleeced themselves. If someone is caught cheating, they are usually arrested for it, not taken out back so a couple of goons named Guido and Nunzio can kneecap them. And if you're arrested for cheating in a casino, your name and picture goes in a wonderful database that is made available to all the major casinos (you know, in addition to, say, a prison sentence), so if they catch you again, they can check and find out that, yes, you've done this before or no, you haven't.

    I believe that if you're convicted of cheating in a Las Vegas casino, and thereby banned, you can be hit with another felony charge for gambling in that, or any other casino in Las Vegas (or possibly across the whole of Nevada), regardless of whether or not you were cheating the second time.

    --
    Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
  6. Re:Easy way out by julesh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The primary reason this doesn't get done at the moment is that it opens the house up to accusations of cheating: it's very hard but not totally out of the question to influence which area of the wheel the ball ends up in. Allowing bets to placed after the ball is released removes any suspicion that this might be happening.