Roulette wheels bias

admin — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:50:16 +0000

Rumor has it, especially with older wheels, that the rotors deteriorate, pockets become worn, and frets get loosened. When this happens, the formerly random roulette wheel will become “biased” and start to favor certain sections or even certain numbers. Instead of coming up once every 38 spins, a spongy slot or the worn frets around it will cause a number to win once every 30 spins or so. At least in theory.
Hallelujah! You’ve found El Dorado! Now all you have to do is get out your pad and paper and record, oh, about 3,000 or so spins of a particular wheel (that’s the minimum it’d take to find a bias). At roughly one spin for every two minutes, it should take you only about 100 hours of continuous observation before you’d want to draw any conclusions. Of course, God forbid after 100 hours you realize that this particular wheel doesn’t have an exploitable bias, so you have to find another wheel and start all over again.
And if you did manage to find a biased wheel, hope that the ever-vigilant casino personnel didn’t replace it, rotate it, or even schedule its usual weekly maintenance, any of which would throw all of your observations out the window. Was roulette bias ever a profitable strategy? Absolutely. But with today’s precision-machined wheels and constant maintenance standards, finding a biased wheel is about as easy as finding a Mensa membership card at a Larry the Cable Guy show.

Plan Of Attack

admin — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:37:33 +0000

It’s said that there is a roulette system for every European - everybody brags that they’ve got a can’t-miss system for beating the wheel (especially if they’re trying to sell you said system).
There are essentially two types of systems that people try to use in beating the wheel: mathematical and physical.
Within days of playing roulette, everyone seems to develop some sort of math-looked but their unheralded genius has managed to devise within moments.
A mathematical system is a method of betting nearly each and every spin but using some sort of negative progression to recoup your current losses. The simplest is the Martingale. You pick a color, such as red, and you merely double your bet each time you lose. Eventually, so the reasoning goes, you’ll win and get all your money back plus your original wager, right? Well, actually, no! For a detailed discussion on why the Martingale is a horrible system, jump ahead to post 13. Otherwise, just know that every casino has a table limit that you can’t bet past. So if you lose more than eight times in a row, the table limits will keep you from doubling your bet again.
Then there’s the Labouchere, the d’Alembert, the Fibonacci, the Paroli, and quite literally a million others. If you want to know how many roulette systems there are, simply type “roulette system” into Google, and you’ll see every possible progression imaginable, all for the low, low price of a few thousand dollars.
Trying to use math to beat the math (which in this case is the house edge) is like trying to fight fire with kerosene. You can’t win.