I was always under the impression that Roulette is a game of chance. That means no matter how well you understand the game there is no real skill element to it. The odds of the ball ending up in one place on the wheel are the same as the ball ending up in another place on the wheel. American rules give the house and edge of anywhere from five to seven and a half percent and European rules give the house an edge of approximately one and a half percent. That difference is enough to make you want to go to Europe just to play. Of course, this is assuming that the wheel is balanced and the land-based casino isn't cheating. Would double cheating just cancel itself out then, and make the game fair? I think it would.

According to an article published in The Guardian online on Saturday players can now get an edge over the house in Roulette. Mark Howe sells a device that can help players get an edge over a land-based casino roulette wheel for £1,000. The roulette cheating machine consists of a small digital time recorder, a concealed computer and a hidden earpiece. The equipment has a clicker which records the deceleration speed of the rotor and ball. The information goes to a remote computer device concealed inside a mobile phone or MP3 player. From there the information on which zone the ball will land in is transmitted to an earpiece that instructs a player.

While Howe claims that while his gadget will work on an honest table, it works best when the land-based casino is cheating as well. The British government did a test on the technique in 2004 after a gang suspected of using the "cheat" won £1.3m at the Ritz casino in London. First the player finds a wheel which isn't completely level, where the ball seems to drop in the same zone on the wheel repeatedly. With that they also look for a "manageable scatter", in other words, when the ball strikes a certain number, it will typically fall into a neighboring pocket. The unpublished report concluded: "On a wheel with a definite bias and a manageable scatter, a prediction device of this nature, when operated by a 'skilled' roulette player, could obtain an advantage when used in a casino."

I think that is fair enough. Internet casino roulette is run by random number generator and has a published pay-back percentage. You know the odds before you ever start to play. There is no tilt of the wheel. Allowing a land-based casino to cheat like that should make these little toys a must for the land-based casino roulette player. It seems that I am not the only one thinking this way. Mark Griffiths, Europe's only professor of gambling, agrees with my point of view, although for a totally different reason, "If someone's got a piece of equipment that calculates where a ball will land, then that is akin to card counting in blackjack. It's not cheating - it's using science to give yourself a better advantage." Land-based casinos disagree, of course. Most casinos worldwide consider card-counting an offense and have been known to blacklist players who have been caught.

One might think that the British Gambling Commission would ban the roulette predicter, however they will not. While these gadgets are outlawed in many jurisdictions across the world, Britain will expect casinos to police themselves. Phill Brear is the gambling commission's director of operations and thinks it might be possible to prosecute someone using them under a new Gambling Act offence of cheating. Might isn't very definitive and the fact that this device works best when the casino is cheating as well wouldn't do any favors for the casino which chooses to prosecute. Imagine the media scandal and the players they would lose when they have been found to be cheating as well. I don't see prosecution as very likely.

According to the Guardian article most people who have won with this gadget have gotten to keep their winnings. "The supreme court in Spain recently ruled against a casino that was attempting to ban a father and son, both of whom claimed to have won millions by forecasting roulette."

"The most high-profile roulette scam in Britain was executed by a woman and two men who, in 2003, won £1.3m at the Ritz using a device concealed inside a mobile phone. They were arrested but later released and their winnings were returned."

Howe, the guy who makes the roulette predictors, claims a gambler with the gadget can get an edge of between 20% and 100% over the casino. This is quite a change from the casino's normal 2.7% edge over customers. "Next year is free hunting for anyone interested in making money from casinos," he said. "All you need to use this is nerves, a good front and consistency." While Howe claims that these also work on a non-biased wheel I don't see how that would be possible. There's nothing for the gadget to predict then. A plum wheel should render this gadget useless. What a way to keep land-based casinos honest.

Keith Tayler, an ex-croupier and gaming inspector, explains why regulators are hesitant to ban predicting devices as doing so would amount to an admission that wheels can be biased. "The commission would be opening themselves to litigation or disputes at the table," he said. "The last thing a casino wants is punters arguing about why their numbers have been missed all evening."

The Gaming Commission wrote to Mr Tayler last year stating: "We now agree that roulette wheels can develop a bias of the type you describe and that, particularly with the use of electronic equipment, players can use the bias to predict with some accuracy the segment of the wheel in which the ball will come to rest, thereby giving them an advantage."

There is a moral of the story here for land-based casinos. It doesn't pay to be greedy.

Posted on: September 20, 2006

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