Editorial

Tuesday, 14 April 2009 01:41 Last Updated on Monday, 11 May 2009 04:27

Throughout history, there have been pioneering gamblers who, not content to be at the mercy of the house and its edge, have sought out ways to beat the apparently unbeatable. Many methods have been devised to beat certain casino games. Some of these have proved to be more successful than others. Here we look at how certain smart gamblers turned to monitoring the Roulette table in order to give themselves an edge. Monitoring can be done in three main ways which are the wheel itself, the ball and the human aspect.

The roulette wheel has been the main focus of many an artful gambler intent on finding ways to improve their edge at a game that for all intents and purposes is one of pure chance. The true 50/50 odds that this game by definition should produce are shortened by the casino with the introduction of the house edge. This is provided for with the inclusion of the zero pocket (or pockets, in the case of the American Roulette wheel).

In order to find an advantage, gamblers have, for centuries monitored roulette wheels for any slight imperfections that may lead to a bias for one or more pockets attracting the ball more often than others. These people are known in the business as wheel watchers. Wheel watchers will spend a lot of time monitoring the performance of a roulette wheel to see whether it is “off” and which numbers are favoured over the others. When such a wheel is discovered, the gambler will, by betting on these numbers gain an appreciative edge over the house. 

To counter this practice, modern casinos use high resolution cameras linked to sophisticated technology to monitor their own roulette wheels. If a wheel is discovered to have developed a flaw, no matter how small, it is changed for a new one straight away. This excessive action is necessary to prevent any gambler gaining an edge and costing them a lot of money. It is also brought about in part due to the legendary true story of “The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo,” Joseph Jagger.

In the late 1800s, the British engineer Joseph Jagger became interested in the behaviour of the popular casino roulette wheel. He noticed that unless a wheel was completely balanced and of perfect construction, any tiny mechanical imperfections would alter the pure randomness of the outcome of a spin. With his advanced mechanical knowledge, he set out to prove his theories.

In 1873, Jagger travelled to Monte Carlo in Monaco and visited the famous Beaux-Arts Casino where six roulette wheels were installed at that time. To assist him in his experiment, he hired a total of six clerks to each monitor one wheel. Each clerk was then to record in secret the wheel’s outcome over a set time span. When Jagger then checked the results he was excited to see that one wheel displayed a clear bias for nine of its numbers. He used this knowledge to place bets and won over $60,000 in three days, equivalent to over three and a quarter million dollars today.

Tracking the ball on a roulette wheel is the second method of monitoring the game for any advantage a gambler might gain. This takes more skill because for each spin, three events must be predicted. First is where the ball will fall from the track. Next is where on the wheel the ball will fall. Last is the length of the ball’s bounce when it hits the wheel. This strategy is explained in detail in a book series entitled “Professional Roulette Prediction,” written by the man known as ‘the God of Roulette’, Laurance Scott. Scott is generally attributed as the person who invented this method and is reported to have made good use of it, although there are no verifiable accounts of his actual winnings from using it.

The human aspect to monitoring roulette comes from watching the dealer. There are some gamblers who swear by their belief that some dealers have a certain way of spinning the wheel which results in a greater likelihood of certain numbers coming up more than others. Whether this is done consciously or not is open to debate, but gamblers alert to this type of advantage will be able to detect patterns over time and then capitalise by betting on those numbers or a certain sector of the wheel. 

In modern times, hidden cameras, lasers and micro computers have been used by enthusiasts to monitor and track roulette wheels for imperfections and non random behaviour. In the 1990s, Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo was reported to have made use of a computer to map the behaviour of roulette wheels at Madrid’s Casino de Madrid. With his family’s assistance, he is reported to have won the equivalent of over a million US dollars over several years. Although the casino sued Gonzalo for his use of illegal means to obtain the money, the court decided otherwise and ruled in favour of Gonzalo, allowing him to keep his winnings.