How Did the Advantage Players You Mentioned Beat Roulette?

You opened the door on advantage play at roulette. OK, spill!

And

Unless you're factoring in comps, I can’t make the roulette math work. With a payback of 36-1 and 38 numbers (inclusive of 0 and 00), the house edge is 5.2%.

These questions, and a few others, were submitted based on our general answer about advantage play we ran in December, in which we mentioned in passing the dedicated team of advantage players that spent decades working on the challenge of beating roulette -- and succeeded.

Since you asked so nicely, here's an overview of that situation.

The name of the book, which will be released soon (not by us), is Follow the Bouncing Ball. It begins where another book about advantage play at roulette left off. The Eudamonic Pie was published in 1985 and detailed the many trials and tribulations of a group of physicists, computer programmers, and hardware engineers who attempted something most people thought to be impossible: beating roulette.

The author of Follow the Bouncing Ball, Mark Billings, writes, “The Eudamonic Pie was a revelation, well-written and interesting. It took off like a rocket and unfortunately ultimately ended its flight with a bit of a thud. Although the pioneers of Chaos Theory were able to get an actual edge on actual roulette wheels in actual casinos, they were never able to win a significant amount of money. Suffice it to say that if anything could go wrong, it did.”

The exploits of the players who took over the roulette project are described in Follow the Bouncing Ball. They combined advantage play at blackjack with predictive computers pioneered by The Eudamonic Pie principals and spent years and years of blood, sweat, and toil perfecting the technology and casino comportment necessary to beat roulette and get away with the money.

Here’s the scene as depicted in the Introduction to Follow the Bouncing Ball.

“Fletcher Barnes is occupying the middle seat at a roulette table and absolutely murdering the game. The predictions Fletcher is receiving from the small custom-built computer are so accurate, the dealer is actually preparing Fletcher’s thirty-five-chip payout before she spins the ball. On this night, Fletcher’s biggest challenge will be losing back the stacks of blue chips in front of him to make it appear as if he busted out before having to slink out of the casino like just another loser.

“Normally, Fletcher’s biggest problem is to look like an average systems player who will eventually get ground down by the insurmountable built-in house advantage in the game of roulette. Particularly in the American version of the game, the house edge is so steep that it’s unusual for an ordinary roulette player to last more than a couple of hours before busting out. Yet, Fletcher has been playing for nearly three hours this night and could literally continue to play and win until the Duracell running the little FM radio tucked into his jacket pocket is thoroughly drained.

“However, for the physicists, programmers, engineers, and professional gamblers who made it possible, it was an enormous amount of work over a long period of time and at no point was it completely obvious that any of their sweat equity would ever amount to anything—anything at all.”

The book tells the extraordinary tale of a small group of advantage players who so thoroughly crushed roulette that they might as well have been printing money every time they walked into a casino. And it had nothing to do with the house edge, gambling systems, luck, or anything you’ve ever heard of. Just good old-fashioned technology that’s invisible to the casino and foolproof at the game. And regarding the house edge, the American double-zero roulette table has 38 numbers total and pays 35-1 (not 36) for hitting a number straight up, which is a 5.26% casino edge -- unbeatable without employing wheel-clocking or wheel-bias techniques, the former of which is detailed in the book.

We'll let you know when Follow the Bouncing Ball is available. It's definitely worth a read.

You opened the door on advantage play on roulette. OK, spill!

No part of this answer may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the written permission of the publisher.

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rokgpsman Mar-16-2020

Beating Roulette?

The books are fiction, they might make for captivating reading but I don't think there's any chance someone can beat roulette, even with the help of a computer. Maybe if the wheel was old or damaged so that it had a bias to a particular section of the wheel you might be able to somewhat track that. But as soon as you start winning a few times the pit bosses or security would take notice and they'd shut the game down because they know it can't happen unless some cheating or other oddity is going on, and they wouldn't re-open the table until the wheel was replaced or thoroughly checked out. Anyone can get lucky on one or two spins at roulette, but it isn't going to happen frequently. Winning several spins at roulette would be so out of place that the suits would converge on the table. And anyway, using any kind of electronic device at the table to help you win is a big no-no, that's a good way in Nevada to earn you time behind bars. Beating roulette is a fantasy, forget about it.

Gramps Mar-16-2020

roulette

I believe it was two years ago, in Laughlin, that the wife and I were walking past a wheel and seeing how she likes to play the game we decided to sit down and try it this night. She play's 18, our anniversary, and the surrounding numbers, I played it also. We had dollar chips and I think it was 5 dollar minimum, so we were playing the minimum, and I put 1 on 18 also, then other numbers. Well, long story short it 18 came up 4 times in a row, and yes after the 2nd time people started to stop and on the 4 time the pit boss and others were watching. I played one more time then left with my winnings, my wife stayed and played some more. I think 18 came up again after about 8 spins, but that was enough for my wife also. Nobody could believe that it hit 4 times in a row, lucky us!

Pat Higgins Mar-16-2020

Big Tex

Great read on roulette.   But the house is way too large to beat on the long run.


There are ways to beat craps if you follow the math and the physics is a moving object through the air.  Do your home work and you to can beat craps.

Kevin Lewis Mar-16-2020

Uhhh...maybe

The veracity of the book is doubtful, as certainly, there isn't any proof offered...no one, after all, would make information available that would prove they had committed a felony, let alone publish it. The implication in the excerpt that Barnes knew exactly what number the ball would land on is misleading--he would no doubt have bet on a physical range of numbers, such as nine numbers that took up a particular slice of the wheel, with the one the computer deemed most likely in the center of that slice.

Even so, Barnes would have had very little time to input the spin of the wheel and its starting point to the computer, and then get its feedback and place several bets that were scattered all over the layout. Let's say he had trained himself to manage that. Still, he would have had to wait until the ball was spun...then he would have spent a few seconds staring intently at the wheel...then he would have frantically spread his bets over the layout in the few seconds remaining.

gaattc2001 Mar-16-2020

I read "Eudamonic Pie" years ago, and still have it in my bookcase.

A typical roulette team in that era had an observer and several agents. The observer made small bets like a roulette systems nerd. In reality, he was clocking the speed of the wheel and the ball at the start of each spin.
The computer then identified the target section of the wheel, like calculating the decay of a satellite’s orbit. The observer signaled this information to the agents, who put the appropriate large bets down just before the “No more bets!” call.
All this was said to raise the player’s advantage from the usual minus five percent to as much as plus fifty percent. But as Kevin Lewis points out, there's still random fluctuation: like a blackjack counter, sometimes you're still going to lose.
The original computer was fragile and cumbersome. Nowadays, it could look like a cell phone. But also nowadays, casinos are well aware of the threat; and as rokgpsman points out, possession of a computer in a casino with intent to influence a game is a serious crime.
Good Luck...

Dave in Seattle. Mar-16-2020

Allen N. Wilson.

Found a biased wheel in Reno,way back when. One of the dividing slots were replaced and made it a biased wheel.He played for hours and still couldn't take advantage of this biased wheel. It was still very random.

Roy Furukawa Mar-16-2020

Beating Roulette?

I think I'd have better luck winning at the Vegas Vacation game of "Guess which number?" where you have to guess which number the dealer is thinking of between one and ten.
Clark: Thrrrr... four! 
Dealer: Seven!

Mar-16-2020

Correct book title; etc.

First, a quick little correction. The actual title of the book (at least the original one) is "The Eudaemonic Pie".  I bought and read the book ages ago.
OK, on to the juicier stuff. While it is true that you cannot FORCE a win at a game that has a 5.26% edge, it is still true that some people CAN WIN during some sessions, but not all of them. People have already mentioned wheel bias; I once scored simply by noting a pattern on prior sessions over a couple days (I don't know if it was because of wheel bias). I noticed that, in every session, the B column had come up 5 times in a row. So each time a B number came up, I placed a $5 bet on the column. 4 consecutive hits = 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 or 81 times the bet. The end result was $405, a $400 profit. Because I'm not an actor, I didn't go wild with joy. The stack of 81 reds looked weird. A "suit" immediately came over, without a smile, and asked for my name. I thought he was going to comp me, but now I believe he was putting me on a blacklist.

Mar-16-2020

"Mr. 31/4"

Now for my more interesting story. At that same roulette table where I won (at the old Marina casino), an older English guy sat down, and proceeded to start betting $20 on each of 6 numbers, for a total bet of $120 per spin. He lost the first couple of spins, but then there was a streak of 7 consecutive spins in which only the numbers 31 and 4 hit. At 35-1 for each hit, he collected $700 on each, or $4900 total. After the 7th hit, he cashed out, with a profit of over $3500. And of course the next spin did not land on any of his 6 numbers. It's as if he knew how long the streak would last. I was late in catching on to what was happening, then started betting on 31 and 4, $2 on each number, after the 5th hit, only making a small profit. I bet on the numbers even after the guy left, but of course I lost those bets, and then abandoned the play. The odds of any pair of numbers comprising 7 consecutive spins is 1 in 47 million.  The odds for just 31/4 doing that is 1 in 893 million.

Question of the Day - 16 March 2020

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