From: stantz@sgi.com (Mark Stantz)
Newsgroups: rec.gambling
Subject: Re: Roulette system(s)
Date: 1 Oct 92 20:06:14 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.

> The system works by using the human brain to determine which quadrant
> of the wheel the ball will fall in - making the judgement and the big
> bets just before the ball is about to fall and the croupier says
> "no more bets".  I believe it is possible, given beaucoup training.

	There is another supposed system for beating roulette.  A friend of
mine who recently spent some time in some Casinos in Europe (where roulette
is the most popular casino game) had a book about it.  I read it in the car
while we were driving out to West Virgina from DC three weeks ago.  Sorry, I 
don't remember the title or author's name, but it's something like 'Beat the
Wheel' as you would expect.  If anyone is really interested in this, I can
get the details from my friend and post them.

	Basically, the book claims this:

	1. There is no such thing as a perfect roulette wheel.  All wheels
	   tend to favor some number or some set of numbers, because of 
	   minute mechanical defects, the wear and tear of years of operation, 
	   etc...

	[ This sounds reasonable, but I'm not buying it.  Chaos theory 
          suggests that any microscopic divots or other imperfections could
	  tend to randomize things "even more" rather than making behavior more
          predictable.  Sure, some imperfections (like loose frets, for 
          instance) will tend to trap the ball (by absorbing the ball's 
          kinetic energy on collision), but there's no proof that ordinary
          wear and tear biases wheels toward certain numbers.  This hooey is 
          just a lot of rationalization for why the holy grain MIGHT exist.
          It does not show that it DOES exist. ] 
	  
	2. Some wheels behave sufficiently non-randomly that you can gain
	   a significant advantage over the house by playing the wheel (or
	   by watching people play the wheel) for a period of time, recording
	   all of the numbers that come up, and doing a statistical analysis.
	   If number X appears Y times more often than you would expect in N 
	   spins, you can have a Z% confidence that that number (or some set
           of numbers) are appearing more frequently *because* of biases in
	   the wheel mechanisms as opposed to the ordinary ebb and flow of 
	   fortune/randomness.

	[  The house advantage at roulette is high.  Maybe if the wheel
           were tilted at a 30 degree angle the biases would overcome the
	   house advantage, but you'd need a pretty clunky wheel to find a 
	   wheel the player had an advantage at otherwise. ] 

	3. You can make big bucks by Kelley betting a sufficiently biased 
	   roulette wheel.

	[  No argument here.  Good luck finding the wheel, and getting the
           casino to let you keep playing it long enough to make your million
	   (in fairness, the book does discuss casino countermeasures and 
           player counter-countermeasures)] 

	4. Some, though not all, people using this system throughout history 
	   have made big bucks.

   	[  Everyone interprets history in a context that succeeds in making
	   their point. ] 

	I found the book interesting reading.  I expected something ridiculous,
and instead found that the author was actually talking about making sure you
get sufficiently large sample sizes, betting proportionally to your BR, using
statistics to make sure that the numbers you see appearing are appearing
because they're very likely biased, and not just because of temporary 
random trends, etc...  His methods are reasonable; his conclusions are
not.  Looks like someone who was looking for the pot of gold and couldn't
find it decided to get rich by selling other people a map directing them
to the gold...

	I've done simulations.  With a normal, unbiased wheel, and a small 
number of trials (800 spins, or about 8 hours of play in NV), unbiased 
numbers look biased all the time, even if you use the supposed 80% or 90%
confidence fuctions (a number should appear SPINS/38 + 0.4*sqrt(SPINS) times
for you to believe it's biased with 80% confidence, or SPINS/38 + 0.5 * 
sqrt(SPINS) times for you to believe it's biased with 95% confidence on a 
double-zero wheel.)  Of course, there's 38 numbers on the wheel, so frequently
at least one will appear biased to these levels of confidence when a small
number of trials are conducted.  Randomness reigns then.

	With a larger number of spins (~3000 spins, or about 30 hours of
constant play) false positives become much less of a problem.  If you then
artificially bias a number (and it's impossible to do this in a way resembling
how a wheel would actually be biased, if in fact it were, so I just tweak
the random number generator) you have to introduce really strong biases (99%
of spins truly random, 1% of spins forced to produce a given number) before 
these biases become detectable.

	All the time you're sitting there trying to find the biased numbers,
betting on odd/even, red/black, etc..., while writing down the results, the 
house percentage is eating away at you...it really adds up, too.

	I would like to believe it.  The book is convincing.  But it does
not stand up to an analysis.  Not to mention that if somehow you did manage
to find a roulette wheel that was sufficiently biased for you to win money
by Kelly betting it, the casino would probably move you to another table
once you were in to them for less money than it cost you to find the wheel
and the biased number(s) in the first place...

	-Mark
Newsgroups: rec.gambling