Who says physics can’t make money?
A group of gamblers have won more than a million pounds (around US$2 million or AUD$2.5 million) by using a laser scanner to beat the roulette wheel. Apparently they used a laser scanner to judge the speed of the ball as it moved around the wheel (the same technology as is used in speed guns by police, or to measure the speed of serves in tennis) then fed this data into a computer, which analysed it quick enough to be able to predict which numbers were most likely to come up. All this, amazingly, happened before the wheel had spun three times, after which no more bets are allowed. And even more amazing, the police decided that this was legal, and that they can keep their winnings!
People have always wanted to use maths or physics to beat the system. Card counting in blackjack can be moderately succeessful (where you track what cards have already been played, to better know the odds of getting the card you want) but casinos watch for it, and may kick you out. (Terrible, isn’t it?!)
One popular but fatal system for Roulette is the “Martingale” strategy. Let’s assume that there’s no zero on the wheel - the only two choices are red or black with even chance. Say you always bet $1 on Red: win, and you get double your money ($2). You’re up $1 and you go home happy. If you lose, you double your bet to $2. Now if you win, you’ve get $4 and so are again ahead $1 (as you’ve bet $3 in total). Basically, you double your bet every time you lose so that you win all your money back, plus $1. And you’ve got to win once, sooner or later, right? You’re guaranteed to win! Hmmm…
Sounds perfect, doesn’t it? This strategy works in theory, only if you have unlimited money. Otherwise, you may quickly run out of funds or reach the betting limit of your casino. Then, you’re out of luck and the system fails! For instance, when using the above strategy to win, say, a hundred dollars, a losing streak of 5 bets means you’re up to $3200. Another loss, and it’s $6400. It only gets worse from there!
So, the bottom line seems to be that while mathematics might not give you the edge, a degree in physics seems to work quite well!
Dave Bacon Says:
I have a theory that every tech school has legends about cunning students beating the odds. Some of these legends are probably even true! At Caltech, for instance, there was a story about a group who discovered a long time ago that the roulette wheels weren’t properly balanced and in some cases they were so badly balanced that you could win by betting specific numbers.
Andrew Gray Says:
One of the more impressive (although non-technological) examples of beating the casinos was an English civil servant in (I think) the late 1800s or early 1900s who realised that roulette wheels were imperfect, and over time would give statistically predictable results. So he sent groups of clerks to watch the tables in various casinos (in Monte Carlo?), and record what numbers came up - presumably with a suitable sensible cover story. After they’d gathered enough data, some simple statistical work tells you that that one leans to red, or that one has a habit of coming up 47 twice as often as it should…
He made a very comfortable sum in a few days, and retired.
Joel Says:
*grin* Yes, I’ve heard the latter of those legends, at least (about the unbalanced wheel). It would be interesting to find out exactly how much fact there is in them!
I wonder too what the actual betting scheme was they used. Presumably they couldn’t pinpoint the exact number, so I imagine they would bet on a section of the wheel to maximise their chances (even on 6 numbers, say, that’s still a 6-1 payout). However, one would think that this would be fairly obvious to the operator (as the numbers aren’t consecutve on the board) as well as being logistically challenging to get their bets in in time (for the same reason). Still, it’s obviously possible!
illuminating science » Gambling with improbable probabilities Says:
[…] and comes out ahead.” Ah, if only they’d read my blog…that’s the Martingale Strategy and doesn’t work in the long run - particularly when the house tips the bets […]
On-Screen Scientist Says:
Well, this is a really old posting, but I just discovered it. In the past week I’ve made a couple on the general topic at . One of them deals with some Berkeley physicists that had a method to beat the roulette wheel, but were foiled by security at Reno.
I heard an old legend about a group of guys at University of Chicago (or some place near there, my memory’s fuzzy) that used a similar sort of scheme to win at roulette. They had a device in the heel of their shoe and when you tapped in time with the sound of the roulette wheel you could figure out the frequency, and thus the speed of the wheel and do a similar prediction to the guys above. It was all very high-tech and cunning for the 1970s, when it’s rumoured to have occurred. The legend ends with the department being very happy with these guys because they earned their own grant money via this method