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Unusual
Ways Newsletter
(Subscriber Access Only)
(Subscriber Access Only)
In any casino, secrets and "systems" are passed from player to player. The result? Big profits - for the casino. Most systems are really just ways to lose slower or differently. But there was that one man who made $80,000 over several months on my roulette wheel, when I was working in a casino. I'll get the details of how he did it in a moment. But first let's look at some misconceptions about gambling.
Gamblers Dumb Ideas
If a red number comes up on roulette twenty times in a row, the odds of another red on the next spin are the same as they are for black. Nonetheless, many people will be betting black, thinking it is "due" to come up. This is just one of the many delusional ideas out there.
Now if you want to test the theory, you can. Just stand by the roulette table and wait. Bet on black, but only when red has come up four or more times in a row. Remember, black is "due" or more likely at these times, according to this theory. You'll have a lot of opportunities to bet during an evening, but I can tell you right now that you probably won't like the result, so don't quit your day job.
One of the most common ideas I have seen in recent years, is that some system of "money management" can make you a winner in a casino. Managing your bets in certain ways can slow your losses, and it certainly can mean more winning nights. But money management doesn't change the odds. In the long run you still lose, just in different ways.
For example, if you sit down to play blackjack, without "card counting" or otherwise moving the odds in your favor, you may see your bankroll go up and down. If your habit is to keep playing until you win really big or lose, you'll normally go home behind. On the other hand, if you have a simple money management system, you can go home a winner more often.
Let's say you start with $100. Your money management "rules" say that you leave if you lose $50 from any high-point. This is called a "trailing stop loss" in stock trading. In other words, if your bankroll is up to $175 at some point, the most you'll let it slip back to is $125. That's $50 lost from that point, but you still leave $25 ahead. The idea here is that you can still win big while controlling losses. You can even increase the size of the "stop loss" once you get to say $300, to allow for bigger bets.
You will very likely go home ahead more often with a simple system like this. But you haven't changed the odds one bit. You are just disciplining yourself to play less and not lose too much in one night. Over the years, you'll still lose 6% of every dollar bet (or whatever percentage the casino gets because of the particular rules they play by).
Now That Roulette
System
There are real ways to win in a casino. Card counting can give you a real edge at blackjack, for example. Anyone can learn how to do it, and I dealt to several players who consistently made money counting cards. However, you'll need a good book to show you how, and you'll need to practice and follow the "rules" religiously. Because 95% of "card counters" won't put forth the effort to do it right, they make a lot of money for casinos.
Other ways to make money in a casino is to take advantage of coupons and promotions. I have seen casinos do promotions that put the odds in your favor, like paying double on blackjack, or matching bets on the money-wheel. To really take advantage of these, though, you have to learn a bit about probabilities. Otherwise you won't know when the game favors you.
Then there is that roulette system. Here it is:
Record the results of 5,000 spins (pen and notebook work fine). Find any numbers in that came up more than 151 times total. If there are any, start betting those numbers every spin. If not, try another wheel. By the way, when you bet a number, you get paid 35 to 1 if it hits, plus you keep your bet.
Roulette wheels can have biases, meaning some numbers come up more often that they should. If a number is frequent enough, you can make make money betting it. For example, if 18 is showing up 1 in 30 spins, and you bet $10 on it each time, you would win $350 once for every 30 spins, on average, and lose $290 on the other 29 $10-bets. On a "fast" table (40 spins per hour) this means averaging $60 profit for every 30 spins, or about $80-per-hour.
This can be tough, because betting the same number every time is boring. Also, an "average" profit doesn't mean no losing nights. I saw that gentleman who won $80,000 lose $500 some nights. The bias must be sufficient too. This player played numbers only if they came up 1-in-33 spins (151 out of 5,000 spins) or more often. The best wheel had a number that came up 1 in 29 spins, making him as much as $100 per hour for his time, depending on the pace of the game each night.
Why do the wheels have biases? Many reasons. Manufacturing imperfections might cause a bias. A divider between pockets which is higher than others "catches" the ball, causing it to fall on certain numbers more often. Also, a loose divider could absorb the "hit" of the ball causing it to drop rather than bounce off of it as it might normally do.
There are other reasons, but you don't have to know why a bias exists for this roulette system to work, as long as the bias is statistically significant. To know that, you track the results of 5,000 spins or more. Less, and you may be betting on a false-bias. The mathematics can be difficult, but a simple example help explain: Any ten coin tosses can result in seven heads or tails, right? But an unbiased coin won't ever come up heads 7,000 out of 10,000 tosses. Big numbers show true bias.
If you do notice temporary reasons for a bias, like a sticky pocket with a few drops of someone's drink splashed in it, you may want to watch to see if they are corrected (cleaned,in this case). Most biases remain for a while because they are not noticed by management, or their cause is unknown, and replacing roulette wheels is expensive. Of course, cleaning isn't.
A cheap solution some casinos use to thwart "wheel charters," is switching a couple wheels around. If you memorize the wood-grain pattern of the wheel you'll know if it was moved or replaced. This kind of roulette system works only on specific wheels (those with known biases), so you have to know you're at the same wheel each time you play.
Books On "Casino
Secrets"
How do you choose? Read a bit of the book, and if you can't understand why what they are telling you will work, move on. You'll have to exercise your brain, and there will be some math in any good gambling book, but numbers are used to confuse as often as they are used to enlighten, so be sure to find a book that make sense to you.
Note: This is part of the "Unusual Ways"
Newsletter.
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