21. The Eudaemonic Pie

Author…………………….Thomas Bass

Published………………..1985

Publishing Com………Houghton Mifflin

How could I do a book review without looking at one of the most famous roulette books of them all. It is strange because there is no mention of the word roulette in the title. But yet this is the true story of a collection of bright and intellectual computer buffs who designed and built a computer that could predict where the ball was going to land on roulette.

It is years since I last read this book and it is also known by another name as well and that is “The Newtonian Casino“. But even though this is a very dated book now at 25 years old, I found the book to be both interesting and rather inspirational.

The technology that these guys had to make this all work was simply not around at the time but I would be very surprised if somewhere in the world, people were not at least trying to emulate these techniques using modern technology.

If they were and the gaming industry found out about it then they would certainly keep it quiet. Would they really want the world to know how simple it could be to design a program that could predict the outcome of a roulette spin or predict it enough to give the player a substantial edge?

Because this is what it is all about, predicting something enough to give the player an edge. Remember that on single zero roulette, the house edge is only 2.7%. This is 100% divided by the total numbers in the wheel which is 37.

If a computer could predict that just one number would not arrive on a certain spin then this eliminates the house edge totally……two numbers and you have a 2.7% edge. At an average of 30 spins an hour, imagine placing $1000 a spin. This would give the player an hourly turnover of $30k and 2.7% of 30k is $810/hour……..imagine if the edge was greater than this?

For these kinds of potential profits then the geeks are going to be busting a gut to build computers and it must be happening somewhere.

RATING………….10/10

See you soon

Carl
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