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I have been asked many times about roulette betting systems and the overall effectiveness of them. Novices tend to believe too much in betting systems and with it the most popular of the lot which is the Martingale. Sceptics basically rip them to pieces but are they correct to do so? Well the true value of roulette betting systems cannot be underestimated. If you wanted to go into a casino on any one individual evening then using a betting system would offer you a fantastic way to end the evening ahead.

One thing that you need to remember about roulette betting systems is that they need not be the Martingale which can quickly spiral out of control because of the doubling up nature of the system. But there are many systems that are used or can be used that are cancellation systems which do not have anywhere the same level of bankroll requirement and certainly do not escalate like the Martingale does.

However where betting systems can prove their effectiveness is when they allow the player to maybe qualify for other casino perks and benefits whilst seeming to be a “player”. Casino comps can sometimes be substantial and it can definitely be in a players best interests to try and qualify for these in the cheapest way possible. In the famous book “Thirteen against the bank” written by Norman Leigh, he described a classic cancellation system that reportedly took the casinos in France for £66,000 which in 1966 was a massive amount of money at that time.

It is well known among certain circles that roulette wheels can often exhibit bias. This basically means wheels that are showing numbers coming more than are statistically normal. On a 37 number wheel then each number will arrive once every 37 spins. Over a long enough series of trials then you will tend to see this distribution or near as damn it. But there are often reasons where certain wheels are showing numbers that are coming more often than what they should be!

This can be to do with temperature differences or the main reason is usually to do with faults that are present inside the actual wheel itself. This could be a looseness in the actual frets or canoes that are absorbing energy as the ball lands and thus warping the outcome of the event.

If this leads to so much as a certain number coming one spin in every 36 spins instead of one in every thirty seven spins then this would allow the player to be at evens with the house. It is easy to see then that if a player was seeing any individual number arrive at a rate of once every thirty fives spins or greater then this would not only reveal a bias but also a bias that was large enough to give the player enough of an edge to make a theoretical profit.

The main problem comes from detecting a true bias and this means that seeing false patterns is all too real with detecting wheel bias. I would ascertain though that any number that was coming more than it should over say 200 spins would merit further investigation. If that continued to as much as 500 spins then it would have to then be taken very seriously and after 1000 spins then wagering money could seriously be considered.

With certain bets on roulette, players can unwittingly increase the house edge against them in that particular situation. One may be forgiven for thinking that the house edge is fixed at roulette but it isn’t and can drift depending on the type of bet that a player places.

I will show a classic example here, one player places a bet of $10 on first and second dozens. This bet wins 2-1 on each winning section and seeing as they can be only one winning bet while the other bet loses, if a number comes first or second dozen then the player wins $10. The winning dozen wins $20 while the losing dozen loses $10 so the net result is a win of $10.

The house edge for this bet is 2.70% but the bet could have been placed better. By splitting the total $20 and placing $15 on the low numbers and the remaining five dollars on the 19-24 six line then he has still covered all of the numbers from 1-24 in the same way that he would have by betting first and second dozen.

If a number from 1-18 comes then the even money low number bet gets paid even money but the bet from 19-24 loses so the bet makes no money but it doesn’t lose any either. This makes the bet seem inferior on the surface but the 19-24 pay-off gets paid 5-1 and this winning bet wins five units minus the one unit loss on 1-18.

The long term pay-off is exactly the same but the difference comes when zero arrives. With the old bet everything is lost but with the new bet then the player gets returned 50% of his bet on low numbers which in this case is $7.50. So every time zero comes the player saves $7.50…….the effect of this reduces the house edge from 2.70% assuming a single zero wheel to only 1.35%.

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Back when I was in gaming, the casino’s never trusted their own staff. Although this is hardly bad because if I owned my own casino then I wouldn’t trust the people who worked for me either.

My experience of human nature is such that if people are given the opportunity to steal and especially when they can get away with it then they will do so. It is just nothing more than human nature. The situation is made worse by the fact that croupiers and casino employees are not well paid compared to other professions.

Although it has to be said that paying staff more money would not deter them from cheating. I have been approached numerous times by crooked punters. They tended to find out where we socialised out of work and then hung out there.

We were expressly forbidden to mix with punters for this very reason although that didn’t stop it from happening. I should have reported these approaches but didn’t as I did not want to stir up any more trouble. I figured that I had been targeted for a reason and that reason was because it was common knowledge that I was disgruntled working in that job.

So it isn’t surprising that certain punters must have heard my conversations with other members of staff in the pit area. But I knew of cases where staff were colluding with punters and there were numerous cases where staff were actually caught stealing. I have heard of cases where chips were passed to punters by all sorts of ways.

I have seen dealers deliberately pay losing bets and I have known that it was deliberate but when you lump all of this together then you can hardly blame casinos for watching their staff.

You wear trousers, shirts and waistcoats without pockets and belts were not allowed where I worked and even watches inside one casino although that was for other reasons as well.

Casino owners do not want punters asking a croupier what time it is and then realising that it is time to go home

see you soon

Carl
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Question……..would a punter be able to spot a biased wheel with the naked eye.

Answer………Almost certainly not

Question…….Would a casino member of staff spot a bias with the naked eye

Answer……..Almost certainly not

The problem with trying to spot a bias is that numbers frequently come in clusters anyway. In this instance then it is exactly the same as lottery numbers, in fact the chances of either lottery numbers or roulette numbers coming out in equal frequency are very remote. If you had 37 spins of a roulette wheel then the chances that these 37 spins would produce all 37 numbers exactly once would be astronomical.

So this means that numbers are getting repeated quite often in the short term and this is entirely normal and merely part of normal random distribution.

So it is difficult or even downright impossible for punters or staff to spot this with the naked eye as they witness normal events that appear like bias every single day when it actually isn’t.

On a 37 number roulette wheel then the bias doesn’t have to be great to totally offset the house edge. On this 37 number wheel, the odds of any one number arriving are 36-1 and the odds that are paid are 35-1.

But if a certain number (for reasons unknown) was arriving not at a rate of once every 37 spins but once in every 36 spins then any punter who recognised this would be playing equal with the house.

Take that one step further and let us say that a number was arriving once in every 35 spins…..now we are into making money territory. Imagine a player who has found a bias on number 17 and was betting $5 per spin.

He was getting 70 spins per hour on a fast game so was wagering $350/hour. But his number was being hit on average one spin in 35 so he was getting 2 winning bets per hour. At 35/1 plus the $5 bet back then this equates to $180×2 = $360.

He has had 68 losing spins at $5 which is $340 and 2 winning spins at $175 per spin so he is $10 in profit. If he can replicate that then he is making $10/hour from a biased wheel. If he doubles his bet then he makes $20/hour and so on.

He is returning $10 on every $350 wagered and is returning 2.85% on turnover. To put this into perspective, this is considerably higher than a conventional blackjack card counter. The difference is that once a wheel like this is found then a player can get away with this and perform this far easier than a card counter.

see you soon

Carl

You recall me talking about “The Salmon”…..if anyone does not understand what I am talking about here then see my previous post. The next instance of me seeing him on roulette occurred a few days later.

I recognised him instantly because of his looks and also because of what he had done on roulette a few days earlier. This time I was watching him like a hawk but I was more concerned in allowing him the opportunity to bet so I could observe him more.

What I didn’t want to do was to blow him away from the table by dealing aggressively and also speeding up the wheel to a ridiculous level. So I kept the wheel at the same speed which was quite slow and before long he was buying in for a £5 stack of colour chips.

He watched my spin for a few minutes and then started to bet. His first few spins missed but each of them was not far away and he was unfortunate enough to have three spins where the ball landed next to his number.

He lost his initial £5 but he then bought some more colour chips and started to spread his bets more. Within thirty minutes he proceeded to win back the money that he had lost and about another £50 on top.

I also noticed that when I left the table for a break……so did he. This got me thinking that there was obviously something about my spin that he liked. I became intensely fascinated by what he was doing and he almost seemed unbeatable. It could just have all been luck so I then decided to track the amount of money that he was winning.

I already knew that he was about £650 ahead over the two sessions that I had seen him. Over the next few months, I managed to watch him an awful lot without him knowing both when he was on my table and also adjoining tables that I could observe clearly.

I kept a running total of bets that I could see. I expanded this by bringing in someone else to help me watch him. We both had a keen interest in controlling a roulette ball and visual prediction. The following three months was alarming, out of a total of 44 sessions, “The Salmon” lost just 7 times and each loss was only in the region of about £20-£50 but when he won he would win anywhere from £50-£150.

These were figures which the casino never bothered to clock but his total over that period was that he was ahead in the region of about £2500……now I was really taking notice.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
Experience the thrill and Play Roulette online at bwin

My first ever encounter with “The Salmon” was memorable. Actually I really ought to point out here that the use of the term “Salmon” has been taken from a blackjack card counter back in the sixties who was dubbed the “Salmon” by casino staff because he was winning and not losing consistently like everyone else. The name came about because Salmon swim up stream against the flow of the water.

This term was in the classic blackjack book “Beat the Dealer” by Ed Thorp and I figured that this name would suit my own version of the “Salmon” on roulette. I recall one early evening at about 7pm, I was dealing on American Roulette 1 when a guy walked up to my table with a couple of his friends. He looked something of a nerd and was about 5ft 9in tall, slightly overweight with a terrible hair style.

He watched the game for a while whilst talking to his associates and he sort of sounded quite irritating. After about fifteen minutes of watching me spin the ball, he then proceeded to place 50p which is £0.50 on number 17. I had no reason to suspect that this wouldn’t be anything more than a losing bet but a few seconds later I was placing the dolly on number 17 and paying him £17.50. He took his chips and put them into his pocket but left the original £0.50p bet on the number.

I gave the ball a big spin and then he appeared to think for a couple of seconds and proceeded to take the cash chips back out of his pocket and place them all back on to number 17. This gave him £18 on the number and this time my eyes were glancing at the wheel as the ball began to slow. With the final half revolution, I knew that it would be close and it was. It bounced around 17 for a second or two until finally coming to rest right in the middle of number 17.

His friends couldn’t believe it and neither could I, this guy had just won £630 from 50p in the space of two spins. A 1260 return on investment but there was nothing to suggest at this stage that this was nothing more than luck and I was sure that it was no more than that…..time would prove me very wrong.

look out for more on “The Salmon”

Carl

Over the years, I have encountered more than my fair share of roulette wheels. From the older high profile wheels to the new John Huxley “Saturn” design with built in bias detection software and electronic readouts.

In my experience, whilst every possible precaution is made by the actual manufacturers themselves to make the wheels unbiased, bias is actually inevitable. Some years ago I was exploring the possibility of bias appearing intermittently and then disappearing again.

I felt that certain atmospheric conditions could contribute towards bias in some instances but I have never been able to properly fathom why this could be the case. Wheels are moved frequently so in the process of moving them then bias can appear.

On several wheels that I have worked on in the past, the diamond shaped canoes have become loose or in some instances the metal pocket dividers that separate the actual numbers have become loose. What happens in these instances is that when the roulette ball makes contact with metal that is loose then the movement of the metal absorbs the energy of the moving roulette ball.

What this means is that the ball is then attracted to a certain area of the wheel and is less likely to be thrown into another area. This type of reaction may seem trivial but when you consider that the house edge at single zero roulette is a mere 1.35% then you can see the effect of a bias and how that can possibly lead to advantages being secured in certain types of situation where you can perhaps ascertain that certain numbers will not arrive on a certain spin.

Think about this for a moment because if you know for instance that given the dynamics of the situation that two numbers will not arrive during this spin then what this means in essence is that you could in theory back all the other 35 numbers where the pay-off is 35-1.

This means that you would return 36 chips and win 1 chip at whatever the chip denomination was. It gets a little more technical than this but this is how you can manufacture an edge at roulette and take advantage of it.

Carl

Many people are put off by the sight of roulette and its apparent complexity. But yet this is far from the truth and to be honest, I find this game to be easier to learn than blackjack. Although it has to be said that if you know how to play Pontoon then you are well on your way to knowing how to play blackjack anyway although in some instances then it can be a handicap.

Everyone knows that you can bet on a number on roulette and that bet pays 35/1. But in most areas where there is a line amongst the numbers or a cross section then you can place a bet there. These bets all pay varying odds and on single zero wheels, there are thirty seven numbers which are 1-36 and zero. The house should pay 36/1 if it was a fair bet but they obviously need an edge to be able to make some money so they only pay 35/1 instead.

Now this edge is very small and is only 1.35%, all those of you who are alert and have already figured out that 100% divided by 37 equals 2.7% have overlooked one tiny thing, the house only takes 50% of even money wagers when zero comes in. The average punter though by bad betting increases this edge quite substantially to a stage where they can easily be conceding around 3% to the house.

This is precisely why very good roulette systems can do so well and why some casinos don’t like them. When you only have a 1.35% edge (assuming single zero wheel) against you and that edge is the number zero for the house (once again assuming that you bet on even chances) then you can go for very long periods of time winning money with roulette systems. The ones that are not doubling up type systems that prohibit reaching the table maximum are perfect and when the online casino in question gives you money to begin with then the dynamic can shift alarmingly.

see you soon

Carl

It is common knowledge that roulette systems fail because of house limits. In fact the great gambling figure of the seventies and eighties John Scarne once remarked how casinos should protect themselves from system players by reducing their maximums and their minimum to maximum ratios.

In theory of course, a casino with no or very high limits and a punter with a massive bankroll could ensure profits. But in reality this simply isn’t the case. The overwhelming majority of system players do not have adequate bankrolls so they stop doubling up before they reach the maximum anyway or they are fearful of losing more money.

The trouble with roulette system players isn’t in the house maximums but in how roulette systems are applied. If you asked any person to describe a roulette betting system then they would undoubtedly talk about the classic doubling system. They may not even know it by name as the “Martingale” but they would be aware of this way of betting.

They could either be unaware of the chances of reaching maximums after a number of losses or they may be thinking along the lines of the house maximums being a deterrent to roulette systems. These are myths and faulty knowledge for the simple reason being that there are many roulette systems that prohibit reaching the table maximum or the chances of it being highly unlikely. They also don’t need a massive bankroll like the Martingale does as many of them are not doubling up systems.

In fact why people persist in the Martingale is beyond me, a sequence of losers with a $5 minimum and a $1000 maximum would go like this….$5, $10, $20, $40, $80, $160, $320, $640. The next bet takes them over the maximum. But a total of $1275 has been lost already, how many players have this sort of money on them and how many would be prepared to take it this far?

What would be the point in risking all this money to win one measly dollar? What would be the point in making yourself incredibly tense and nervous for a dollar in profit? In all my years in gaming I only ever saw one system player reach the maximum who was prepared to bet it on roulette. I saw something similar on blackjack with a player who used basic strategy and a progressive betting system.

But the trouble with roulette systems isn’t the house maximum but the ignorance of the player using the system.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson   www.bwin.com