Physicists and mathematicians work with probability and predicting the behaviour of systems all the time, and it was perhaps inevitable that some of them would try to use that knowledge to beat the odds at casinos. Paul Halpern has an article where he tells the stories of several famous mathematicians and physicists who did just that. Physics graduate student Albert Hibbs (who would later on co-author with Richard Feynman Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals and become the mission announcer at JPL), and medical student Roy Walford, did precisely that in 1947, studying the properties of roulette wheels for biases they could exploit.
Early wheels were cruder than today's and sometimes had defects. Such flaws, the students realized, offered the key to successful prediction. By studying the mechanical idiosyncrasies of various machines, they developed predictive models, carefully placed bets, and manage to win thousands of dollars. They used much of their earnings to buy a boat and sail around the world.
Later, Edward Thorp, hearing of Hibbs and Walford's exploits tried to do the same thing himself. By then the casinos had fixed the defects that allowed those two to beat the odds, so a new strategy needed to be employed. He made the acquaintance of Claude Shannon, and in 1961, they developed what became the world's first wearable computer... for cheating at roulette.
By 1961, Thorp and Shannon had built and tested the world's first wearable computer: it was merely the size of a cigarette pack and able to fit into the bottom of a specially-designed shoe. Toe switches would activate the computer once the wheel and ball were set into motion, collecting timing data for both. Once the computer calculated the most likely result, it would transmit that value as musical tones to a tiny speaker lodged in an earpiece. The wires were camouflaged as much as possible.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @11:30PM (1 child)
Where is the story here? Stormwyrm is the jackass by the name Ethan Siegel, isn't it?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 28 2017, @01:11AM
He's not a jackass, he is a FAGGOT.
And he is married to a man.
If that doesn't make you want to puke, you aren't much of a man.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @11:46PM (1 child)
S/T
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @11:52PM
Sieg, Heil!
Son of a Jewish postal wanker, that's classic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 28 2017, @12:03AM (1 child)
This is basically like card counting except they counted the number of rotations of the roulette wheel, yeah.
(Score: 1) by Paradise Pete on Sunday May 28 2017, @07:47AM
Only in the sense that some "counting" is involved. By that logic, anything activity that in some way involves summing numbers is "basically the same."
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday May 28 2017, @05:03AM (2 children)
I tried some variation of this while observing that one particular roulette wheel at a local Indian Casino was not very stable -- when customers would lean on the table you could see it visibly tilt. I figured if they didn't care about that, they probably didn't care about some other things.
Anyway, one winter I took up the game as something to do. I'd watch the croupier/wheel combinations to see who would be most predictable then sit down and play. Over time I got a sense of which croupiers launched the ball/spun the wheel the same way. Basically, if I could be confident they'd drop the ball in a 1/4 to 1/3 slice of the wheel at least half the time (*), I had a good chance of making money, certainly better than 6ish% house advantage on a purely random wheel. You have to memorize the wheel because starting position relates to final position when the croupier is very mechanical about doing things the same way every time. I would spend about two - three hours observing and then 10-15 minutes playing when good croupier came in (they switch out constantly).
I limited myself to $100 -- win a hundred: quit; lose a hundred: quit. I kept track of wins and losses and after about 6 months I was +$1300. The thing is, it became incredibly boring. Maybe if I gambled an important amount of money it would have been more interesting, but then, it would suck to be wrong and just fooling myself that I was seeing patterns, and even then, watching and recording became really dull. I basically averaged a $50 win for 3 hours of work at the casino (plus all the effort to learn memorize the order of the numbers on the wheel) -- it started to feel like a dead-end second job barely paying minimum wage, so I quit.
(*) For example, you bet a 12 number sector by betting the 12 contiguous slots. If you lose, you lose $12. If you win, you lose $11, keep the winning chip, and get 35 more (the house advantage comes from them paying you like there are 36 slots, when there are actually 38). So if I could win half the time, I'd lose $23 and make $35, a net of $12 (plus I have the winning $1 chip).
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday May 28 2017, @05:13AM
Also, I'm surprised the article didn't mention Joe Jagger: http://www.roulettestar.com/joseph-jagger.php [roulettestar.com]
He was an engineer in 1800s, went to Monte Carlo, employed a half dozen people to take data on all of the wheels, found a good one, and then won some amount that would translate to about $6M in today's dollars.
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Sunday May 28 2017, @11:04AM
> I basically averaged a $50 win for 3 hours of work at the casino (plus all the effort to learn memorize the order of the numbers on the wheel) -- it started to feel like a dead-end second job barely paying minimum wage, so I quit.
That's not so bad in India.
(Score: 1) by butthurt on Sunday May 28 2017, @03:03PM
If you get the "Forbes Welcome" page, try this:
https://www.webcitation.org/6qnd6CAzu [webcitation.org]