I hear anecdotal evidence that skilled casino dealers can fairly accurately hit if not a given number, then certainly a section of the roulette wheel. I just can’t see it, seems like too many random variables to me. Also if it were possible, surely it would be easy for them to help their friends to win, and almost undetectable.
Anyone know the straight dope?
IANACroupier, but I watched an episode of a show called “Breaking Vegas” that was about a Spanish family who observed roulette wheels in casinos across Europe, monitoring the wheels to discover how their uneven patterns of wear led to numbers within certain sections of the wheel landing more often. They would then lay bets on the section of the wheel that contained those numbers. Presumably a croupier, if s/he wanted to invest the time, could do the same thing.
Absent cheating, it’s impossible. It’s simply too random. The tiniest puff of air, a thousandth of a different in the force applied to the ball, can put it literally anywhere else on the wheel. A few micrometres will put the ball on the opposite side of the wheel when it ticks off a ridge.
Even what Otto suggests would only allow betting to pay off over time, not give you the ability to plunk the ball down ina s pecific spot on a given spin.
Read The Eudaemonic Pie. looks like the whole thing is online. The same guys who invented card counting decide to take on roulette. They buy a couple roulette tables and work out the physics equations to predict where the ball will land. Remember, the croupier still allows bets while the ball is spinning. An agent clicks each time the ball passes one full rotation. They need 3 (maybe 4) clicks to be able to predict a 1/8th sector of the wheel well over half the time. This information is computed and transmitted back to the agent before the croupier stops bets. Hey, it’s just physics, right? This is enough of an edge to make themselves a fortune.
Sadly, they have this idea back in the early days of computing and are never able to fully get the software and hardware reliable enough. There are several funny stories though. One time the agents wires short out. He is being lightly electrocuted, but has to pretend nothing is happening while he slowly strolls to the mens room where he rips off all his clothes and wires screaming in agony. More or less.
(I read this about 20 years ago, I may have the facts slightly off.)
At any rate, if a computer can do it with 3 or 4 data points, it’s not inconceivable to me that a human could do it with more data points.
I used to work in casinos, there was a phenomenon among roulette dealers known as “section spinning”.
If they saw themselves spin in the same section 3 or 4 times in a row they thought that it’s because they were just doing this mundane repetitive task that they had somehow fallen in to a pattern of spinning up the same section.
The truth is that it was bs.
It’s the same as people that think after 4 red numbers, a black is due.
But it IS possible.
If someone could send the ball witht he exact same force in the exact same places while the wheel was in the exact same position everytime, then i imagine you’d see some true “section” spinnings. (ETA: Plus outside, uncontrollable effects such as air pressure, temperature etc)
But it’s also possible that someone could break snooker balls in the exact same way every time.
I misunderstood the OP. So if a croupier can’t “aim” for a particular sector, could he/she predict what sector the ball would end up in while bets were still out? Slightly easier task…
Have you ever seen a casino roulette wheel in use? They spin the wheel, then spin the ball, hard, the opposite way. Now, I suppose they could maybe always spin the ball from the same point, with the wheel in the same place, at the same strength. But then when the ball falls down to the moving part of the wheel, it reacts pretty much randomly. I don’t believe any human is capable of achieving the first part, anyway.
“Breaking Vegas” did an episode on these guys too. Man I loved that show.
The late gambling writer John Scarne claimed that, in the bad old days of Vegas, croupiers could indeed hit a certain section of the wheel. This, however, was in the time before two important changes were made to the roulette wheel: first, that the wheel was spun in the opposite direction to the way the ball was spun; and, second, that small raised sections which caused the ball to bounce randomly when they were struck were added to the rim of the wheel. Both of these changes did a lot to randomize the eventual location of the ball. Scarne was known for telling whoppers, though, so take that with a grain of salt.
Then there’s rigged wheels, but that’s a whole 'nother story.
I did some IT consulting work for a casino company a couple of years back, at one of their staff meetings they showed a video of a group that used PDAs, wireless signaling, team betting and spin counting to predict where the ball would land. I don’t remember where they operated, maybe Australia.
I think what made it profitable was the relatively large payouts at roulette, 35-1, 17-1, and 8-1 depending how the bet was placed, so narrowing down the odds to a smaller section of the wheel would still pay off.