Referring to the upthread Bloomberg article, the step after that would have involved some unpleasant conversations with law enforcement if you were in London, and broken knuckles if you were in a more colorful part of the world. And possibly millions of winnings, though not billions.
Interesting though. Thirty years ago, the idea that you could beat roulette was crackpot stuff. Then it became, “Well, maybe with a computer.” Only recently has it been grasped that older style roulette wheels could be exploited with sharp eyes and quick hands placing bets at the last moment.
I think your explanation misses the mark a bit. I think the reason that standing on a 16 against a 7 being worse than a 10 is that a 7 is more likely to be a 17 or 18 whereas a 10 is more likely to be a 20. Therefore if you hit against a 10 and get a low card you have more chance to still lose than hitting against a 7. Standing against either is more or less of equal value.
There’s this documentary on Prime where this professional blackjack player travels the country and deals with a lot of stuff that’s been mentioned. It’s called Inside the Edge, I think. The first hour is pretty interesting.
I came in to say this. As I understand it rules are set by the state gaming commission. They want the tax revenue but will also fine any place that breaks the many laws. Off the top of my head the line of underage fans for a Star Trek exhibit at one casino ended up extending onto the gaming floor. There was a large fine even though no one underage was actually gambling
You can justify it a number of ways, the simplest being “Against a dealer’s ten, if you make a hand better than 17 you are still likely to lose or push”, whereas against a dealer’s seven you can make 17, 18, 19, 20 or 21 and have a good chance to win.
But the real answer is because we’ve run hundreds of millions of hands of perfectly simulated blackjack and know the exact odds of every play. There is no guesswork. Blackjack is completely deterministic and every move can be calculated to an arbitrary number of decimal points.
Would a casino accept the bet if someone walked in and placed a huge bet on a single spin of the wheel black or red? Or do they typically limit the size of roulette bets?
But that’s just not true. If you are playing a game of pure chance and you go on a winning streak by sheer luck, they encourage you to keep playing. Conversely, they will throw skilled card counters out before they win any money, if they can catch them early.
So they don’t throw people out for winning.
They throw people out when they find a way to circumvent the basic premise for the existence of casinos, that the house has a statistical edge. That’s a violation of an obvious rule, whether or not the rule is written down explicitly, and whether or not the rule is a fair one. Obviously if casinos were fair, they wouldn’t exist.
Each casino is different. Most tables / wheels / whatever have a posted min & max bet allowed. But for the right amount of money those policies can be waived.
If I wanted to place a $100K bet on a roulette wheel I would not walk into a cheap casino & try that on the 50 cents to 5 dollar table. I’d walk into a higher end large casino and walk up to the high-limits area host / gate guards and ask to play at their $500-$5000 table. Then after a few hands / spins ask the manager in there if I could place my $100K bet.
They’d be talking to their grandboss before they said “yes” or “no”. But “yes” is not out of the question. It would certainly help if your name was Bond. James Bond.
Absolutely this. Say you’re clearly employing a Martingale betting strategy and have managed to build up some substantial winnings. They will do everything humanely possible to keep you at that table because a few losses in a row will rapidly earn the casino all that money back.