# What happened to the "laser scam" roulette players?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-laser-scam-roulette-players/557712
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [October 19, 2010, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-laser-scam-roulette-players/557712 "2010-10-19T22:36:15Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Dahu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dahu)
#### Post date: [October 19, 2010, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-laser-scam-roulette-players/557712/1 "2010-10-19T22:36:15Z")
[This](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4069629.stm) was a bit of a story back in 2004.
> [@](#):
>
> A group of gamblers who won more than £1m at the Ritz Casino in London by using laser technology have been told by police they can keep their winnings.
> The trio - a Hungarian woman and two Serbian men - were arrested in March but police have apparently decided that they did not break the law.
>
> A laser scanner linked to a computer was allegedly used to gauge numbers likely to come up on the roulette wheel.
My question is, whatever happened to them? I can’t find their names anywhere, their methods, details of the technology involved. No CCTV. Gambling coups are usually well documented, but this story just seems to have ended 6 years ago.
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### Author:  [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2010, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-laser-scam-roulette-players/557712/2 "2010-10-20T01:17:19Z")
It doesn’t seem like a tremendously complex thing. A roulette ball has a ‘capture velocity’ which is quite consistent. As friction slows the ball down, when it reaches the capture velocity the centripetal acceleration of the ball against the wheel isn’t strong enough to prevent it from rolling off the track, and down it goes.
If you can measure the speed of the ball and the speed of the wheel, and you know the position of the ball on the wheel, you can create a database of probabilities for where the ball will leave the track and where the numbers were when that happened. Track that data for an afternoon, then switch the computer into ‘predict’ mode, and when the ball starts spinning, let the laser capture the data. It can then use a table lookup to make a best guess as to the location the ball will land on the wheel.
It won’t be perfect, because the wheel has little vanes and ridges that randomize the ball’s movement. But the randomization isn’t perfect, and all you have to do is be 5.26% better than random at guessing where the ball will land and you can make profit.
Roulette computers that do this have been around for a long time. I think the only difference here is that they used a laser scanner to collect the data rather than having hidden switches in their shoes and such.
The confusing part is that they were allowed to keep their money. They must have found a jurisdiction that doesn’t have a rule against using devices to gamble. If you tried the laser stunt in Nevada, you’d be thrown in jail. Using a device to aid gambling is a felony. Or maybe the loophole is that it appears these players still used their brains to figure out what to bet - the laser appears to have only given them the starting data. But I have my doubts about that.
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### Author:  [@Dahu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dahu)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2010, 9:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-laser-scam-roulette-players/557712/3 "2010-10-20T09:24:22Z")
But what puzzles me is the lack of information on the people involved, how their device was developed, how/where it was tested, what happened afterwards (surely the Ritz scam wasn’t the first and last time this was ever used) etc. Seems to me this must have been a fairly discreet device as it wasn’t spotted at the time (did it use an invisible laser?). Surely this device would be worth a fortune so where can I buy one? What security have the casinos put in place to prevent this happening again, this sort of thing.
The lack of detail sort of makes me begin to doubt that this actually happened, at least not in the way described.
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### Author:  [@firstname](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/firstname)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2010, 9:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-laser-scam-roulette-players/557712/4 "2010-10-20T09:34:42Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#):
>
> The confusing part is that they were allowed to keep their money. They must have found a jurisdiction that doesn’t have a rule against using devices to gamble.
Yeah IIRC they were arrested and banned from a fair number of casinos but it was decided that it was legal.
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### Author:  [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2010, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-laser-scam-roulette-players/557712/5 "2010-10-20T16:48:29Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#):
>
> It doesn’t seem like a tremendously complex thing. A roulette ball has a ‘capture velocity’ which is quite consistent. As friction slows the ball down, when it reaches the capture velocity the centripetal acceleration of the ball against the wheel isn’t strong enough to prevent it from rolling off the track, and down it goes.
>
> If you can measure the speed of the ball and the speed of the wheel, and you know the position of the ball on the wheel, you can create a database of probabilities for where the ball will leave the track and where the numbers were when that happened. Track that data for an afternoon, then switch the computer into ‘predict’ mode, and when the ball starts spinning, let the laser capture the data. It can then use a table lookup to make a best guess as to the location the ball will land on the wheel.
>
> It won’t be perfect, because the wheel has little vanes and ridges that randomize the ball’s movement. But the randomization isn’t perfect, and all you have to do is be 5.26% better than random at guessing where the ball will land and you can make profit.
I don’t understand how they can use that to gamble. Everytime I looked at Roulette - whether in movies or in Casino demonstrations - the croupier says “Rie ne va plus - nothing goes more” and only then starts throwing the ball. So now you start measuring, but are too late to bet.
If you bet before he throws, you have nothing to measure.
Do other countries’ casinos allow betting after the rolling has started, before the ball drops?
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### Author:  [@MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MPB_in_Salt_Lake)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2010, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-laser-scam-roulette-players/557712/6 "2010-10-20T17:14:16Z")
> [@constanze](#):
>
> Do other countries’ casinos allow betting after the rolling has started, before the ball drops?
Yes, in the US, (at least in Nevada) you can bet while the ball is in motion, but the croupier stops the bets a few seconds before the ball lands…
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### Author:  [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2010, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-laser-scam-roulette-players/557712/7 "2010-10-20T17:18:55Z")
> [@Dahu](#):
>
> But what puzzles me is the lack of information on the people involved, how their device was developed, how/where it was tested, what happened afterwards (surely the Ritz scam wasn’t the first and last time this was ever used) etc. Seems to me this must have been a fairly discreet device as it wasn’t spotted at the time (did it use an invisible laser?). Surely this device would be worth a fortune so where can I buy one? What security have the casinos put in place to prevent this happening again, this sort of thing.
>
> The lack of detail sort of makes me begin to doubt that this actually happened, at least not in the way described.
It’s happened before in the 70s with the shoe computer, so I don’t see any reason to doubt it happened again since then.
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### Author:  [@Yarster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yarster)
#### Post date: [October 20, 2010, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-laser-scam-roulette-players/557712/8 "2010-10-20T18:22:28Z")
In terms of how to detect if the scam is occurring again, my guess is that the laser is infrared, and it is simple enough to get an infrared detector, which would spot the laser and put it on all the eye in the sky cameras. Hell, with all the money these casinos have, I’m sure they have a multi or hyperspectral solution that can detect both infrared and ultraviolet lasers. I assume the laser must have been concealed on their body or in a purse of other item that required particular positioning to get a good field of view for both the ball and the wheel to properly calculate speed. My guess is the positioning is probably what gave them away since whatever it was, it was consistent whenever the ball went out.
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### Author:  [@colinsk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colinsk)
#### Post date: [August 11, 2011, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-laser-scam-roulette-players/557712/9 "2011-08-11T01:03:31Z")
They walked free:
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk\_news/4069629.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4069629.stm)
And kept 1.3M pounds!