Is Roulette Rigged? Unveiling the Truth of the Casino Classic

Ah yes, the mystery and allure of the roulette wheel.  The sound of the ball spinning, the click of the chips, the ball hitting the canoes, bouncing across the frets and finally dropping in the winning number.

So intoxicating, so exciting . . .

Today we’re going to look at roulette.

An in-depth, ‘why would a casino cheat you’ exploration of the ins and outs of how they could, and why they absolutely won’t.

Let’s dive in . . .

What does ‘Is It Rigged’ mean? 

Here is a dictionary definition:

Rigged: Manipulated or controlled by deceptive or dishonest means

Is the casino or the dealer doing something illegal or dishonest to make sure you lose and the casino wins?

And the answer, in any regulated jurisdiction, is always going to be ‘not a chance’. 

So in a Legit Operation?  Never Going to Happen!

Here’s why:

A typical modern roulette wheel is a technical marvel, manufactured to extremely fine tolerances, like a Formula 1 racing engine.

TCS Huxley or Cammegh are two of the most highly-respected manufacturers of roulette wheels worldwide.

Do you really think these massive international companies are going to risk their multi-million dollar businesses to cheat you out of your $50, or $200, or $2,000 by supplying a gaffed wheel?

I can tell you that an American roulette game, with a single and a double zero, has a House Advantage of 5.26%. 

Which is higher than most of the other casino table games. 

Please read our House Advantage guide to understand how you get to that percentage.  

Which translates into a hold percentage (how much of the money in the drop box the casino keeps) of approximately 24%.

When I was the Vice President of Casino Operations at a large casino in the USA, we had a million dollars a day coming across my 75+ tables.

And the roulette games won almost ¼ of what was in their drop box.

Roulette is one of the games with the highest percentage hold, but for the whole table games department, we would typically win about $180,000 per day. More on the weekends. Less on the weekdays.

Every day.  All year.

$180,000 x 365 = $65,700,000.

Yes – that’s $65 million plus.

Do you really think I would tolerate, or even consider having someone work for me who was stupid enough to try and cheat my players out of a couple of hundred dollars when they are giving me millions legally every year?

Here’s another reason.  And for me personally, a much better reason:

If we got caught, the first thing that would happen is the casino loses its license to operate.

Getting a key license to work in a casino is a challenge.  The legitimate casino business is one of the most heavily regulated businesses in the world.  More regulated than the banks.  More regulated than the nuclear industry.

When I got my Louisiana key license to work at Harrah’s in New Orleans, I went through the 1 ½ inch deep, hard-copy application with a Louisiana State Trooper.

Who removed his sidearm and placed it on the table across from me just before we started.

One of the questions was ‘What union affiliations did your maternal grandmother have?’ 

There were many more questions just like it.

This is serious business.

Am I going to risk losing my fabulous, well-paid job for the rest of my life (that I absolutely loved, btw!) to cheat you out of your $100?

Would you?  I didn’t think so.  Not a chance!

The Concept of Rigging

It’s possible that in the past, in a non-regulated environment, unscrupulous fly-by-night operators might consider using magnets or altering the size of the pockets to affect the random outcome of a roulette wheel.

These days, in a regulated jurisdiction, there is not a chance of that happening.

If you go to a casino that is run by shady characters outside of a regulated environment, you may find yourself on the wrong end of ‘rigging’, but not in a real casino run by professionals.

What Does It Mean for a Game to Be Rigged? Common Methods of Rigging Games

Can a roulette dealer control the ball to hit a number, or a section of the wheel?

I dealt roulette off and on for years. 

When I first started dealing roulette, one of the first things I thought of was ‘What if I could hit a number’. 

So I tried.  Not on a live game of course, but during a dead period. 

I tried, I really did. 

Ha – not a chance.

And I tried everything to make it happen. 

Slowed the wheel down.  Slowed the ball down. 

Released the ball over the same number over and over while slowing the wheel down. 

Released the ball over a slowly advancing or declining number with the wheel at a really controlled slow speed.

Slowed the ball down even more!

For a few weeks.  I really wanted to know if it was possible.

Not a chance.

Was I the best roulette dealer in the world?  Ha – no!

But I was pretty good. 

I was a supervisor for years, sometimes on roulette.

At Bally’s in Las Vegas.

And I dealt roulette at the Playboy Club in London, at Harrah’s in Las Vegas, and a very short spell dealing roulette at the Paradise Island Casino in Nassau, in the Bahamas. 

It’s called Atlantis now.

Can it be done?  I watched dealers try.  For years.

The short answer is no. 

Oh, there were guys who said they could do it. 

But the (not that) surprising truth was they could hit a number about once every 38 spins or so.  Hmmm – funny that, isn’t it?

And hitting a section of the wheel?  Nope, they couldn’t do that to order either.

Roulette Canoes and Rigging

See those diamond-shaped obstructions?  They’re called canoes.  And they interrupt the flow of the ball.  The first wheel below has 8 or them.  And the ball itself bounces around all over the place once it drops from the track.

You can custom order the number of canoes.

On an older wheel like the one above, there are frets that are locked in place that could possibly expand, contract, or distort.

I’ve never seen it, but I suppose they could if the wheel was old enough.

Of course, at that point an observant player could bet the numbers that keep coming up more often than the others.  Right? 

But then he’s betting on the numbers that hit more, not less. Using a biased wheel to win, not lose.

Usually, the first part of the wheel to wear out is the bearings, which get replaced as part of the normal maintenance.  Then the next part is the track, where the dealer spins the ball.  And then you need a new wheel.

On the newer wheels, the part of the wheel where the ball lands is made from one piece of cast metal.

On some other wheels, like the first one, the cast is concealed for aesthetic reasons.

The Cammegh wheel above has 12 canoes.  They come with up to 16 canoes. I always preferred the 12 canoe models because the 16s took forever for the ball to settle. 

Too slow for the players.

And hitting a section with 12 or more canoes to get in the way?  Good luck with that.

How about magnets? Can they magnetize the pockets?

Modern wheels are free-standing. 

To magnetize the wheel, they would have to mount the magnets inside the wheel.

It would need to have a switching system to turn them on and off.

No point in having it attract the ball to all the black numbers if the player is betting black, right?

So you would need wires going into the wheel to turn them on and off. 

Very easy to spot.

Random Number Generators (RNGs)

Think of RNGs like a super-smart random number maker. When you play online roulette, this random number maker decides where the ball lands in a way that’s meant to be completely unpredictable and fair.

How RNGs Make Things Fair

• Before an online casino can use an RNG, it gets checked out by experts to make sure it’s doing its job right. These experts test it to make sure the results are fair and that the numbers are random, just like they should be.
• The RNG starts with something called a "seed." You can think of it like a starting point that helps the RNG mix up the numbers in a way that’s random. This seed makes sure that the numbers you see are not predictable.
• The RNG uses special math formulas to make the numbers. These formulas are designed to create numbers that are as random as possible.
• Reputable online casinos use RNGs that have been certified by independent organizations. These organizations check that everything is fair and up to the highest standards.

And yes, by all means try to track and manipulate that. 

Go ahead. 

A casino is a legitimate business just like any other. It has a set profit margin that it expects to make, and each game has a built-in House Advantage, so the profit margin is a known quantity. 

It doesn’t need to use shady tactics to meet its business goals. 

It already knows how much it’s supposed to make. 

How to Tell if a Roulette Wheel is Rigged

First up, check that the wheel is free-standing.   

You should be able to see that the wheel isn’t mounted into a piece of furniture, and you can see the entire structure of the wheel. No wires protruding (except for the camera that tracks the ball and feeds the video to the scoreboard if they have one).

Watch as the ball drops from the track. Does it do anything ‘unnatural’? 

I watched a YouTube video of a guy who was taking the position that roulette is always rigged. 

And lo and behold, the magnets in his video were so strong that my granny would have been suspicious. It was very funny because it was so obviously faked. It looked like a Charlie Chaplin movie.

One thing you may see is called ‘a floater’.  It’s when the ball starts to roll above the numbers but doesn’t drop into one. It happens because the rotation of the wheel causes the ball to roll along the numbers at the same speed as the wheel is rotating. 

And it can go on for minutes.  Usually the supervisor will call ‘floater’, and ‘no spin’ and the dealer will retrieve the ball and spin it again.

What about a magnetic ball?  And a magnetic pocket, or pockets?

Well, the ball is going to be attracted to the same magnetic pockets, isn’t it? 

So the player just has to watch for a while and bet on the numbers that keep repeating. 

And win over and over again. Hmmm – maybe not that, then. 

Or the magnetic pockets have the north pole to the ball’s south pole?

Then just bet on the numbers that haven’t hit for hours. Hmmm – maybe not that then, either.

How about online? 

Well, you need to make sure you are playing on a licensed website from a reputable casino provider.

The regulatory license will be displayed on the front page of the casino website.

And the software will be from a well-respected provider.

Oh – and the cash transactions aren’t handled by the websites.

And the websites don’t have access to the software – only the developers do.

How about the ‘Live Dealer’ websites?

The dealers get paid whether you win or lose.  Why would they be involved in anything like that?  What’s in it for them? Ah, that’s right. They get to lose their license if they do anything illegal!

And the roulette games have a built-in House Advantage. It’s well-known to be 5.26% on an American double zero wheel, and 2.7% on a European single zero wheel. 

And we won’t even mention the Triple Zero wheel. If you’re worried about online casino websites and you’re okay playing a Triple Zero wheel, we need to talk!

Signs of a Rigged Wheel

Many casinos have a scoreboard for the players to keep track of the numbers as they hit. 

The old-school ones will offer you a scorecard with colored crayons to keep track of the numbers as they hit.

Look for anomalies, things that make you go ‘hmmm’. 

Like 7 red numbers in a row. Or 10 black numbers in a row.

But just be aware, these runs happen every day in a busy casino. 

Every. Day.

Or the same number hitting twice in a row. Or three times in a row. Or four times in a row!

Every. Day. 

Okay – I’ve seen four times in a row a couple of times, but never every day. 

Or what are the chances in a craps game of one dice landing on top of the other, after having been thrown down a 16-foot table and bouncing off the back wall. I saw that twice in one week in the Bahamas. And never again.

You get the picture. 

There was an old roulette table from the 1920s sold in a Chicago antique store about 5 years ago. 

They discovered that it had a battery pack concealed in one of the legs of the table.  The roulette dealer would use it to activate a small pin that would stick out of the track, forcing the ball to drop into the wheel before it would naturally fall out of the track, into a pre-selected set of numbers.

Maybe it came from the illegal riverboat joint that one of my mentors worked at in Steubenville, Ohio. 

Dear old Frankie was a dealer there when he was a young man. 

You were the best, Frankie, and taught me a lot! 

The boat was owned and operated by Al Capone.

Maybe a brake on the wheel to slow it down to prevent you from hitting your numbers? 

I would say too easy to spot the dealer activating the brake. .

Professional Inspection Methods - Techniques Used by Regulators and Experts

Once a week, I would have a gaming tech check the roulette wheels.  With one of these:

Some of them include a spirit-level. Some are more technologically advanced than that.  And the wheels would be rotated to ensure a completely fair and random spin.

And (usually) about once a month or so, the Gaming Commission would come and check the wheels with the manufacturer’s technician.

By taking the whole wheel apart and making sure all the bearings and inner workings weren’t worn, maladjusted or biased.

A modern wheel looks something like this on the inside.

Note the 16 canoes and the one-piece cast section where the pockets are located.

Is Roulette Rigged in Vegas?

The two major casino group owners in Las Vegas are Caesar’s Entertainment and MGM Resorts. 

Between the two of them, they own about half of the casinos on the Las Vegas Strip.

They also own multiple properties across the country, and in exotic foreign locations, too.

Their corporate revenues per year are in excess of $10 Billion.

How much damage do you think would be done to their business if it was discovered that they were running gaffed roulette wheels in Las Vegas to beat players out of their $150 or $200? 

They would be the laughing stock of the entire casino business, not to mention that players would stop going to play there.

Is it possible that a small casino on the outskirts of town might consider it?  I suppose it could be. 

When I first went to Vegas, I worked at a couple of them. 

And all the staff there were incredibly protective of their gaming licenses. 

Because without a license, you can’t work in a casino.  Anywhere. Ever again.

So no, it’s highly unlikely that you will run into a rigged roulette game in Las Vegas. 

It’s just not going to happen.

Why Some People Believe a Roulette Table Can Be Fixed

Everyone has seen casino movies where these sorts of things are happening.

Of course, the movies are long on story, and short on fact. 

Its really difficult to fix a roulette table so that no one notices. 

Psychological Factors - The Impact of Losing Streaks and Confirmation Bias.

When a player hits a 6-time losing streak, they take the position, ‘it must be rigged, this can’t happen in a fair casino’.  But when they hit a 6-time winning streak, it’s because they’re a good guy, that the streak is perfectly normal, and they deserve to hit it. 

Here’s my favorite confirmation bias story that happened to me. 

I was the GM of a casino in Oklahoma.

One of my regular $1 slot players who always complained that I had the slots set too tight (literally, every time I saw him!), hit a $24,000 jackpot. 

I was on the casino floor and went over to congratulate him on his fine win. 

And as soon as I got there, as the slot attendant was counting out $24,000 in cash into his hand, he said, ‘Your goddamn machines are still too tight’.  And he meant it. 

And they ignore any new information that doesn’t match those theories.

Mistrust in Gambling Establishments

Why is there such a mistrust of gambling establishments?  

Because the movies we’ve all seen are based in the near-distant past of about 50 – 100 years ago. 

When the mob ran many of the casinos in Las Vegas.  And other places, too. 

Because it makes for a far more entertaining movie than if Jimmy Stewart is the benevolent casino boss, helping his downtrodden staff get through their day.  

Maybe it’s Bogey telling the kid in Casablanca to bet on 22.  And then bet it again, and it hits twice in a row. 

Ocean’s Eleven?  Never going to happen. 

Watching Nicky Santoro in the movie ‘Casino’, getting buried in a corn field in Iowa makes for a good movie scene.  

Especially when you know it actually happened to a real mob guy whose name was Tony Spilotro. 

Conclusion

Bottom line these days is no, roulette isn’t rigged.  It may have been in the past, but highly unusual, even then.

And now, it simply doesn’t make any sense at all. 

No one is going to go to the extraordinary lengths they would need to go to, to cheat someone in that way.

It’s simply not worth the effort.

Final Thoughts

It’s important to check the legitimacy of any casino website you’re thinking about playing. So make sure you research the website you’re interested in.

We also have our approved casinos that we have researched and approved.  We check their integrity, their financial background, and make sure they offer a fair and secure gambling experience to players. 

We give them our Token Of Trust. 

And no, they can’t buy it.  We have strict rules, and very high standards. 

And we don’t alter or create any of the ratings on our website.