Roulette Computer: Can You Outsmart the Casino?

Today we’re going to take a look at roulette computers.              

These are small, usually concealed devices that measure ball speed and wheel speed and based upon previous spins, the likely numbers that the ball will drop into once it comes to rest.

Then it’s up to the player to get their bets down after the dealer releases the ball, and before she calls ‘No More Bets’.

The objective of this article is to look into those claims, and to give you some recommendations as to whether you should consider using a roulette computer to help you win when playing roulette.

Let’s get started.

How Do Basic Roulette Computers Work?

They all have similar functions, and those are to track the speed of the wheel, and to track the speed of the ball. 

A simple computer program determines the likely time the ball will drop and calculates the numbers that will be below the ball as it drops from the track.

Based on previous results recorded from the same wheel and ball, using the same dealer (although that’s not necessary at all), the computer selects a likely landing spot for the ball.

Some of the less sophisticated computers are manual, and the player must click a button as the ball and wheel are spinning to input the information that the computer requires to do it’s calculations.

The ball usually hits a couple of the canoes (called diamonds in Australia) more often than the rest, and these are called the ‘dominant diamonds’

This may be because the wheel isn’t perfectly level and the slight tilt favors one or two particular ‘diamonds’.  I suspect it’s more likely that it’s because gravity causes the ball to fall from the track at a consistent location due to its declining speed over the ‘dominant diamonds’. 

When the ball is passing the most dominant diamond, the player clicks the button, or pushes the clicker with his big toe etc, and then does it again when the zero passes the dominant diamond. 

The computer then calculates the likely landing spot for the ball, based on the decaying ball speed and the wheel speed, and previous information recorded by the player. 

Does it sound a bit ‘Rube Goldberg’ to you?  

Yes, me too.

Source: vernier.com

With a manual piece to the ball and wheel tracking, even a 20-millisecond difference will place the ball a few inches away from the ‘drop zone’, so the manual system is probably not very efficient.

Roulette Wheels - Then vs. Now

Typically, the modern wheels are too sophisticated to be susceptible to the predictive software found in most roulette computers. 

The old-style wheels that I learned to deal on had deep pockets with high frets and it was hard for the ball to bounce out of the pocket once it had found its way there.

The pockets looked like this:

Source: cgtrader.com

As you can see, the frets cover almost 75% of the ball.  It’s very difficult for the ball to escape from such a deep pocket, and there was a reason they were designed that way. 

The faster the ball settles, the more win/loss decisions are made per hour and the more money the casino makes.  Back in the day, there were no roulette computers to worry about, so the wheels all had deep pockets and settled quickly.

The pockets on this modern wheel are so low, plus the inside of the pocket is scalloped to facilitate the ball moving in and out of several pockets before it finally settles.

The more modern versions of the roulette computers have a small hidden camera tracking the ball and the wheel speed and then they provide the player with a number (or two or three numbers) where the ball is most likely to land.

And as Mr. Howe correctly states, ‘you only need to be right a few times out of 35 to make money from the predicted numbers’.

How Roulette Computers Are Used 

Obviously the first challenge would be making sure you’re buying your computer from a reputable company that isn’t going to sell you a computer that they know doesn’t work, and then disappear once they’ve got your money.

And then you must be sure that the computer they’re selling you actually works and works on the roulette wheel you’re going to be playing.

Once you have found your reputable company to buy from, and the computer they’ve sent you actually works, now you have to learn how to use it.

Which is probably the easy part – although practicing in a live casino may not be the most discreet thing to do in a casino.

And here’s the thing that may trip you up that you probably haven’t thought of.

Once the computer tells you the likely numbers to hit, you have to get your bets down before the dealer says ‘No More Bets’.

And for me, that means knowing the wheel so well you don’t have to think about the numbers you’re betting on.

A neighbor bet is a five-piece bet that includes the number and the two numbers on each side of it ON THE WHEEL.

Numbers on the layout are easy to find.  32 is right between 31 and 33.

But on the wheel, they’re all over the place. 

On a single zero wheel, 32 has the zero on one side, and 15 on the other.

A Practical Example 

Let’s say the computer tells you the ball is likely to drop in 27 or 8.

I suppose you could just bet on those two numbers, but I would want more coverage than that.  Where the roulette ball lands is fairly fluid, so I would bet both those numbers and the neighbors to give the ball an arc of the wheel to settle in.

So now you must bet on 27 and the neighbors, and 8 and the neighbors.

And those numbers are 34, 6, 27, 13, and 36, and 10, 23, 8, 30, and 11.

And you have about five seconds to place those 10 bets so you don’t have time to find the numbers on the wheel and then bet on them. 
You must know the wheel so well that you can simply place the bet.

On a European wheel that has the Racetrack printed on the layout, it’s simple. Place your 10 chips on the layout and say to the dealer 27 and the neighbors and 8 and the neighbors and the dealer will place the bet on the Racetrack for you.

And then once you start winning, the dealer will immediately start to put two and two together.

So perhaps you don’t have the dealer put up the neighbor bets for you. 

You can’t put the bets up on the Racetrack yourself, so you need to know the number layout on the wheel perfectly, with immediate recall.
Is it hard to do? 

No, it’s not. 

When I was a dealer, I dealt all the games, but craps was my main game.

There was a period when I dealt roulette on a European wheel one or two days a week for a couple of months.  The Tier, Les Voisins, the neighbor bets and so on.  I loved it, btw.

(And thank you Playboy Club for teaching me to deal roulette, and to Bunny Colette for your incredible skill and expertise that you were willing to share with me).

And I found that I became very familiar with the most popular numbers and their neighbors quite quickly. 

So it wouldn’t take long to learn them all if I was really motivated to do it. 

How do you use Roulette Computers undetected?

That’s a great question.
 
Having been on the other side of the cameras, I can tell you we have a few PTZ (Pan, Tilt, Zoom) cameras that we use to take a look at you as you play.

And the cameras we have these days are good enough to tell me if the watchmaker’s name is Seiko or Rolex.

We’re watching your hands and feet to see if you’re tapping or clicking or making any unusual movements, and of course we’re taking into account if you’re betting after the ball is released and which numbers you’re betting on.

 Are Roulette Computers Legal?

Let’s take a look at the disclaimer that is usually in the first paragraph of some of the sales materials that are on the internet advertising roulette computers for sale.

We are not recommending or endorsing the use of cheating devices. This page is here for information purposes only.

‘Cheating devices’? ‘For information purposes only’?

Why would they say that if they’re legal?

Perhaps it’s too simplistic to say ‘because a roulette computer would help me win, and casinos don’t want anyone to win’. 

Which is not true.  If the players never win, they would never play.  

And casinos routinely allow players to have a Blackjack Basic Strategy card on the table with no issues. 

I have to say, in every jurisdiction where I worked, with a license issued by the regulatory body that oversaw the operation of every casino in the jurisdiction, it was a felony or equivalent to use such a device. 

For the UK, I have seen conflicting information, so I phoned one of the Grosvenor casinos (a large British entertainment company that has about 50 casinos in the UK) and asked one of their managers what their policy is.

Ultimately I decided to contact the UK Gambling Commission for their view of whether they are legal in the UK.  I also contacted the regulatory body that oversees all the French casinos, and the body that oversees all the casinos in the European Union.

And for good measure, I also contacted the Malta Gaming Authority who oversee many online casinos.

So hopefully we may have an answer before we publish this article.

If not, I will update it as the updated information becomes available.

And where exactly did I work both as an operator and as a licensed consultant? 

The list includes the UK, the Bahamas, Nevada, California, Washington State, Louisiana, Arizona, Mississippi, New Mexico, Minnesota, and Manitoba in Canada. 

The jury is still out on the UK, but seemingly everywhere else? 

Illegal.

Are Roulette Computers a Scam?

I’m sure some are.

I’m equally sure that some do provide some or all of the information that they say they’re going to provide, so the answer to the question is ‘not all of them’.

The accuracy of their prediction software remains to be seen. 

From my research into this fascinating subject, go here.

seems to be the one that offers the most. 

It is run by an Australian guy called Mark Howe who is apparently based in Melbourne.  

He has a good sales pitch, and notes that his product is legal in approximately 50% of casinos, mostly in Europe. 

And I don’t believe that for a second.*  

He states that a team from Eastern Europe beat the Ritz Casino in London for over £1 Million in the early 2000s using technology similar to his.

Which is partially true. They did win over £1 Million.  

But unfortunately for Mr. Howe, Niko Tosa, the team leader, has always claimed that he never used any kind of computer to help him identify where the ball was going to land.

He has stated in a few interviews that he never used a computer, and that he trained himself to assess where the ball would land. 

Check the FAQs for how you might be able to do that.  I believe it’s possible. 

Go here and here for more about Niko Tosa’s play at the Ritz.

(Full disclosure – my sister was a roulette supervisor at the Ritz in London, although not when this team was playing there).

What Mr. Howe doesn’t tell you in the video is that although the team were arrested, they were ultimately released without punishment.  He allows you to infer that they were released because the use of a computer isn’t illegal.

The real reason they were released without punishment is because the laws governing their play in effect at that time were written in the mid-1840s, and of course, computers and cell phones did not exist then.

If Mr. Tosa and his team tried to run their game with today’s laws, and had actually used a computer, they would still be in jail. 

Mr. Howe lists the prices for his computers from $3,000 to $80,000.

My Best Advice to You 

My thoughts on this subject are ‘caveat emptor’, or Buyer Beware!

So be very careful. 

Lots of unwary people have been scammed by unethical people on the internet. 

To start with, I have some serious reservations about the alleged legality of these devices, and there also seems to be a general lack of awareness among the general public that people try to scam casinos every day. 

Yes.  Every. Day.

And the good folks who work in casinos aren’t stupid. 

We’re not oblivious to the attempts to scam us. We’ve seen a lot.

Oh – and we can ban people for any reason we like.  Or no reason at all.

I spent almost half of my 35+ years in the casino business on the casino floor, dealing and watching games.
I’ve dealt and watched hundreds of hours of live roulette.  It might easily be thousands of hours.

As a Director or Vice President, I’ve scanned players from several angles with PTZ cameras. We didn’t know what they were doing, but they were definitely

JDLRs. 

And once you see the foot tap, or the hand-in-pocket movement right after the dealer releases the ball, or the late section or neighbor bet right before the dealer calls ‘no more bets’, and a player who can make those neighbor bets right off the top of his head, it’s not so hard to figure out what’s going on.

And how do we respond to that when we see it? 

There are two very simple responses.

The first is we assign a new dealer onto the game, and as they’re going on to the table, we tell the new dealer, ‘Please spin the ball for three revolutions before it drops, and call ‘No More Bets’ as soon as you release the ball’.

This has zero effect on the profitability of the game because the dealer spins the ball later than usual, but the spin lasts for a shorter period of time. The other players’ comfort isn’t compromised because they can all get their bets down in time, and the game runs at the same speed as usual.

And the second option was to call the Gaming Commission and have the ‘to arrest or to not arrest’ conversation.

It’s an interesting conversation to be a part of, and too detailed to go into here, but I’ve been in those conversations and based on what was happening, sometimes we arrested the perpetrator(s), and sometimes we didn’t.

Conclusion

Roulette computers are a somewhat new entry into the ‘new technology to try and beat the odds in a casino’ stakes.  As a long-time casino operations guy, at all the levels from dealer to Vice President, it’s interesting to read the claims made by the sellers of these computers.

The casino staff are not oblivious to the fact that a few people are constantly trying to find a way to overcome the House Advantage and beat the games.

We’ve seen them try a lot.  And almost always fail. 

Occasionally someone comes up with a new way that works for a little while, and then we close the loophole.

Just like the infamous Niko Tosa, Ratomir Jovanovic and the mystery ‘Hungarian woman’ at the Ritz twenty years ago.