How Do You Say Roulette
For as long as gamblers have wagered money on games of chance and skill, the temptation to cheat has loomed.
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube. If you think this betting system is a wild ride, then you should see what the 'Frankenstein System Series (FSS)' can do for you! Learn how to play Roulette, Baccarat, and Craps with over 32,000:1 probability in your favor or 99.99694% chance of winning! Roulette roul-ette r-oo-l-EH-t Record the pronunciation of this word in your own voice and play it to listen to how you have pronounced it. Can you pronounce this word better or pronounce in different accent or variation? Roulette, (from French: “small wheel”), gambling game in which players bet on which red or black numbered compartment of a revolving wheel a small ball (spun in the opposite direction) will come to rest within. Bets are placed on a table marked to correspond with the compartments of the wheel.
Unwilling to let fate decide, casino cheaters use creative and unscrupulous tricks to gain an unfair edge over the house.
Among the earliest methods employed by poker cheats, the gunslinging poker games of the Old West era saw cheats wield aces up their sleeves. These days, cheaters who plague poker can be found in both brick and mortar card rooms and online sites, colluding or dumping chips to team up on unsuspecting opponents.
Cheating in modern casinos predominantly afflicts the skill-based games like poker and blackjack, but you’d be surprised by how prevalent the crime has become in roulette and other games of chance. You wouldn’t think a simple wheel-spinning affair like roulette would be subject to cheating because players don’t really have any influence on the gameplay.
Nonetheless, cheats can be found anywhere real money is being wagered, and the roulette table is no exception. Even with the ever-present “eye in the sky” watching their every move, and eagle-eyed croupiers (dealers), pit bosses, and other staff members trained to detect malfeasance, roulette cheaters just can’t help themselves.
The allure of making easy money without incurring risk certainly makes sense, but trying to cheat the casino while playing roulette is a fool’s errand. Don’t take my word for it though, just ask the long lineup of convicted roulette criminals who tried the five ways to cheat at roulette listed below.
1 – Past Posting or Late Betting to Increase Wagers on Known Winners
Every roulette player knows the feeling well…
When you nail the number perfectly and watch the croupier stack the 35 to 1 payout, wishing you would’ve bet $10 instead of $1, the experience can be bittersweet to say the least. Beating long odds for a big payout is always cause for celebration, but when you only bet a few bucks, it can be easy to kick yourself for not putting more out there.
Some roulette cheaters aren’t content with their minimal payouts, so they resort to a tactic popularly referred to as “past posting.” Also known as “late betting,” the concept of past posting is quite basic on the surface. You add chips to your bet once you know it’s a winner.
When the croupier watches the wheel to find out where the ball landed, it will take them a split second to scan the spaces, find the ball, and turn their eyes back to the table before calling the number. In that split second, past posting artists use sleight of hand tricks to secretly add significant sums to their winning bet.
Let’s say you sprinkled various bets between $5 and $40 on several single-number spaces, using combinations of both the red $5 and green $25 chips. You have the number 17 covered with one $5 chip, but when you see the ball nestle into the 17 space, you instantly dart your hand out and cap the $5 bet with a $25 chip. The croupier never notices your trickery, and just like that, you’ve turned a $175 payout (35 to 1) on $5 into a whopping $1,050.
Why You Shouldn’t Try Past Posting
While potentially lucrative when undetected, past posting is inherently dangerous based on the moving parts in play.
How Say Roulette
A professional croupier is trained to scan and memorize the bets in play when they wave for final wagers, so they might notice your small chips suddenly transforming into big ones. While you’re watching the croupier, a nearby pit boss outside of your peripheral vision might see you make the switch. And up above, high-resolution cameras are recording every move you make.
Add it all up, and past posting just isn’t worth the risk involved, a fact Charbel Tannous and Constandi Lubbat can attest to. In 2011, while playing roulette at L’Auberge du Lac Casino Resort in Louisiana, the pair were caught red-handed past posting for big money.
After authorities used surveillance footage to confirm that over $175,000 was stolen via the roulette scheme, Tannous and Lubbat were charged with felony cheating and swindling over $1,500 and criminal conspiracy.
Tannous was eventually convicted and sentenced to 37 months in federal prison for organizing the roulette racket. This is a harsh punishment US Attorney Stephanie Finley made clear will be the norm for casino cheats:
“We are very pleased with the court’s decision to give this defendant a significant prison term. The casino and the citizens were victims in this case. A portion of the profits from the casino goes to the State of Louisiana and the Calcasieu Parish School Board.
We will continue to partner with our local, state, and federal law enforcement partners to prosecute crimes of this nature and seek the maximum amount of prison time available.”
2 – Partnering With a Croupier to Produce Fake Winners
If you read the previously linked reporting, you know Tannous and Lubbat didn’t work alone.
By conspiring with two croupiers working at the casino, these cheats made sure their past posting antics would never be reported.
That approach certainly makes sense on an objective level, too. By doubling down on the scam, colluding to ensure their cheating is allowed by the people running the table, conspirators don’t leave anything to chance. Having an “inside man” on the team only makes cheating at roulette that much easier, as a corrupt croupier can allow their partner to inflate winning bets or pull back chips on losers.
Why You Shouldn’t Partner With a Dealer
In 2016, a casino pit boss at the Horseshoe Casino in Council Bluffs, Iowa, decided to go rogue. He enlisted a croupier to do the dirty deed, and a third partner to act the part of lucky player. Past posting provided the bulk of the team’s $20,000 in ill-gotten gains, but like almost all roulette cheats before them, these three were eventually caught on camera and arrested.
David Dales, a special agent with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation (IDCI), issued a statement explaining how the scam was set up:
“There was a dealer that was doing some active cheating mechanism on the roulette table at Horseshoe Casino. And there was a patron he was consistently cheating for. The allegations are they were past posting – adding chips to the winning numbers – doing other activities that gave them illegal winnings at a table game.”
The offenders were charged with four felonies, including ongoing criminal conduct, first-degree theft, conspiracy, and cheating at gambling. They faced significant jail time and hefty fines.
3 – “Coloring up” Small Chips for Higher Denominations off the Table Before Cashing Out
An especially clever way roulette players can cheat the game involves the old bait and switch.
To make the “color up” scheme work, two players working in tandem start by sitting at different tables. In roulette, cash is turned into specially designed chips that are only good at the table. To avoid confusion between different players betting, everyone gets a different color chip in the denomination of their choosing.
A color up team moves from table to table, one buying in for the minimum $1 chips, and the other going bigger with a $25 or $100 denomination. When they both receive the same color chips, they’re always at a different table and only six or seven colors are in play so this will inevitably occur, the trap is sprung.
The low stakes player pockets a handful of chips on the sly, then heads off to take a quick bathroom break. With no surveillance cameras to worry about, they wait for their partner to hit the head as well, then they deliver a handful of chips when nobody’s around.
Flush with new chips in the same color as those at the big stakes table, the second player proceeds to play a spin or two with minimal action before requesting a color up and cash out.
When cheaters turn 10 of the $1 chips into an equivalent amount of $25 chips, they’ve instantly “earned” $240 in profit without incurring an ounce of risk. And if a $1 to $100 exchange rate is in play, the color up scam produces a massive $990 profit margin.
Why You Shouldn’t Color up Chips
Between 2012 and 2013, a highly organized team of color up cheaters based in New York toured the country targeting small commercial and tribal casinos. Their run came to an end in Ohio, after the team struck at four casinos and stole thousands of dollars, only for 13 members to find themselves behind bars when it was all said and done.
Karen Huey, director of enforcement for the Ohio Casino Control Commission (OCCC), told local media outlets that the Buckeye State was not alone:
“This is a very organized group of about 70 people. They travel the country. They’ve been identified in 18 states running this scam.”
The roulette cheating team wound up facing 29 felony counts and the possibility of lengthy prison sentences. According to Lucas County Prosecutor’s Office Special Units Division Chief John Weglian, casino criminals will never receive leniency.
“One of the principle purposes of these casinos is to provide revenue to the State of Ohio so the laws that the legislature has passed cover casino violations will be enforced strictly by the Attorney General’s office and this office. We will enforce the laws of the state.”
4 – Using Hidden Lasers to Measure Ball Speed Before Betting Concludes
These last two are so absurd that they hardly merit mention, but based on their scientific innovations alone, they made the cut.
Back in the 1970s, a physicist at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico named Norman Packard postulated that laser beams could be used to measure crucial roulette variables. By using a laser and a computer to chart the ball and wheel speed, Packard succeeded in predicting which quadrant of the wheel the ball would land in.
Here’s how he described the gambit in an interview with New Scientist:
“In the best circumstances, we could predict the quadrant correctly. Even saying which half of the wheel is extremely powerful because the payoff is so good. We definitely got to the point where we were winning money, but we didn’t continue long enough to make large amounts.”
Why You Shouldn’t Use Technology to Cheat
Obviously, pulling out a laser pointer and hiding a computer on your person is impractical in the modern casino setting. Maybe the laser cheat works in a laboratory, or even an old-school gambling hall before cameras became prevalent, but this is a method of cheating at roulette that would never fly nowadays.
5 – Directing the Ball to Certain Spaces by Generating a Magnetic Field
Using a laser pointer and a computer isn’t the most discreet way to cheat at roulette. So, how about a magnetic roulette ball to improve your odds?
In the early 2000s, a team of Austrian roulette cheats found a way to activate magnetic fields that drew the ball to certain numbers based on where the player stood. While the team didn’t win on every single spin, the use of a remote-controlled ball helped them improve their chances of winning.
Why You Shouldn’t Use Magnets
Unfortunately for this team of conmen, the croupier eventually found the ball stuck to his cufflink. The jig was up, forcing the cheaters to abandon their winnings and run away in shame. Today, some casinos use magnetic field sensors to prevent this from happening.
Conclusion
Folks who feel the need to cheat at roulette represent the bottom of the barrel when it comes to casino gambling. Desperate and down on their luck, yet unwilling to simply learn a skill game and play it well, roulette cheats refuse to accept reality. And as the five entries above should show you, the run of free money always ends at some point, leaving prison, probation, and a ruined reputation as the roulette cheater’s only legacy.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Everyone knows that the house has the edge in roulette. If you didn’t know this, you should do. All casino games have a house edge- this is the “tax” you pay the casino so it can run its business. Some people win at roulette, some people lose, but on average, over say a month, the house wins.
The House has an Edge
This house edge, or house advantage is around 2.6% on European Roulette (it can go down to 1.3% on some French roulette tables), or 5.2% in American Roulette. That is to say, if you added up all of the bets made by all of the players over the day in a casino on their single zero roulette table (European), the house would be 2.6% up. Lets say all the punters bet $100,000 during the day. The casino would pocket $2,600 on average. But just like the punters, the house is gambling too. It might make more, it might make less.
But Casinos Lose Too
Casinos do go into the red sometimes, even if you average out the day. There have been well documented cases (like the Philip Green win at les Ambassadeurs in London) where the company running the casino has had to come out with a profit warning.
But can the average advantage or edge ever move in the favour of the player?
Well, that is where we come on to the subject of biased roulette wheels. This can only ever happen on a physical wheel- so you would have to be playing roulette at a land-based casino, or playing live roulette online, rather than video roulette, which will always mimic a perfect wheel with no imperfections (it would be great if they copied imperfect wheels, wouldn’t it!). Try the Virgin live roulette tables for instance- they have a wide range of tables. There´s been plenty of books written on the subject- the Perfect Bet, for example.
Spot the Difference
Physical wheels are manufactured, and no wheel will be 100% perfect. Some may have more imperfections than others. The wheel has to be mounted on the table on bearings, and it has to be mounted on the level. Again, there is scope for an imperfect mount and a biased roulette wheel. There have been cases historically where players have been able to identify biased roulette wheels (no easy task), and then map out hot zones on that wheel that have given them a significant advantage over the casino. Some teams use roulette computers to help them get that edge, others look for patterns by eye.
A biased wheel is one with a defect – certain numbers or sectors of numbers- will drop in more frequently than others.
Types of bias
Pockets
The pockets on the wheel can be manufactured slightly differently, or they can evolve into having different properties through wear and tear. This may make it harder or easier for the ball to settle in certain pockets. One pocket could be slightly bigger than the others, for example. The edge of the pockets may become worn, resulting in the ball having a slightly different reaction to it when hit.
Wheel Wobble
Hot sectors can start appearing if the wheel rotor becomes worn and starts to wobble (rotor wobble). The axis of the wheel can become slightly bent (we are talking small imperfections here) wobble. The ball track at the top of the wheel (where the croupier launches the ball, spinning it in the opposite direction to the roulette wheel) can also be subject to wear and tear- some sectors may scratch and build up more friction than others, for example.
Any of these defects on their own may not make much difference, but add 3 different defects together, and it may start to become significant.
How do You Spot A Biased Wheel?
OK, so we have established that wheels can be imperfect and have defects, either built into them at the time of manufacture, or that develop through wear and tear. How do you spot a defective roulette wheel?
Having a Wobble
A wheel wobble is relatively easy to spot. Look for reflections of lights in the wheel. If the reflection is wobbling, chances are that the wheel is wobbling. The other types of defects are difficult to spot without the help of technology (and you’ll be thrown out of the casino if you try and measure imperfections with any form of sophisticated technology).
Other factors that come into play include the dealer, the rotational speed of the wheel (some of these defects are more prominent at different speeds. Have you ever “driven through” a wheel wobble in a car with unbalanced tyres by increasing your speed? The theory is the same). The ambient humidity and air pressure will also affect how the ball moves around the wheel.
- Time of the day
- The rotor speed
- How the wheel is oriented
The Anti-Wheel Bias Squad
You are also up against the casino, which is studying all of these things and tracking them from the other side of the table. They are working on minimising all this stuff, so for example they may move the wheels around the casino to make it harder to spot individual wheels (try and identify unique scratches and ID marks if you can). Here’s a fascinating article on the subject by Jeff Murphy, the Director of Table Games for Seven Feathers Hotel & Casino Resort in Canyonville, Oregon.
Follow the Pros
Professional wheel bias players will spend days just watching the wheels, without making any bets at all, or at least making low value infrequent bets. Biased wheel spotting is perhaps the most difficult part of the “roulette system” for them.
Laurance Scott is perhaps the most famous player with thoughts on this subject of “Visual Ballistics” and ball tracking. His “crossover pattern method” attempts to estimate how many spins remain before the ball drops onto the wheel and to predict which zone the ball will land, depending on a, observed “crossover pattern”. He claim an optimum speed of rotation for biased wheel players is around 2 seconds per revolution.
How Do You Bet on a Biased Wheel?
Well, the whole key to these biased wheel systems is in identifying hot sectors and zones. How big these zones will be will depend on how biased the wheel is, the speed of rotation, the initial ball speed and so on. One a hot sector has been identified, it is then a question of making a number of single number (straight up) bets that cover this sector, (through a custom bet) and then praying that ths sector comes up more often than it should do. In sophisticated tracking systems, the zone will change from spin to spin, but you’ll need some pretty sophisticated technology to do this.
How Do I Say Roulette
The betting bit is relatively easy, it’s the biased wheel identification and then the hot zone identification that is the difficult bit.