Are Online Roulette Tables Rigged
As it is inside the wheelhead of the wheel, the latter can be rotated, leveled, and moved around, as if it is not rigged. As casinos and other establishments have been using rigged roulette wheels and other casino devices of fraud for a while, the time has come for resourceful roulette players to respond. Nov 18, 2020 Whether you enjoy playing at land-based roulette tables or live online casinos, you’ve probably wondered if they’re rigged. We’re often asked: “do roulette tables have magnets?” and the short answer is no. Any casino with a valid gambling license will never try to influence a game because getting caught costs a lot of money.
Can Roulette Be Rigged?
Gamblers who don't understand the inner workings of a casino sometimes wonder if the games they play are set up fairly. When a casino patron loses against a slot machine, for example, he or she might wonder if the machine was somehow rigged. Authentic roulette eliminates some of this suspicion because it makes use of a physical wheel that is spun by hand. An electronic roulette game could be rigged, however, as Pierre Coulon proved when he used his laptop recently to remotely help a female friend win a jackpot at the Paris Casino in Blackpool, England.
Coulon was the managing director of the Paris Casino at the time of the incident. Upon investigation, officials discovered that the surveillance cameras normally trained upon the facility's electronic roulette game had been moved. Coulon later admitted to manipulating the outcome of the game via laptop so his female friend could win some cash. He cited a dispute with his business partner and co-owner of the casino as the reason why he committed the crime. Prior to this event, Coulon, who spent 40 years working in the gambling industry, had no instances of criminal activity in his personal record.
About Roulette Wheel Bias
Roulette is a game of chance, but a person's chance of winning or losing can definitely be affected by wheel bias. A biased wheel is one that does not select numbers completely at random. Physical irregularities and normal wear and tear can alter a wheel in a way that causes it to favor certain numbers more than others. This irregularity, if discovered by a casino patron, can boost his or her odds of winning tremendously. For this reason, casinos do everything they can to detect such flaws and prevent customers from taking advantage of an edge in their favor.
Are Online Roulette Tables Rigged Games
Bias Caused by Wheel Manufacturers: Not Likely
Gambling equipment manufacturers are aware of the potential for irregularity and the great harm a defective wheel could ultimately do to a casino's bottom line. For this reason, wheels are manufactured to extremely high standards. A concentrated effort is made to ensure that all wheels are perfectly symmetrical and homogenous in weight and texture. A manufacturer of bum equipment would quickly go out of business, after all. Bias caused by the manufacturers is, therefore, highly unlikely.
Bias Caused by Normal Wear and Tear: Likely
A roulette wheel is spun thousands of times per day; it is only natural that wear and tear would gradually break it down. Sometimes the ball hits the wood with such force it becomes chipped, causing weight to be unevenly distributed. Sometimes 'rotor wobble' develops, in which the wheel gradually becomes crooked due to routine cleanings in which the rotor is removed from the spindle. Sometimes 'pocket defects' occur. In this situation, certain number pockets become slightly enlarged due to repeated force, or the felt between the pockets loosens, causing abnormalities in ball recoil. Any or all of these situations can occur during the lifetime of a roulette wheel, causing bias.
Wheel bias in itself is not harmful, or helpful, to anyone. The phenomenon only becomes harmful to the house when patrons discover it and develop their own personal ways to capitalize upon it. Similarly, wheel bias is only helpful to patrons if they realize it's there and seize the opportunity to profit from it.
Joseph Jagger Rips Off the Beaux-Arts Casino in 1873
Roulette wheel bias is nothing new, nor is the casino patron's desire to capitalize upon it. Almost 150 years ago, a man named Joseph Jagger won 65,000 pounds from Monte Carlo's Beaux-Arts casino through his knowledge of the facility's weakest wheel. Jagger spent time studying all six of the casino's wheels and deduced that one of them favored a grouping of nine adjacent numbers. After a fair amount of suspicious winning, the Beaux-Arts caught on to Jagger's tactics and tried to move the games around the room order to confound him. In the end, however, the gambler's profit was much higher than that of the house.
One Century Later: Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo Wins Big in Madrid
Over 100 years later, at the Casino de Madrid in the 1990s, Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo happened upon a defect that won him over a million euros over the course of several days. The casino eventually figured out what Garcia-Pelayo was doing and tried to sue, but the courts ruled in the gambler's favor, saying it was the casino's responsibility to maintain their equipment.
The Dealer Controls the Ball
The outcome of electronic table games can be controlled by computer, as Coulon showed the world in the Blackpool incident. The outcome of authentic games can be capitalized upon by scrutinizing players who have correctly identified an equipment defect. One last question remains: can a roulette dealer, or croupier, purposefully determine where a ball will land?
Debate exists as to whether croupiers can control the outcome of their spins. Anecdotally, some croupiers claim to possess this superior skill. Skeptics are quick to point out, however, that the wheel and its ball are spun in different directions, making it nearly impossible to control the outcome of a spin. It would take an extreme amount of fine motor coordination and muscle memory for a croupier to purposefully dictate this outcome.
For over a century, people have been looking for ways to cheat the roulette wheel and win big money. Whether through electronics or the identification of a physical equipment problem, this goal is occasionally achieved. For those who wonder if casinos sometimes cheat their patrons by rigging machinery, the answer is yes. In the case of roulette wheel bias, it is sometimes the patrons who cheat the casinos.
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Magnetic Rigging
When it comes to using magnetics, one of the schemesincludes the replacement of some of the brass (non-magnetic) pocket separators with separators made of steel (a magnetic material).
The steel separators are manufactured with precision so that they appear identical to the ones made of brass. When a casino uses a roulette ball with a magnetic center, logically, it is drawn to the steel separators and gives preference to those ball pockets. Because the separators are permanently attached to the wheel, the preferred ball pockets need to be determined aforetime. In many cases casinos choose the single zero and the double zero as favored numbers.
Once the steel separators have been installed, the dealer is now able to decide whether to favor the above-mentioned pockets by putting the magnetic ball into or out of the play session.
During the 1940s and 1950s, the casino industry in Cuba developed by astute gamblers was aware that all the roulette wheels in the capital city of Havana were rigged. Many of these gamblers decided to go against casual players, as the ball usually settled into sections of the wheel where betting activity was low.
Back then a common way to gaff a Cuban wheel was by using electromagnets behind the ball track. One simple scheme employed four electromagnets, which were placed at an equal space inside the woodwork around the back side of the ball track. As the roulette balls had a core of steel, logically they reacted to the magnetic field. With a simple press of a button, a dealer was able to activate those electromagnets and force the ball off the track towards any of the four sections. Dealers had four sectors on the wheel to select from, thus, directing the ball to the desired area was not much of an effort, especially for a skilled dealer.
Other efforts for magnetic gaffing have been tested as well, but they proved to be not that successful.
There has been another scheme, which involved the placement of electromagnets in the wheelhead under pre-determined ball pockets, but it was quite difficult to maintain.
The major issue featured the electric current transfer to the spinning wheelhead. Several slip-ring contacts (one for every electromagnet) and a common return line were put to use. However, it was not a reliable method, because the frequent maintenance would eventually reveal to more people than what casino management could accept, that the wheel is rigged.
The Contemporary Way
As technology developed, the methods of rigging a roulette wheel became more complex.
The majority of older methods had the following relevant issue, the wires or levers needed to be run to and from the wheel, which tied the latter to the roulette table and made the rigging more exposed to players. Contemporary methods do not use buttons, levers or external wires, but instead all the mechanisms and wires are hidden entirely within the wheel.
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One of the modern methods, used by some casinos, features electrically-operated blocking pins at every ball pocket. A minuscule electrical solenoid is placed behind each of the pins inside the spinning wheelhead. Every solenoid will push the respective pin out whenever an electric current is applied. All 38 solenoids are connected to an electronic circuit board, which includes a radio receiver and digital control circuits. The board and the solenoids receive power from alkaline dry cells.
The specific moment is that the batteries, the wires and the circuit board are positioned under the cone of the wheelhead and rotate along with it. With the help of a remote control, similar to a TV set remote, a digitally-coded radio signal is sent to the circuit board. This signal ensures that one or more of the solenoid connections are selected and the electrical current necessary is applied.
Other Ways of Rigging a Wheel
Beating the Roulette Odds the Old Way
Other Old Roulette Schemes Used by Players
Beating the Roulette Odds by Computer Prediction
Digging Deeper into the Roulette Computer Prediction Method
The remote control is usually operated not by the dealer, but by an associate of his/hers. It can be set ahead of time, before the ball falls onto the wheelhead, to block the numbered pockets where the betting activity is high. When the ball falls off the track, the dealer’s associate will simply press the activating button and the blocking pins will be pushed out for as long as a few seconds, not allowing the ball to settle into the designated pockets.
This is a system, which requires no maintenance and is completely out of the players’ sight. As it is inside the wheelhead of the wheel, the latter can be rotated, leveled, and moved around, as if it is not rigged.
Online Roulette Wheel
As casinos and other establishments have been using rigged roulette wheels and other casino devices of fraud for a while, the time has come for resourceful roulette players to respond. Therefore, they have invented a number of smart ways to overcome the odds.
Are Online Roulette Tables Rigged Game
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