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Comment by throwaway81523 | Hacker News Reader

Article starts out lame but then gets very good. Worth reading all the way through. In the 1980s some nerds figured out how to use hidden computers to beat roulette, by placing bets after the ball is already spinning and the computer can time its movement to predict (nowhere near perfectly, but well enough to have a statistical edge over the house) where it will land. There is a fantastic book about the adventure, called "The Eudaemonic Pie". The guys in the article managed to do the same thing without computers, and it drove the casino detective nuts.

If you like the article, the book is also great.

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Claude Shannon[1] claims he did something similar in the early 60's, proving it worked in Vegas. He and his collaborator Ed Thorpe quit playing well before the legitimate businessmen who ran the casinos could realize they were winning too much and have a friendly chat with them about it.

For more, see: https://boingboing.net/2017/07/27/wearable-computing.html

[1] If the name doesn't ring a bell, he discovered that Boolean logic could be used to analyze and design electric switching circuits -- as a Master's thesis. He went on to a storied career at Bell Labs where he invented Information Theory.

The story was about Claude Shannon. And Ed Thorpe was the father of modern day hedge funds or something

There is a good interview with Thorp around his quantitive strategy he developed after beating Las Vegas: https://thunderclapresearch.com/a-conversaation-with-ed-thor...

Yes, the article goes into that with photos and everything.

+1 the book is entertaining (esp for engineers). Also was released under the title "The Newtonian Casino".

I'm not expert on casinos, but placing a bet after the ball starts spinning just sounds wrong? Why would casinos ever allow that?

To encourage more betting, in the excitement of the moment when the wheel is spinning one way, the ball is circling the other way, and the outcome is mere seconds away...

Slow things down, require all bets to be placed before the croupier spins the wheel and throws the ball, and you'll have taken away some of the mystique and the adrenaline of betting on this bouncing, glittering thing that's happening right now in front of your eyes, and some of the casual gamblers will get bored and walk off.

The article confirms this:

Having to wait for all bets to be placed before starting the spin would also reduce the average number of spins per hour which would reduce the casino's profit per table-hour.

How can customers be assured the casino isn't using a magnet or some other cheating device?

Gambling regulations and board certify / audit these machines / tables, etc?

How can the consumer have confidence in any of those?

By not gambling.

How do consumers have any confidence in the FAA, EPA, FDA, or any other entity that performs checks and balances?

At least with the FDA I'm eating food and taking medicines that doesn't make me or the people around me sick all the time (as they did before the founding of the FDA).

With casinos it's the opposite. Their customers regularly lose their shirts. Maybe the games aren't rigged, maybe they are, as someone who regularly loses (as most gamblers do), they might as well be rigged and I would not be surprised if there was regulatory capture and the consumer would have no way to know.

You can't, but, at least in Las Vegas, the machines are under fairly strict protocols. If a customer makes a complaint, things get sealed and impounded almost immediately.

And, besides, if it ever got out that a casino was doing that, it would basically fold up overnight.

Why would the casino need that, when they can have anybody who wins arrested?

The game would seem really boring if that's how it worked. There's an energy when the ball starts going that makes you want to bet.

It's probably because people would believe the dealer is cheater and throwing harder or softer in exactly the same way.

Or it is so the casino can argue roulette is a game of skill instead of chance. But this would be paradoxical.

from the article

> There’s one surefire way casinos could stop prediction: calling “no more bets” before the ball is in motion. But they won’t. That would cut into profits by limiting the amount of play and deterring casual gamblers. Instead, the industry seems willing to pay a toll to a select few who know the secret, while trying to design out the flaws that make the game vulnerable.

Because it wins them more money, until wearable PCs come on the scene.

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