Man steals $33 million from Australian casino in 'Ocean's Eleven'-esque heist
news.msn.com
news.msn.com
The head-line says "steals", but the reality is that he was simply cheating. One is a crime but I'm not sure about the other. If I'm accomplished at counting cards, I can still beat the house because I've changed the odds. The casino may ban me (and I might forfeit the earnings for the day) but they can't charge me with a crime.
>The casino may ban me (and I might forfeit the earnings for the day) but they can't charge me with a crime
Counting cards has apparently been explicitly ruled not to be cheating in Canada, and while casinos generally call it that, it is not actually illegal. Other forms of cheating are, however. For example, in Nevada, cheating is a felony.
I know the casinos would rather have people turn their brains down to "idiot mode" when they play. However, I can't understand why the law supports the idea that I am not allowed to use my brain, memory and deductive reasoning skills when playing.
Weird,
I don't get it.
It's really no different from your choosing to walk away from a table after losing a lot of money.
Maybe it was Pai Gow Poker, which does have strategy that can be exploited by knowing the dealer hand you need to beat, and is often played for high stakes in VIP rooms.
I still think they are full of manure with this, but that explains a little bit of their angle.
Also, is there an implied Terms Of Service you agree to when entering a casino? I've been to many and have never seen anything even remotely resembling a TOS.
I was asked to stop playing roulette at a major Vegas casino a number of years ago. I wasn't betting big or making tons of money. I am what one might call a geek gambler: I enjoy devising ways to improve my odds. During my occasional trips to Vegas (example: Once a year for CES) I test the ideas with a couple of hundred bucks. It's purely for fun. If the goal was making money it'd be far more effective to spend four hours coding rather than gambling.
Anyhow, on this particular occasion I had memorized a betting pattern that improved the probability of my bets winning. On average it seemed effective. I got kicked out when I won thirteen times in a row. Fun while it lasted.
No. Most gambling locales have a law against the use of hidden electronic devices to assist play. It has nothing to do with airwave rights.
Think of it as betting by considering the physics of the game vs. in complete ignorance. Betting single numbers, black, white, dozens, columns and rows is absolutely moronic once you stop to think about how the game actually works.
To win at betting with roulette you only need to bet on a set of numbers, where the probability of the marble landing on that set is pretty good, and the payout of winning over time covers the losses from being wrong.
So say you can accurately guess which 1/4 of the wheel will capture the marble. (and there are no greens... the real math is the same but uglier a bit). You put down equal bets on the 9 numbers represented by that. Each beting round will net you a 4:1 payout.
Now say you can only guess that 1/4 of the wheel, 50% of the time. You will still average a 2:1 payout.
Guessing the 1/4 of the board 50% of the time is not that hard, you just need to calculate the linear drift of the time the marble passes a fixed point, and know the frequency of "loops" that is too slow for the marble to stay on the track. Accounting for the rotation of the board is straight-forward, it is almost constant for a given play. The 50% covers the wierd bounces. Just calculate board position for the time that the marble will get below the threshold, and the marble position as well, and you've won. A person can't do it well, but an arduino is overkill for it.
Edit: further notes on this- casinos will be able to detect this easily. All they have to do is look for people on hot streaks that are "too hot", then compare betting placement with wheel positions. And they generally kick people out who are winning too much anyway, even if they can't prove 'chaeting'.
Google Glass will make this hack so simple, the casino's will have to ban them from being anywhere close to a roulette table to reduce team cheating possibilities.
1) In the age of the smart phones, could one not develop an app to do this calculation for you? It might be tricky to film the wheel, but I'm sure that can be done stealthily somehow.
2) Would this work on online roulette games who claim to simulate the real-world physics of a roulette table?
Consider that a 2 link pendulum is chaotic. The tiniest difference in your estimate of the initial kinematics results in divergent predictions.
[1] Where you are betting, or otherwise working on odds and long term averages.
Missed your breakfast this morning?
Relax bro.
Betting on a single number is foolish. The mathematical probability of hitting any single number is only 2.7%. In other words, the house absolutely loves you.
Dozens and Columns are better, 32.4%. Still, the house advantage is huge.
Even/Odd or Red/Black get you up to 48.6%. Hey, that's a deal, right?
Well, no. The problem with all of these calculations you'll find around the internet is that they are equivalent to picking a random number (or 12 or whatever) out of 38. The problem is that this is NOT how the roulette works.
The roulette has a spinning wheel with numbers separated by fences. The ball spins as well. Along the path of the ball there are also little bumpers that can alter the path of the ball.
Yes, in the long term it is just like picking random numbers. However, if you look at what makes you win or loose at the "micro" level it is a little simpler.
If you bet on a single number the ball only has to move one slot for you to loose. As it lands on the number field the ball has a bunch of excess energy. The surfaces are hard and it bounces around with great efficiency. It can go over one or more number fences very easily.
In fact, if you study every single common bet, single numbers, rows, columns, dozens, color, even/odd, etc. they all share one trait: If the ball jumps over just ONE fence you loose.
If you've played roulette enough you'll eventually run into this stereotype: Big guy. Smells and looks like money. Shows up with piles of cash, gold watch and gold chain around his neck. And starts to place piles of cash on numbers he is pulling out of his anal orifice. Most of the time these guys loose a ton of money. Why? The "one fence" problem.
OK, I think that sets it up. Actually, it is probably beyond obvious at this point. Take a look at a roulette wheel and think about how you should bet to solve the problem that makes every single common bet nearly worthless.
The genius of the roulette is in the wheel.
Now find those numbers on the wheel.
If I drop the ball directly on one of your numbers from, say, 1 inch above the number. Wheel not spinning. How far would the ball have to bounce for you to loose?
Bet on the dozens, columns, rows, black/red and other common ( and convenient) bets. Repeat the exercise.
It has been proven that roulette can be beaten through predictive methods. This is nothing new. Not sure I get your angle when all you do is shoot the messenger.
What you can't do, is come up with a positive expected value through any kind of betting pattern.
Yes, there is. It reads something like this:
"This is private property. When you are no longer welcome, you are a trespasser and if you don't leave, we will call the police".
With regards to what would happen over 5,000 or 10,000 spins, yeah, of course, the odds are the odds.
That said, I went across the street to another casino and did just as well.
Will it happen again? Who knows? Probably not.
Hunh? At my workplace the surveillance room, as in most casinos, is segregated from the rest of the building by a separate entrance. Surveillance staff are not permitted to socialize with other staff and can't work in any job in the casino other than surveillance. The room has restricted swipe access via thick steel double-doors aka a "man trap" with poured concrete blocks and reinforced metal plates in the walls, of course Pelco PTZ cameras covering the outside of the doors.
The camera system isn't accessible anywhere other than possibly in the ceiling of the gaming floor which would be pretty obvious having someone trying to splice in to a cable. Everything else goes to the surveillance room not to the server room other than maybe the corporate LAN and intrusion detection server but still that's a restricted access locked room but to get to that door there are several other steel doors you need to swipe through, not even the big boss has access to some of them, but I do ;)
Our surveillance manager was telling me he trained in Las Vegas at some guy's house who teaches surveillance techniques to people in the industry. This guy has a multi camera setup in his home and tables too. He cheats at cards while on camera then shows it to the trainees but even he can't see himself cheating on camera even though he did it himself and knew he was on camera.
Although I should add most times cheating especially Blackjack is from collusion between player and dealer. There is a reason why staff and patrons don't mingle or why staff can't use public washrooms when on-shift.
Now I wait for the men in black to come knocking at my door I've said too much!
With a name like that, you'll either grow up to be a Bond villain or a casino consultant.
I would have assumed the camera feeds would be wired, but I guess maybe for ease of maintenance they're wireless feeds?
If they're just using run of the mill Wi-Fi cameras, then I suppose they get what they deserve..
In fact the article actually says they've identified the man and banned him from the casino. If they had legal backing I'm sure it would have mentioned the manhunt, and not a "near zero chance of recovering the money."
For blackjack, he could use the outside accomplice to count cards, then start playing at a table with favorable shoe.
For roulette, I think I've read elsewhere that precise timing of the spinning wheel allows you to model its physics well enough to figure out where it will land.