This brings nothing new to table, i thought it would be interesting to share this article.
1.4753920.pdf (2.4 MB)
There have been several popular reports of various groups exploiting the deterministic nature of the
game of roulette for profit. Moreover, through its history, the inherent determinism in the game of
roulette has attracted the attention of many luminaries of chaos theory. In this paper, we provide a
short review of that history and then set out to determine to what extent that determinism can really
be exploited for profit. To do this, we provide a very simple model for the motion of a roulette
wheel and ball and demonstrate that knowledge of initial position, velocity, and acceleration is
sufficient to predict the outcome with adequate certainty to achieve a positive expected return. We
describe two physically realizable systems to obtain this knowledge both incognito and in situ. The
first system relies only on a mechanical count of rotation of the ball and the wheel to measure the
relevant parameters. By applying these techniques to a standard casino-grade European roulette
wheel, we demonstrate an expected return of at least 18%, well above the 2.7% expected of a
random bet. With a more sophisticated, albeit more intrusive, system (mounting a digital camera
above the wheel), we demonstrate a range of systematic and statistically significant biases which
can be exploited to provide an improved guess of the outcome. Finally, our analysis demonstrates
that even a very slight slant in the roulette table leads to a very pronounced bias which
could be further exploited to substantially enhance returns. VC 2012 American Institute of Physics.