Roulette

Early European tables tended to have the wheel built-in and a complicated number layout to play on. It was played at a leisurely pace. American tables build the wheel on top or 'above' the table (above board) and a simplified number layout. This style of table developed in America from the need to discourage gambling establishments and players from cheating with mechanical devices easily used covertly under the table and to speed up the game that may not necessarily been a legal and permanent part of an establishment. The simple layout, fast play, and above board designs eventually became dominate throughout the world. However, Monte Carlo still favors the traditional design. Standard European roulette uses 37 numbers (0-36) while American roulette uses 38 (0-36 and 00). In modern times the 0 and 00 are included in bets and the Casino's advantage due to pay-offs for every bet are slight less than the odds of winning. The 0 square was initially the sole advantage for the casino, as all pay-offs matched the odds but no one could bet on 0 (The casino statistically broke even except for odds that 1 turn out of every 37 when all the players lost their bets to the Casino). An additional 00 square was also added on some boards to give the casino more advantage. Due to legal reforms, the casino in Monte Carlo became the last legal casino in Europe in the 1860s. They happened to have used the single 0 table. Thus single 0 table became prevalent in Europe when casinos were once again allowed in Europe. The single 0 table spread throughout the world from Europe. But, in the North and South Americas, the double 00 table remained the most common.

For real roulette wheels, it is possible to reliably predict, before the betting is closed, which number the ball will land near or on. One method is to find the wheel's mechanical bias. Due to the imperfections inherent in mechanical systems, the ball will be more likely to land on numbers in a certain area of the wheel. A lot of data samples are required to find this bias. 'Stars' cause this bias to have much less effect. Casinos may exchange wheels from other tables making it difficult to relocate the wheel with a known bias. Casinos can also change the bias often by rebalancing the wheel often, preventing a large number of data samples for the bias from being collected. Another method involves knowing the speed of the ball, the speed of the wheel and calculating the likely result. This second method is only a slight advantage unless minimal allowances for mechanical bias are also considered. 'Stars' also limit this method, in fact, if the ball strikes an obstruction the prediction is useless. Some people have claimed to be able to spot bias, calculate the speeds, and make predictions reliably without the aid of any devices. But, so far, only computers that can be feed the data from the table have been proven to reliably make predictions. Such computers have been banned from casinos and actually illegal in many jurisdictions. But, more an more common place devices are being used that are able to make these calculations. For instance, a program was written for a cell phone to watch a roulette wheel using the cell phone's built in sensors; it predicted the results reliably enough for its programmers to win £1.3 million. A 3rd method is the oldest and easiest to accomplish. It involves finding a rigged table and betting against biggest pay-off. Since the person operating the rigged table will try to avoid paying the most costly bet, all other bets are safest. For example (USA table), if the biggest pay-off is $5000 for a Six-line on 1-6 ($1000 bet), then betting $1 Six-Line 7-12, 2nd Dozen, 3rd Dozen, and 0+00, will get you $1-$17 profit ($2-$5 is most likely). However, don't put more than $100 on each or $294 on 0+00, since it would potentially make your bet the one to avoid. The safest payoff potential is when the biggest payoff it on 1st or 2nd half, a color, odd, or even; either the opposite of any one of these bets or 0+00 are winners. $1 on the opposite and $1 on 0+00 is either $1 or $17 profit. Or $3 on opposite and $4 on each of the zeros gets at least $6 guaranteed with 8.5 to 1 odds of getting $68. All of this assumes that the person operating the rigged table has accurate calculated which pay-off is the right one to avoid.

In theory, electronic roulette simulations are subject to a type of bias due to the fact that computers cannot create truly random numbers. This has nothing to due with mechanical biases, but rather computational bias. The user of a roulette program can control most of the variables and record the results. It depends the on complexity of the platform and the program, but given enough samples, a bias will be found. As gaming computers become more complex, there are many time more variable to control and track and random numbers are getting better an better. Also, the complexity may require more samples than is practical to record. The last option is the most interesting, a videogame with a rigged table. Some are rigged in the protagonists favor, including obvious odds. Some are rigged to follow a pattern that can be discerned. One type of rigged table, the one that happens in real roulette (see above), is the most interesting possibility for use in a game plot. Sadly, I do not know of any example that uses a playable rigged roulette table in the plot.

Standard 0:
0-32-15-19-4-21-2-25-17-34-6-27-13-36-11-30-8-23-10-5-24-16-33-1-20-14-31-9-22-18-29-7-28-12-35-3-26
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████28████████████████ 4
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█29█████████████████████ 2
18████████████████████████25
22████████████████████████17
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31████████████████████████6
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██20████████████████████13
█████1████████████████36
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██████████24510238

Standard 00:
0-28-9-26-30-11-7-20-32-17-5-22-34-15-3-24-36-13-1-00-27-10-25-29-12-8-19-31-18-6-21-33-16-4-23-35-14-2
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████16█████████████████30
██33█████████████████████11
█21████████████████████████7
6██████████████████████████20
18█████████████████████████32
31█████████████████████████17
19█████████████████████████5
██8███████████████████████22
██12█████████████████████34
████29█████████████████15
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