Posts Tagged ‘bias’
If we’d look back at the whole history of roulette, we might see how many people have tried to find unconventional ways to win the game. Some were pretty illegal, like slipping the bet after the stop of the wheel or somehow controlling the ball or bribing a complacent croupier. But only one method was really successful, spotting a biased roulette wheel.
Finding a bias is like finding the goose that lays the golden eggs. And often players who knew what to look for were able to take advantage of a manufacturing error of the wheel to win big before the casino could realize what had happened. The best thing is that it is not cheating at all. Spotting a bias is somehow considered a skill and you can keep all your winnings. The most famous case is probably that of Joseph Jaggers, a British man who was able to win the today’s equivalent of $5 million on a biased roulette wheel at the casino of Monte Carlo in 1873.