Editing Roulette (section)

===Prediction methods===

Whereas betting systems are essentially an attempt to beat the fact that a geometric series with initial value of 0.95 (American roulette) or 0.97 (European roulette) will inevitably over time tend to zero, [[engineer]]s instead attempt to overcome the house edge through predicting the mechanical performance of the wheel, most notably by [[Joseph Jagger]] at [[Monte Carlo]] in 1873. These schemes work by determining that the ball is more likely to fall at certain numbers. If effective, they raise the return of the game above 100%, defeating the betting system problem.

[[Edward O. Thorp]] (the developer of card counting and an early hedge-fund pioneer) and [[Claude Shannon]] (a mathematician and electronic engineer best known for his contributions to [[information theory]]) built the first [[wearable computer]] to predict the landing of the ball in 1961. This system worked by timing the ball and wheel, and using the information obtained to calculate the most likely [[octant (plane geometry)|octant]] where the ball would fall. Ironically, this technique works best with an unbiased wheel though it could still be countered quite easily by simply closing the table for betting before beginning the spin.

In 1982, several casinos in Britain began to lose large sums of money at their roulette tables to teams of gamblers from the US. Upon investigation by the police, it was discovered they were using a legal system of biased wheel-section betting. As a result of this, the British roulette wheel manufacturer John Huxley manufactured a roulette wheel to counteract the problem.

The new wheel, designed by George Melas, was called "low profile" because the pockets had been drastically reduced in depth, and various other design modifications caused the ball to descend in a gradual approach to the pocket area. In 1986, when a professional gambling team headed by [[Billy Walters (gambler)|Billy Walters]] won $3.8 million using the system on an old wheel at the [[Golden Nugget Atlantic City (1980-1987)|Golden Nugget]] in [[Atlantic City]], every casino in the world took notice, and within one year had switched to the new low-profile wheel.

[[Thomas Bass]], in his book ''[[The Eudaemonic Pie]]'' (1985) (published as ''The [[Newtonian Casino]]'' in Britain), has claimed to be able to predict wheel performance in real time. The book describes the exploits of a group of [[University of California Santa Cruz]] students, who called themselves ''the [[Eudaemons]]'', who in the late 1970s used computers in their shoes to win at roulette. This is an updated and improved version of [[Edward O. Thorp]]'s approach, where [[Newtonian laws of motion]] are applied to track the roulette ball's deceleration; hence the British title.

To defend against exploits like these, many casinos use tracking software, use wheels with new designs, rotate wheel heads, and randomly rotate pocket rings.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Zender|first1=Bill|title=Advantage Play for the Casino Executive|date=2006}}</ref>

At the [[The Ritz Hotel, London|Ritz London]] casino in March 2004, two Serbs and a Hungarian used a [[laser scanning|laser scanner]] hidden inside a mobile phone linked to a computer to predict the sector of the wheel where the ball was most likely to drop. They netted £1.3m in two nights.<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2004/mar/23/sciencenews.crime The sting: did gang really use a laser, phone and a computer to take the Ritz for £1.3m? | Science | The Guardian<!-- Bot generated title -->], guardian.co.uk</ref> They were arrested and kept on police bail for nine months, but eventually released and allowed to keep their winnings as they had not interfered with the casino equipment.<ref>{{cite book|last1=du Sautoy|first1=Marcus|title=The number mysteries : a mathematical odyssey through everyday life|date=2011|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|location=New York|isbn=978-0230113848|page=237|edition=1st Palgrave Macmillan}}</ref>