Ritz phone gang can keep £1.3m
Discussion
www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,4484-1390808,00.html
article said:True or not?
Ritz phone gang can keep £1.3m roulette winnings
CASINOS across Britain were reviewing their security last night after three gamblers who used a mobile phone to win more than a £1 million at the Ritz were allowed to keep their takings.
A device in the phone allegedly enabled them to predict the outcome of every spin of a roulette wheel. But Scotland Yard has decided that there is no ground to prosecute the gamblers and refunded them the “significant” quantity of cash which officers seized after their arrest. The group, described as a “chic and beautiful” Hungarian woman, 32, and two “elegant” Serbian men, aged 33 and 38, had been on police bail for nine months but are free to leave the country.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said last night: “They have been informed that no further action will be taken and that the inquiry has ended.”
The three were arrested in March this year after the Ritz casino management reviewed CCTV footage and called in police. They had won £1.3 million over two nights at the popular haunt for Arab princes and international playboys.
On their first night they took home £100,000. The following evening they returned and won £1.2 million. They were handed £300,000 in cash and a cheque for £900,000. They were alleged to have had a laser scanner inside a mobile phone linked to a microcomputer. The scanner measured the speed of the roulette ball as the croupier released it, identified where it fell and measured the declining orbit of the wheel.
The data was beamed to the microcomputer, which ran through thousands of possible outcomes to forecast which section numbers the ball would land on. This data was flashed on to the screen of the phone just before the wheel made its third spin, by which time all bets must be placed.
Having reduced their odds of winning from 37-1 to 6-1, the trio placed bets on all six numbers in the section where the ball would end up.
Legal sources said that the gamblers had not broken any law because their scanner did not interfere with the ball or the roulette wheel.
Well done the phone gang. All they were doing is making the best use of the information available to them. Same as that bunch who were on TV the other week having found a way to swing the odds of blackjack(?) in their favour by keeping track of what cards had already been played. (See also "Masters of the Vortex" )
It really annoys me the way casinos try and grab the moral high ground and label these people cheats. They're not cheats - they're playing by the rules, just using more of the available information to make good choices guided by those rules. It is the casinos' response - labelling them cheats because they're better at the game than the casinos - which is dishonourable.
) It really annoys me the way casinos try and grab the moral high ground and label these people cheats. They're not cheats - they're playing by the rules, just using more of the available information to make good choices guided by those rules. It is the casinos' response - labelling them cheats because they're better at the game than the casinos - which is dishonourable.
The odds are seriously stacked in favour of the Casinos on all games - yet no one accuses them of cheating...lol
I have no problem with this if it was not illegal.
Sounds almost too clever to be true though - I am struggling to see how even with the technology the article decribes - and I'm not totally sure such technology exists or could be fitted in a phone - the behaviour of a roulette ball would surely be unpredictable as it is truly an example of chaos theory in action.
In My Humble Opinion.
I have no problem with this if it was not illegal.
Sounds almost too clever to be true though - I am struggling to see how even with the technology the article decribes - and I'm not totally sure such technology exists or could be fitted in a phone - the behaviour of a roulette ball would surely be unpredictable as it is truly an example of chaos theory in action.
In My Humble Opinion.
Pigeon said:
Well done the phone gang. All they were doing is making the best use of the information available to them. Same as that bunch who were on TV the other week having found a way to swing the odds of blackjack(?) in their favour by keeping track of what cards had already been played. (See also "Masters of the Vortex"
It really annoys me the way casinos try and grab the moral high ground and label these people cheats. They're not cheats - they're playing by the rules, just using more of the available information to make good choices guided by those rules. It is the casinos' response - labelling them cheats because they're better at the game than the casinos - which is dishonourable.
Thanks, you've just written my post for me
anonymous said:
[redacted]
The probability of where the ball might end and in which particular quartile is a well known mathematical formula that uses rotation of the wheel speed and ball velocity as 2 components. The ingenious part is that although many people could calculate the formula by the time they would have done the ball would have stopped
Thus these guys just found a way of doing it quickly enough to benefit. A work of genius and they should be applauded not regarded as criminals, as the casino's would dearly love them to be.
You might want to read
The Newtonian Casino
Thomas A. Bass
I story of how some computer geeks in the US built a computer to do this a number of years ago. A great book
This book retells the theoretical and technical breakthroughs made by a group of people into the gambling systems of American casinos. It follows their attempts to solve the complex physics of roulette, which leads them to invent microprocessors that fit into shoes, to use toe switches and body sensors to relay information, and ultimately to make their assault on the gambling palaces of Las Vegas. Along the way the reader is given an insight into the cutting edge of computer science: on chaos theory, strange attractors, and other concepts in contemporary physics: on the history of roulette and the many different systems devised over the years for beating the odds at all sorts of games of chance.
ben
The Newtonian Casino
Thomas A. Bass
I story of how some computer geeks in the US built a computer to do this a number of years ago. A great book
This book retells the theoretical and technical breakthroughs made by a group of people into the gambling systems of American casinos. It follows their attempts to solve the complex physics of roulette, which leads them to invent microprocessors that fit into shoes, to use toe switches and body sensors to relay information, and ultimately to make their assault on the gambling palaces of Las Vegas. Along the way the reader is given an insight into the cutting edge of computer science: on chaos theory, strange attractors, and other concepts in contemporary physics: on the history of roulette and the many different systems devised over the years for beating the odds at all sorts of games of chance.
ben
benmc said:
You might want to read
The Newtonian Casino
Thomas A. Bass
I story of how some computer geeks in the US built a computer to do this a number of years ago. A great book
This book retells the theoretical and technical breakthroughs made by a group of people into the gambling systems of American casinos. It follows their attempts to solve the complex physics of roulette, which leads them to invent microprocessors that fit into shoes, to use toe switches and body sensors to relay information, and ultimately to make their assault on the gambling palaces of Las Vegas. Along the way the reader is given an insight into the cutting edge of computer science: on chaos theory, strange attractors, and other concepts in contemporary physics: on the history of roulette and the many different systems devised over the years for beating the odds at all sorts of games of chance.
ben
I just checked this out on Amazon £22 in paperback :-(
Gassing Station | The Pie & Piston Archive | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff