Roulette Formulas?

IniX

Hi, new person here.
I'm looking for some roulette formulas for a project. Anything that has to do with it. I was mostly looking for the number a ball would end when it's thrown in opposite direction of the spinning wheel.

If anyone could help, that would be great.

ImAnEngineer

This has more to do with probability/statistics than with physics.

Oh, and if I knew, I wouldn't tell you

sylas

A while ago I heard about an amazing roulette system, which is guaranteed to cut the house edge to literally zero. I'm a mathematician myself, and at first I was skeptical. But then I looked into it, and in fact this system is foolproof. It's called "Caro's roulette system #1".

This version of the system is tailored to work with the American wheel, which includes a zero and a double zero. Some authorities believe this gives the house a better edge... but not when you use Caro's system!

I've done the technical analysis on this myself, but you don't actually need to know that to use the system effectively, so I'll gloss over those details. Here is the arrangement of numbers on the wheel (G: green; B: black; R: red). Start at green zero, move left to right along the top, drop down to double zero, and then right to left back again. That's once around the wheel clockwise.

G0 B28 R9 B26 R30 B11 R7 B20 R32 B17 R5 B22 R34 B15 R3 B24 R36 B13 R1
B2 R14 B35 R23 B4 R16 B33 R21 B6 R18 B31 R19 B8 R12 B29 R25 B10 R27 G00

Here's the system (using Caro's own description)

• First, never bet simply red or black. Also don’t bet odd or even. These are equally poor, consistently losing wagers.
• Second, don’t be suckered into betting zero or double zero. This may seem like you’re betting with the house, but for technical reasons you are actually betting against the house—and you are taking the worst of it.
• So, in order to negate the house advantage, you must stick to straight non-green number bets.
• All odd red numbers turn out to be bad choices, based on over two trillion computer trials. Don’t bet them.
• All even black numbers fair poorly, and cannot be bet, for much the same reason, which I won’t explain here.
• Let’s get straight to the money-saving advice. Any bet you decide to make must cover only even-red or odd-black numbers. There are no exceptions.
• Finally, you need to be very disciplined in excluding the number 30 and the group of consecutive numbers that begins with 11 and continues clockwise through and including 14.

HallsofIvy

So, in other words, don't bet on any number! Very good advice!

sylas

... quiet! You'll scare away all the fish...

I was getting all ready to explain further for people who might have been skeptical.

The Caro roulette system is an open secret within the casino industry. Although not explicitly mentioned, their advertising is carefully designed to prevent people from using it.

There's nothing illegal about this, by the way. However, if you are at a roulette table for long enough, and you are using the Caro roulette system, it doesn't take long at all for the operators to see what you are doing. Usually they'll just try to ignore it, but if you are there for too long, you are quite likely to be moved on. You'll almost certainly be denied any of the usual benefits offered to players, like free parking or drinks. My advice is not even to try. You still get more benefit by using the system than by trying to making alterations in your play style for the sake of casino incentives.

Cheers -- sylas

alxm

Any and every 'roulette system' is a load of nonsense.
The wheel is nearly perfectly random, and to the extent it's nonrandom, the deviation is hardly systematic. Fact. This is not blackjack where you have a finite, small even, number of cards.

The only way you can get an 'edge' is to collect a ridiculous amount of data, which is only valid for a specific table. Which is something casinos also counteract by switching wheels, moving tables, etc. But the suggestion that there's any 'strategy' that would work equally on any table is flat-out ridiculous.

Pengwuino

Yah that is silly, minus any flaws (which manufacturers safeguard against) in the structure, a roulette wheel is a perfectly random crap shoot (pun not intended). The house knows this. The payouts are defined in such a way that statistically, they win, always.

I never understood the idea of splitting your bet up either.

alxm

They will tend to always win regardless (the zeroes just increase their profit margin). Even if you had a perfectly 'fair' game (say 50-50 chances and 2:1 payout), the 'bank' would win. Statistical law of averages only works on an infinite series, but because you're playing with a finite amount of chips, which is guaranteed to be smaller than the Casino's amount of chips - most players will, most of the time, run out of money before 'the bank' does, and be unable to continue.

sylas

That doesn't work; and for the same reason that roulette systems don't work.

You are, in effect, proposing a "system" in reverse. You are suggesting that a casino can "beat the odds" by having enough money to outlast the smaller players.

Doesn't work -- for the same reasons that a player can't hope to get any improvement in their odds by varying the size of their bet, or bank. The wheel has no memory. It plays just the same odds, regardless of a previous "run" and regardless of how many previous players went bust.

If the casino plays a very large number of even money games, it makes no difference whether they play with players having very large banks and steady income who dribble away a bit of money just for fun, or hard up pensioners wanting to double their money or go bust. The casino expectation depends exclusively on the number of bets, without any dependency on the prior history of who is betting, or the remaining bank of the bettors.

The only system that can take away the casino edge is the Caro roulette system, which I have outlined above.

Cheers -- sylas

ImAnEngineer

Oo

I'm really sceptical. What else do I need to know before I put my fortune on the stakes?