The overwhelming number of biased casino roulette wheels happen purely and simply by accident rather than some underhandedness on behalf of the employees or the punters. A wheel can be biased in numerous ways. The ball drop off point from the ball track can be repeatedly in the same place although this is a characteristic that very rarely crops up these days on modern roulette wheels.
But please note that I said rarely and not never, and please don’t expect the dealers or inspectors to notice this either. They really couldn’t care less and wouldn’t know a biased wheel if one dropped on their head. Of course with the use of bias detection programmes then anyone can identify a biased wheel but the real skill is to be able to identify one without the use of software and to be 100% sure in your own mind that what you have located is true bias.
The reason why this bias is so crucial is not because you can then necessarily identify numbers that will come up like what the Billy Walters team did for instance. But having a consistent ball drop off point significantly aids a players ability to be able to read the spin. In fact based on just how lax the casino was where I first worked, it seems highly likely now to me that this particular flaw may have been the major reason for the success of “the salmon”.
Any part of a roulette wheel that comprises of metal can be subject to bias effect. This means that a very large percentage of the wheel is vulnerable to any kind of outside force that effects metal. In that wheel we have numerous components like the wheel head, spindle, turret, frets, canoes etc and each component can be a potential bias waiting to happen.
Another major factor in bias forming on roulette is whether or not the wheel is level. Any bias may or may not be accentuated by the wheel not being totally level. This is another avenue where temporary bias can and does occur. The gaming industry in my experience do not do enough to deter bias but they get away with it for the simple reason being that the vast majority of punters do not know anything about roulette wheels in this capacity.
This ignorance is partly just that but in some cases the roulette side of a casinos operation is closely monitored anyway. In my experience there is rarely a proper balance in this area as I have also worked inside a casino where the actual table maximums were reduced in response to one single punter who was having a successful period of winning sessions.
Looking back I don’t believe that this punter had found a biased wheel but I do believe that he was reading the spin and the casino management knew it as well. So you often have to give these people credit for being professional and knowing their jobs but that mainly does not involve needing to know the in and outs and the weaknesses of roulette wheels.
Carl “The Dean” Sampson
Author – “Killer Roulette”
Come and read my highly entertaining bwin casino blog
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Hi there – just found this site because of what I am about to relate.
After several years I just re-established contact with a BJ-playing colleague. A few years ago he was playing in a UK provincial casino when he noticed on a roulette results “tree” that a certain number had hit 6 times in 15. He thought it looked interesting so began writing numbers. This wheel and several others of the same make turned out to be massively-biased and for the next 3 years they played it until the casino removed the wheels. This was about 3 years ago.
The amount they eventually won was a 6-figure number of which about half went on wages, etc. Not huge but then they were not playing big, which is probably why the game lasted so long. He just sent me the records of the best wheel –– in 27,000 spins the best numbers hit 938, 885, 823, 814, 812, 794, 783. In total there were 13 winning numbers, some of them marginal.
The most interesting feature is that those 7 best numbers were all black. In fact if they had only played black (even chances) they would have won 3.2% of turnover. Surely this is the holy grail of roulette?
Have you come across anything like this before? And what could have caused such a massive bias?
They didn’t take into consideration any variables like rotor speed, ball size, spin direction, nothing at all.
Thanks for a nice series of articles.