In 1985, a man called Thomas A. Bass wrote a book that took an awful lot of people within the gaming world by surprise and led to some very worried people in high places. That book was called “The Eudaemonic Pie” later renamed “The Newtonian casino ”. In that book, Bass goes into great detail about their plans to manufacture a computer to predict the likely outcome of the ball on roulette.

Before we start talking about these “Eudaemons”, I have to point out that they did not actually succeed in making any money, not meaningful amounts anyway. But success can be measured in many ways and for me; the success story in this is not what was won because there weren’t any winnings to speak of. It was the fact that these methods were now deemed possible and were not science fiction but were almost science fact.

In fact Thomas Bass and his colleagues were not the first ones to arrive at the computer idea to assist them in beating roulette. Edward Thorp was using a very primitive system back in the sixties but without success. What Bass did was to invent a unique way of disguising it by hiding it in a shoe. They took the next step from Thorp by using a micro-processor. Bass could detect certain impulses in his feet that would indicate what numbers to bet on.

One of his main accomplices was a man called James Farmer who was an astrophysicist at the time. But once again like Edward Thorp over twenty years earlier, they suffered from inadequacies in the technology of the day. Their big mistake in my opinion was that they went about it in a too complicated a way and suffered for this.

When the computer was working properly, it was calculated that it could attain a 44% edge over the casino on every spin which is nothing short of phenomenal. Although it has to be said that even if they had succeeded, they were still going up against inferior roulette wheels that were in general circulation in Las Vegas at that time.

But the fact of the matter was that you do not need to be that complicated in order to beat roulette. This was a classic case of a group of highly qualified and highly intelligent people simply going down a blind alley and over complicating the process. They failed because they were intelligent enough to make it work and that was their downfall.

What I really liked about this story was the fact that it all seemed beyond me personally. Computers and computer technology has always seemed so alien to me. This may seem strange to many people seeing as I have made my living using a computer. But yet roulette is beatable with the naked eye so it is certainly beatable using computers. If the new roulette wheel manufacturers are so confident in their new wheels being random then why not allow players to use computers?

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
Author – “Killer Roulette”

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