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roulette (dict)

Roulette

This page is about the game. Mathematics has another concept named roulette.
Roulette is a casino game. A croupier turns a round roulette wheel which has 37 or 38 separately numbered pockets in which a ball must land. The main pockets are numbered from 1 to 36 and change between red and black, with number 1 being red. In addition there is a pocket numbered 0 of green color. In most roulette wheels in the United States but not in Europe, there is a second zero compartment marked 00, also colored green. If a player bets on a single number and wins, the pay is 35 to 1. This means the bet is multiplied by 35, while also the bet is returned, in total it is multiplied by 36. (In a lottery one would say 'the prize is 36 times the cost of the ticket', because in a lottery the cost of the ticket is not returned additionally.) A player can bet on numbers, combinations and even colors.

Board depiction (American Roulette)

000
1-
18
1st
12
123
456
odd789
101112
red2nd
12
131415
161718
blk192021
222324
even3rd
12
252627
282930
19-
36
313233
343536

Bet odds table (American Roulette)

(in addition to the mentioned payout the bet is returned)
Bet nameWinning spacesPayout
0035 to 1
000035 to 1
1135 to 1
2235 to 1
.
.
.
.
.
.
363635 to 1
Row 000, 0017 to 1
Row 31, 2, 311 to 1
Row 64, 5, 611 to 1
Row 97, 8, 911 to 1
.
.
.
.
.
.
Row 3634, 35, 3611 to 1
Column 11, 4, 7, ..., 342 to 1
Column 22, 5, 8, ..., 352 to 1
Column 33, 6, 9, ..., 362 to 1
First 121, 2, 3, ..., 122 to 1
Middle 1213, 14, 15, ..., 242 to 1
Last 1225, 26, 27, ..., 362 to 1
Odd1, 3, 5, ..., 351 to 1
Even2, 4, 6, ..., 361 to 1
Red1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 30, 32, 34, 361 to 1
Black2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 13, 15, 17, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 29, 31, 33, 351 to 1
1 to 181, 2, 3, ..., 181 to 1
19 to 3619, 20, 21, ..., 361 to 1
five number bet0, 00, 1, 2, 36 to 1
Note also that 0 and 00 are neither odd nor even in this game. The house average or house edge is what is lost on average relative to the bet. If a player bets on a single number in the American game there is a probability of 1/38 that the player gets 36 times the bet (including the return), so they end up having on average 36/38=0.9474 times the bet. Thus the house average for American roulette is 1/19 (5.26%); the same applies for the other kinds of bets, except for the five number bet where it a greater than 7%. The house average is approximately halved in the European game.

Number Trivia

Roulette has been known as the devil's wheel since the total of all numbers adds up to 666, the legendary number of the beast.

Betting Strategies and Tactics

Albert Einstein is reputed to have stated, "You cannot beat a roulette table unless you steal money from it." And yet, the numerous even money bets in roulette have inspired many players over the years to attempt to beat the game by using one or more variations of a Martingale betting strategy, wherein the gamer doubles the bet after every loss, so that the first win would recover all previous losses, plus win a profit equal to the original bet. As the referenced article on Martingales points out, this betting strategy is fundamentally flawed in practice. Various attempts have been made by engineers to overcome the house edge through predicting the mechanical performance of the wheel, most notably by Joseph Jaggers, the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo in 1873. Claude Shannon, a mathematician and computer scientist best known for his contributions to information theory, built arguably the first wearable computer to do so in 1961 http://c2000.cc.gatech.edu/classes/cs8113c_99_spring/readings/thorp.pdf. To try to prevent exploits like this, the casinos monitor the performance of their wheels, and rebalance and realign them regularly to try to keep the result of the spins as random as possible. More recently Thomas Bass, in his book The Newtonian Casino 1991, has claimed to be able to predict wheel performance in real time. He is also the author of The Eudaemonic Pie, which describes the exploits of a group of computer hackers who attempt to use computers in their shoes to win at roulette by predicting where the ball will fall. In 2004, it was reported that a group in London had used mobile cameraphones to predict the path of the ball, a cheating technique called sector targeting. http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14898 In December 2004 court adjudged that they didn't cheat because their special laser cameraphone and microchip weren't influencing the ball - they kept all 1.3m. http://www.gamblinggates.com/News/07122004/Ritz_Roulette_Scam24041.html

Famous Bets

In 2004, Ashley Revell of London sold all of his possessions, clothing included, and brought US$135,300 to the Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas and put it all on "Red" at the roulette table in a double-or-nothing bet. The ball landed on "Red 7" and Revell walked away with his money doubled to $270,600.

See also

External link

 

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