Casino Players with sharp minds can beat the house: Blackjack players who count cards, colluding card sharks, players who work together with cheating dealers etc. There are, however, players who have used technical devices to beat the casino. We're going to investigate them in the second article in the series How to Beat the House.

Roulette Scam at the Ritz Casino

In the spring of 2004, two men and one woman walked into the Casino at The Ritz located near Piccadilly Circus in London. They sat down by the roulette table and started placing high-denomination chips. Everything seemed normal - just a couple of new high rollers in town.

And they were lucky, very lucky, and could later that night leave the casino with £100.000 in winnings.

The subsequent evening, the team returned to the casino for another session - and it turned out to a really profitable one. They could walk out with another £1.2 million, £300.000 in cash and a check for the remaining balance.

However, the casino-security team sensed something was wrong and went back to look at the security tapes.

 

A Mobile Phone Calculated the Outcome

The casino employees saw something interesting: One of the team members looked at a mobile phone from time to time. They decided to inform the police.

Later that night, Scotland Yard entered the team's hotel room and found a significant amount of cash and a number of mobile phones. When they examined the phones the realized how the team had managed to win that much money. The phones were equipped with a piece of software that approximately calculates where the ball will land after each roulette spin - a system called sector targeting.

Sector targeting is quite simple. You determinate where the ball is released, and then where it is after, say, two spins. With these variables it's possible to roughly calculate where the ball will end up. The problem is that it's impossible to do with just the mind - a program must do the calculation for you.

So the roulette players weren't sending a lot of text messages. It was a new form of casino hustling.

Below, you can watch a video about sector detecting and also learn about a device that can help you beat the dealer in blackjack.

 

 

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