The D’Alambert system is for risk-averse players, but we still wanted to give it a try in our hunt for the most successful roulette strategy. After trying the most popular 4 roulette strategies over countless hours at the table, I’ll let you in on a secret. There’s no such thing as a roulette strategy that works every time.
For as long as gamblers have wagered money on games of chance and skill, the temptation to cheat has loomed.
European roulette wheels offered better odds than American wheels: They had 37 slots instead of 38, reducing the casino’s edge over the player from 5.26% to 2.7%. And, as Jarecki would discover, they were just his type of machine — old, janky, and full of physical defects. In the early 2000s, a team of Austrian roulette cheats found a way to activate magnetic fields that drew the ball to certain numbers based on where the player stood. While the team didn’t win on every single spin, the use of a remote-controlled ball helped them improve their chances of winning. The house edge in American Roulette is 5.26%, beginners are urged to play French/European versions as the house edge is lowered to 2.7% Whatever strategy a players decides to utilize: Martingale, D’Alembert or Fibonacci for instance, it’s critical to remember that in Roulette the spin of the wheel is a unique event for each spin despite. So why play Roulette? It is in fact one of the fairest forms of gambling. You can bet on more or less even chances Black/Red High/Low Odd/Even, Two to one chances on dozens rows columns or neighbours.
Unwilling to let fate decide, casino cheaters use creative and unscrupulous tricks to gain an unfair edge over the house.
Among the earliest methods employed by poker cheats, the gunslinging poker games of the Old West era saw cheats wield aces up their sleeves. These days, cheaters who plague poker can be found in both brick and mortar card rooms and online sites, colluding or dumping chips to team up on unsuspecting opponents.
Cheating in modern casinos predominantly afflicts the skill-based games like poker and blackjack, but you’d be surprised by how prevalent the crime has become in roulette and other games of chance. You wouldn’t think a simple wheel-spinning affair like roulette would be subject to cheating because players don’t really have any influence on the gameplay.
Nonetheless, cheats can be found anywhere real money is being wagered, and the roulette table is no exception. Even with the ever-present “eye in the sky” watching their every move, and eagle-eyed croupiers (dealers), pit bosses, and other staff members trained to detect malfeasance, roulette cheaters just can’t help themselves.
The allure of making easy money without incurring risk certainly makes sense, but trying to cheat the casino while playing roulette is a fool’s errand. Don’t take my word for it though, just ask the long lineup of convicted roulette criminals who tried the five ways to cheat at roulette listed below.
1 – Past Posting or Late Betting to Increase Wagers on Known Winners
Every roulette player knows the feeling well…
When you nail the number perfectly and watch the croupier stack the 35 to 1 payout, wishing you would’ve bet $10 instead of $1, the experience can be bittersweet to say the least. Beating long odds for a big payout is always cause for celebration, but when you only bet a few bucks, it can be easy to kick yourself for not putting more out there.
Some roulette cheaters aren’t content with their minimal payouts, so they resort to a tactic popularly referred to as “past posting.” Also known as “late betting,” the concept of past posting is quite basic on the surface. You add chips to your bet once you know it’s a winner.
When the croupier watches the wheel to find out where the ball landed, it will take them a split second to scan the spaces, find the ball, and turn their eyes back to the table before calling the number. In that split second, past posting artists use sleight of hand tricks to secretly add significant sums to their winning bet.
Let’s say you sprinkled various bets between $5 and $40 on several single-number spaces, using combinations of both the red $5 and green $25 chips. You have the number 17 covered with one $5 chip, but when you see the ball nestle into the 17 space, you instantly dart your hand out and cap the $5 bet with a $25 chip. The croupier never notices your trickery, and just like that, you’ve turned a $175 payout (35 to 1) on $5 into a whopping $1,050.
Why You Shouldn’t Try Past Posting
While potentially lucrative when undetected, past posting is inherently dangerous based on the moving parts in play.
A professional croupier is trained to scan and memorize the bets in play when they wave for final wagers, so they might notice your small chips suddenly transforming into big ones. While you’re watching the croupier, a nearby pit boss outside of your peripheral vision might see you make the switch. And up above, high-resolution cameras are recording every move you make.
![Successful Roulette Players Successful Roulette Players](https://wizardofodds.com/games/double-ball-roulette/images/double-zero-roulette-1.png)
Add it all up, and past posting just isn’t worth the risk involved, a fact Charbel Tannous and Constandi Lubbat can attest to. In 2011, while playing roulette at L’Auberge du Lac Casino Resort in Louisiana, the pair were caught red-handed past posting for big money.
After authorities used surveillance footage to confirm that over $175,000 was stolen via the roulette scheme, Tannous and Lubbat were charged with felony cheating and swindling over $1,500 and criminal conspiracy.
Tannous was eventually convicted and sentenced to 37 months in federal prison for organizing the roulette racket. This is a harsh punishment US Attorney Stephanie Finley made clear will be the norm for casino cheats:
“We are very pleased with the court’s decision to give this defendant a significant prison term. The casino and the citizens were victims in this case. A portion of the profits from the casino goes to the State of Louisiana and the Calcasieu Parish School Board.
We will continue to partner with our local, state, and federal law enforcement partners to prosecute crimes of this nature and seek the maximum amount of prison time available.”
We will continue to partner with our local, state, and federal law enforcement partners to prosecute crimes of this nature and seek the maximum amount of prison time available.”
2 – Partnering With a Croupier to Produce Fake Winners
If you read the previously linked reporting, you know Tannous and Lubbat didn’t work alone.
By conspiring with two croupiers working at the casino, these cheats made sure their past posting antics would never be reported.
That approach certainly makes sense on an objective level, too. By doubling down on the scam, colluding to ensure their cheating is allowed by the people running the table, conspirators don’t leave anything to chance. Having an “inside man” on the team only makes cheating at roulette that much easier, as a corrupt croupier can allow their partner to inflate winning bets or pull back chips on losers.
Why You Shouldn’t Partner With a Dealer
In 2016, a casino pit boss at the Horseshoe Casino in Council Bluffs, Iowa, decided to go rogue. He enlisted a croupier to do the dirty deed, and a third partner to act the part of lucky player. Past posting provided the bulk of the team’s $20,000 in ill-gotten gains, but like almost all roulette cheats before them, these three were eventually caught on camera and arrested.
David Dales, a special agent with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation (IDCI), issued a statement explaining how the scam was set up:
“There was a dealer that was doing some active cheating mechanism on the roulette table at Horseshoe Casino. And there was a patron he was consistently cheating for. The allegations are they were past posting – adding chips to the winning numbers – doing other activities that gave them illegal winnings at a table game.”
The offenders were charged with four felonies, including ongoing criminal conduct, first-degree theft, conspiracy, and cheating at gambling. They faced significant jail time and hefty fines.
3 – “Coloring up” Small Chips for Higher Denominations off the Table Before Cashing Out
An especially clever way roulette players can cheat the game involves the old bait and switch.
To make the “color up” scheme work, two players working in tandem start by sitting at different tables. In roulette, cash is turned into specially designed chips that are only good at the table. To avoid confusion between different players betting, everyone gets a different color chip in the denomination of their choosing.
A color up team moves from table to table, one buying in for the minimum $1 chips, and the other going bigger with a $25 or $100 denomination. When they both receive the same color chips, they’re always at a different table and only six or seven colors are in play so this will inevitably occur, the trap is sprung.
The low stakes player pockets a handful of chips on the sly, then heads off to take a quick bathroom break. With no surveillance cameras to worry about, they wait for their partner to hit the head as well, then they deliver a handful of chips when nobody’s around.
Flush with new chips in the same color as those at the big stakes table, the second player proceeds to play a spin or two with minimal action before requesting a color up and cash out.
When cheaters turn 10 of the $1 chips into an equivalent amount of $25 chips, they’ve instantly “earned” $240 in profit without incurring an ounce of risk. And if a $1 to $100 exchange rate is in play, the color up scam produces a massive $990 profit margin.
Why You Shouldn’t Color up Chips
Between 2012 and 2013, a highly organized team of color up cheaters based in New York toured the country targeting small commercial and tribal casinos. Their run came to an end in Ohio, after the team struck at four casinos and stole thousands of dollars, only for 13 members to find themselves behind bars when it was all said and done.
Karen Huey, director of enforcement for the Ohio Casino Control Commission (OCCC), told local media outlets that the Buckeye State was not alone:
“This is a very organized group of about 70 people. They travel the country. They’ve been identified in 18 states running this scam.”
The roulette cheating team wound up facing 29 felony counts and the possibility of lengthy prison sentences. According to Lucas County Prosecutor’s Office Special Units Division Chief John Weglian, casino criminals will never receive leniency.
“One of the principle purposes of these casinos is to provide revenue to the State of Ohio so the laws that the legislature has passed cover casino violations will be enforced strictly by the Attorney General’s office and this office. We will enforce the laws of the state.”
4 – Using Hidden Lasers to Measure Ball Speed Before Betting Concludes
These last two are so absurd that they hardly merit mention, but based on their scientific innovations alone, they made the cut.
Back in the 1970s, a physicist at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico named Norman Packard postulated that laser beams could be used to measure crucial roulette variables. By using a laser and a computer to chart the ball and wheel speed, Packard succeeded in predicting which quadrant of the wheel the ball would land in.
Here’s how he described the gambit in an interview with New Scientist:
“In the best circumstances, we could predict the quadrant correctly. Even saying which half of the wheel is extremely powerful because the payoff is so good. We definitely got to the point where we were winning money, but we didn’t continue long enough to make large amounts.”
Why You Shouldn’t Use Technology to Cheat
Obviously, pulling out a laser pointer and hiding a computer on your person is impractical in the modern casino setting. Maybe the laser cheat works in a laboratory, or even an old-school gambling hall before cameras became prevalent, but this is a method of cheating at roulette that would never fly nowadays.
5 – Directing the Ball to Certain Spaces by Generating a Magnetic Field
Using a laser pointer and a computer isn’t the most discreet way to cheat at roulette. So, how about a magnetic roulette ball to improve your odds?
In the early 2000s, a team of Austrian roulette cheats found a way to activate magnetic fields that drew the ball to certain numbers based on where the player stood. While the team didn’t win on every single spin, the use of a remote-controlled ball helped them improve their chances of winning.
Why You Shouldn’t Use Magnets
Unfortunately for this team of conmen, the croupier eventually found the ball stuck to his cufflink. The jig was up, forcing the cheaters to abandon their winnings and run away in shame. Today, some casinos use magnetic field sensors to prevent this from happening.
Conclusion
Folks who feel the need to cheat at roulette represent the bottom of the barrel when it comes to casino gambling. Desperate and down on their luck, yet unwilling to simply learn a skill game and play it well, roulette cheats refuse to accept reality. And as the five entries above should show you, the run of free money always ends at some point, leaving prison, probation, and a ruined reputation as the roulette cheater’s only legacy.
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The goal of this post is to offer you the best roulette strategy ever.
I read somewhere that roulette is the 3rd most popular table game in the USA. In Europe, roulette is THE most popular table game. I recently took a look at the roulette survey at Wizard of Vegas, and as near as I can tell from the table, there are about 300 roulette tables in Las Vegas. That’s a lot.
The most popular posts on this site so far have all been about the game. My post about the Hollandish system for roulette is the most-viewed post on the site, followed closely by my post about the best roulette systems. And while I’m proud of those posts, they don’t quite cover the subject I’m going to write about here today–the best roulette strategy ever.
It’s true that this is a game of pure luck.
But you can be a successful roulette player.
All you need to do is find other roulette players who’ve succeed and implement the same strategy.
This post explains how to do that.
The Best Roulette Strategy Is a Biased Wheel System
I’ve read multiple accounts of players who have won 6 figures or more using a biased wheel strategy. They’ve won this money in Atlantic City, Las Vegas, and Monte Carlo.
Here’s the thing about this game:
There’s no such thing as a flawless roulette wheel. All mechanical devices are slightly imperfect. If you can find a wheel that’s imperfect enough, you can get an edge over the casino.
The best roulette strategy involves writing down numbers as they come up during play. Eventually, you’ll find a wheel where some numbers come up more often than they should statistically.
When that happens, you’ve got ’em!
Think about this, too:
Casinos discard decks of cards and dice multiple times each day.
Why?
Because of their physical imperfections.
Roulette wheels have physical imperfections, too, but they’re too expensive to replace that regularly.
And even a wheel that’s close to perfect when it’s first bought and installed develops a bias after the wear and tear of regular use.
My plan for the rest of this post is to look at a few examples of players who’ve used this “best roulette strategy” to see how they did it:
- How much time did they spend “clocking” these wheels?
- How did they bet once they detected a bias?
- What kind of bankroll did they have to begin with?
- How much money did they bet?
- And how much money did they win?
How Much Money Did Vladimir Granec Win Playing Roulette?
Vladimir Granec Won money playing roulette at international casinos during the 1970s. Many huge, almost un-explainable casino losses were reported to Interpol and European police departments in France in 1975. Those complaints also started coming in from other countries, too, like Africa and Yugoslavia.
And it took these police years to catch up with Granec and his confederates.
In France in 1978, The Municipal Caisno in Canne and La Siesta in Antibes lost $3.2 million on their roulette tables. Treasure mile casino bonus codes. When you added in the losses on roulette from other French casinos, the total came to $6 million.
Of course, it’s not illegal to exploit a bias in a roulette wheel. It’s the casino’s responsibility to ensure their equipment works properly, and if they don’t, it’s on them.
But it IS illegal to create a bias in a roulette wheel, and that was apparently Granec’s big game. He had several confederates, at least one of whom was an expert mechanic. This mechanic was able to not only fix the wheel, but he was also able to “unfix” it after they’d won their money–leaving the casinos confused about what had happened.
To this day, no one knows how this crew got access to the roulette wheels to fix them. We do know what they did to fix them–they loosened the slots on the wheel to either side of the 20. (The 7 neighboring numbers were 9, 31, 14, 20, 1, 33, and 16.) To the croupiers, the player just seemed really lucky.
To try to thwart his luck, the croupier spun the roulette wheel faster, which had the effect of causing it to land in the desired series of numbers even more often than it should have.
Finally, in 1981, the police caught up with the ringleader of this scheme–Vladimir Granec–the so-called “King of Roulette.” He was a Czechoslovakian living in Munich. Granec had a storied career prior to his life as a roulette cheat–he’d been 2nd in command of the Czechoslovak Department of Radio Free Europe, owned casinos in both England and in Yugoslavia, and he ran a real estate business.
Vladimir Granec’s “Guidance” on What to Look for in a Roulette Number
They were finally able to arrest Granec in 1984. They took him to trial again in 1986 after failing to convict him in 1984. During his trial this time, he explained that he’d merely tracked where the ball landed. When he found a number that came up 10% more often than it was statistically supposed to, he started betting on it.
He was again acquitted.
The French courts were finally able to convict him when they found 3 of his confederates who were willing to testify against him. Each of them admitted that they’d worked for Granec in exchange for 2% to 20% of the winnings.
He was sentenced to 5 years in prison and charged a fine of $500,000.
But since he’d won over$10 million or more at the roulette tables, he’d come out way ahead. In fact, Vladimir Granec is the largest roulette winner in the history of the game.
This does not mean that I think the best roulette strategy is to cheat. But it’s hard to talk about biased wheels without telling the story of Vladimir Granec.
Watching the Wheels Go Round and Round
William Nelson Darnborough
Several winners demonstrated their best roulette strategies by just watching the wheel. One of them was William Nelson Darnborough. From 1904 to 1911 he beat roulette consistently. He won $415,000 from the Monte Carlo Casino alone. He was famous for how fast he placed his bets when the croupier started spinning the wheel.
Darnborough was a user of the “wheel-watcher system.”
Here’s how the wheel-watcher system works:
The bettor estimates the speed of the ball and the wheel relative to each other. Then he looks at the relative position of the ball compared to the numbers on the wheel. He then calculates the average point of fall for the ball. Once this is done, he immediately places his bet.
Users of the wheel watcher system lose more often than they win, but when they do hit a win, the amount compensates for the losses and then some.
They’re able to make these calculations within just 1 to 3 spins of the wheel.
The big trick was having a confederate or 2 to help place the bets. Otherwise, there’s not enough time to make the necessary mental calculations and place the necessary bets.
Edward Thorp
Another player to beat roulette was Edward Thorp, who’s better known for inventing card counting in blackjack. Thorp was a professor of both physics and mathematics at MIT. He and Claude Shannon, both professors, bought a regulation wheel in Reno, Nevada and set it up in Shannon’s basement.
They wrote an academic paper where they’d determined that they could reach a +15% expectation by betting on the 5 numbers they predicted the ball would land on–again, just by eyeballing the speed of the ball compared to the speed of the wheel. They were able to increase this to +44% by using a computer. (I should note that using a computer for such a purpose would be considered cheating in a real casino and would be illegal.)
You can read about their experiments in a book called The Eudaemonic Pie by Thomas A. Bass.
It recounts how in 1962, Thorp had already been banned from some casinos because of his card counting. But he used sunglasses and a fake beard as part of a disguise to get past this. And there were still some casinos where he hadn’t been banned.
Thorp and his friends spent a week at the Riviera. They had repeated problems with the wires in the microcomputers they were using, which were the size and shape of a cigarette case. They didn’t win at roulette and eventually gave up.
A later team of roulette players used the same principles with a computer that worked, though. They won $55,000 at the Valkenburg Casino in Holland. At another casino in Germany, the casino took countermeasures and stopped allowing players to make bets after the wheel had been spun.
It’s probably hard to become a wheel-watcher, but it’s probably not impossible, either. Laurence Scott wrote a book called How to Beat Roulette which explains a one-person and 2-person wheel-watcher system.
How Can You Become the Most Successful Roulette Player of All Time?
On an American roulette wheel, the probability of the ball landing on any specific number is 1/38.
If you can find a number where the ball lands 1/35 of the time, you’d have a clear bias. If you could find a number where the ball landed 1/30 of the time, you’d have a strong enough bias that you’d be playing at a significant advantage to the casino.
Here’s how the math works on that:
If the wheel is perfect, and the number comes up once every 38 spins, the house has an edge of 5.26%. You calculate that by taking a statistically perfect set of spins and averaging the amount lost per spin.
You win 35 to 1 on a single number bet, so your winnings (if you’re betting $100 per spin) would be $3500. But you’ll lose $3700 on your losing spins, for a net loss of $200. Averaged into 38 spins, you’re looking at an average loss of $5.26 per spin, or 5.26%.
But let’s do the math behind a number that comes up 1/30 of the time.
You’d win $3500 once, but you’d lose $2900 on the other 29 spins. That’s a net win of $600, or an edge of 15.78% over the casino. That’s a huge edge, by the way–far greater than you’d see counting cards in blackjack.
How to Find a Number that Comes Up More Often than It Statistically Should
But how do you find a number that’s actually biased?
In an average 8 hour session of play, you’ll see 300 to 350 spins on a roulette wheel. That’s not enough to accurately find a bias. In any set of 325 spins, about half the numbers on the wheel will come up more often than you’d expect. And half of them will come up less often than you’d expect.
That’s just variance.
Any given number then has a 50% chance of coming up more often than statistically likely during any given 8-hour shift.
But for a number to come up more often 2 days in a row, the probability becomes 50% X 50%, or 25%. For it to come up 3 days in a row, the probability drops to 12.5%.
This is just the probability that a number is coming up more often than it “should” just because of random chance.
Creating a Roulette Betting System Based on This
The casino provides cards for tracking which numbers come up as you’re playing. You’re going to keep track of how many times a specific number has come up.
After the first spin, the ball will have landed on a number once. That number is the number you bet on the next spin, because it’s the number that has come up most often. It’s unlikely that this number has a bias, because the wheel is still random.
When another number comes up, you switch to that number.
But as soon as a number has come up twice, you start betting on that number until another number has come up twice. Then you switch again.
Once a number has come up 3 times, it becomes the theoretically most likely number, and you switch to that number.
You continue to switch to the number that has come up most often throughout your time on the wheel.
Successful Roulette Players
The more spins that are made, the likelier it is that you’re betting on a biased number, increasing your probability of winning.
It might take several days of play for this system to bear fruit, but when it does, you can make a lot of money. Winning 35 to 1 on a 29 to 1 event is an advantage that most gamblers dream of.
This betting system comes from the book Beating the Wheel: Winning Strategies at Roulette by Russell T. Barnhart.
Keep in mind that this isn’t a foolproof system. You might be playing on a wheel that isn’t biased. You might be playing on a wheel that is biased, but you might still be unlucky.
Roulette Bankroll Management Guidelines
Of course, to place this many roulette bets, you’d need a bankroll sufficient to cover the action. At a $5 table, if you lost every spin, you’re looking at $1500 to $1750 in losses per day. (This assumes you’re playing for 8 hours day.)
Your goal, too, is to stay in action until your long-term edge kicks in. This means you don’t want to go broke just because you were unlucky. Even if you’re betting on a number that’s statistically more likely to come up, you could go broke during a cold streak.
In blackjack, card counters use “risk of ruin” as their guideline for how big a bankroll they need. They set a goal of 80%, 90%, 95% or 99%, which is their probability of NOT going broke before they run out of money. The number of betting units needed for each level goes up as your probability of not going broke goes up.
To best avoid going broke before your edge kicks in, you should have at least 200 units to bet with, but 700 to 1000 units would be even better.
You should also avoid betting on a single number throughout your play, as it will become obvious to the casino what you’re doing.
One method of camouflaging your play is to bet on the target number, one additional random number, and make a columns bet on the column containing your target number.
This, of course, requires a larger bankroll than if you were just betting a single number every time, so if you’re a $5 bettor, try to have $3500 to $5000 in your total bankroll to play with.
Finally
I can’t guarantee that the best roulette strategy will result in you becoming the most successful roulette player of all time. Modern roulette wheels tend to be well-made, after all. If you’re searching for a biased wheel, you should go to a smaller casino that only has a single wheel. You should also keep in mind that a wheel might not be biased at all.
You can easily go broke playing roulette, and all the theory in the world isn’t enough to win if you’re consistently unlucky.
Successful Roulette Players Strategies
At any rate, I wish you luck on the Devil’s Wheel.