No weblog I know has picked up this story from the news sites yet, but it deserves an audience -- it's quite remarkable.
Three people have been arrested after winning more than £1m at an exclusive central London casino.
Two men and a woman won the money playing roulette at the Ritz Casino club in Piccadilly on 16 March.
Two men and a woman... hmm... do you think it could be...?
Seriously, though, here's what we know. The suspects walked into an exclusive club in London and on two separate nights earlier this month they walked away from the roulette table £1.2 million (in total) richer.
But it gets far more interesting. The Guardian has an interesting article about the suspected method behind this heist.
In short, the gang are believed to have used laser measuring devices and concealed computers to calculate the spin of the wheel and trajectory of the ball, and predict where the ball was likely to fall.
Let's go over that again. Someone used data collected optically from covert hand-held devices to calculate the likely outcome of an ostensibly chaotic system in faster than real time. This isn't just clever -- if true, it's genius. It's practically science fiction.
Now most of this is just conjecture at this point... a journalist joining the dots, as the details have not yet been fully revealed. But Scotland Yard have at least confirmed that they're examining a gadget in a mobile phone, and the principles in question have been proven effective before -- albeit in a lab. So it's not idle speculation... it really does look plausible that this scheme was the one employed by the suspects. Doesn't it sound like the plot of a great caper movie? And it's not over yet -- as discussed in the Guardian article, the legalities of this case are anything but clear-cut, so the suspects might walk away, not having broken any law.
For me, there's something hard to define about the act of ripping off a casino that makes it sound like the most glamourous, exciting, and sympathetic kind of crime. Maybe we like to see gambling institutions -- who make a business out of putting people into debt -- get a taste of their own medicine once in a while. Maybe a long line of charming fictional scoundrels in our entertainment media have created a romanticised archetype which we can't help but think of when we read stories like this one. And stories about those who outsmart the system have always been popular. But whatever the reasons, and against my better judgment, there's certainly a large part of me that hopes these three slick swindlers get away with it.
(Cowboy Bebop image from Cartoon Party)
A gang of MIT students tried much the same stunt years ago and documented their exploits in the book Newtonian Casino - http://www.thomasbass.com/work3.htm
A great tale, although possibly implausible.
If it is as interesting as is speculated then I am definitely anticipating the movie :)
How does something work faster than in real time?
Calculated faster than real time -- that is, the prediction takes much less time to calculate than the movement of the actual physical ball. If you could only predict it in real time or slower then it wouldn't do you much good, because you'd get the prediction too late for you to be able to act upon it.
Often there's a tradeoff between the timeliness of a prediction and its accuracy. Take weather forecasts -- we are theoretically able to model weather systems much more accurately than we do today, but it's currently no use to us because by the time the calculations are actually complete, they're predicting yesterday's weather.
Hi Folks
Its not that difficult, I have been doing it for nearly 20 years and supplying Roulette computer prediction devices for 12 years!
But don't take my work for it, have a look at my site, and if you are interested, come and visit me in person and I will demonstrate it to you!
I can even have you using it yourself in around 1 hour and obtaining fantastic results!
My success rate is 1 in 18 for the exact number!
and around 50-60% for a sector of 7 numbers approximately!
Oh, and can you get your bets on quick enough, sure, the casinos allow you to bet long after the ball has been released, calling no bets as the ball slows and starts heading for the Rotor!
Read Ed Thorp 'The Mathematics of Gambling' and 'Newtonian Casino' by Thomas A Bass.
I will not be releasing my story for many years to come yet!
Speak to you all soon.
Have a good week!
Regards
Mark. .
Hi there folks
Roulette Computers are legal in most parts of the world!
They are of course illegal in Nevada, NJ and California due to the exploits of the team in the 1980's which was well documented in >
'The Eudeamonic Pie; By Thomas A Bass, an excellent read by the way!
Roulette Computer History goes way back to 1955 when the first WEARABLE Computer was proposed for beating the game of Roulette by Edward O Thorp(Author of Beat the Dealer) and Claude Shannon( The guy responsible for communications Protocol, without him the internet would not exist). A Analogue device was constructed in 1966, but failed practically because of the limitation of the hardware.
http://c2000.cc.gatech.edu/classes/cs8113c_99_spring/readings/thorp.pdf
Also around the same time, Russian Teams were developing Roulette computers, some of them gaining around 20% advantage consistantly.
Then the 'Eudeamonic Pie' was set up, a team of ambitious young scientists, electronic buffs, programmers, mathematicians to create the ulternate dream, a computer that could predict the outcome of the game before the ball lands!
http://www.thomasbass.com/work2.htm
Heres another team that did it in the early 1980's>
http://nowscape.com/blk/roul/index.html
-------------------------------------------------------
Later the software of the Eudaemonic Pie was found to have a small bug in the code which had caused the Kim Computer to behave badly and not return the correct predictions.
The Code was later taken over by Fred Britain and Laurence Scott ( Visual Ballistics using only your eyesight) and revamped and set nito a block of resin, now called Copernicus, this gadget had a massive edge on the old style wheels with deep pockets which created hardly no scatter!
Eventually it had its days, with only a handful of units around, some selling for $20,000 dollars a time, its History came to an abrupt end whith the introduction of modern wheels with shallower pockets, Casinos setting their wheels level and checking for titled wheels.
All othe casinos were wise to the fact that tilted wheels were enabling these Roulette Computers to gain a massive edge and for the Roulette Computer operator to set up pretty quickly.
We then had Newton Roulette appear in London, selling their system on a Compaq PDA, although the system never actually worked, they fizzled in just over 6 months.
Who am I, I am the owner of 'Phophecy', now in my 20th Year of Research And Development of Roulette Prediction Software and Roulette Computers!
I have taken it to new heights, I can play within around 4 spins on ALL wheels, play level, tilted, continuous ball changes, alternate and sporadic with different Croupiers and still obtain an edge of around 100% on the exact number( On average I will hit 1 in 18 on the exact number), or chosing one of my Sector playing programs, between 40%-70% on a sector!
Anyone wanting the Roulette Mathematics can obtain it for free at my site and build their own Roulette Computer if they wish!
Regards
Mark Anthony Howe
http://predictroulette.com
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