• Can Roulette Machines Be Rigged Like
• Can Roulette Machines Be Rigged Without
• Can Roulette Machines Be Rigged As A
• Can Roulette Machines Be Rigged For A

There are two different ways that you can play casino table games such as Roulette online. The first is via a software driven gaming platform, and the other way is by making use of one of the next generations of live gaming platforms that have recently become available to players. Often people ask me if casinos ever use rigged roulette wheels with magnets. The truth is some wheels do have magnets, and some casinos do cheat players. However, it is extremely rare. Generally it doesn’t happen in a government sanctioned casino because if they were caught, they would lose their gambling license and face heavy fines.

The roulette table is one of the most popular games in any casino for plenty of reasons. For one, the roulette table is easy to understand, which attracts new and old casino players. However, like most casino games, the issue of cheating is always there. In fact, you probably have asked the question “are roulette tables rigged?” In this article, we are going to answer that question.

Do Casinos Rig Roulette Tables?

When it comes to money, some people will always find a way to cheat. In roulette, it may be the casino or the player. While there are instances in which casinos were caught rigging the roulette tables, but these are rare cases.

The truth is, opening and running a legal casino is not easy. In fact, just getting approval to run a legal casino is a big headache. Even after you get your approval, you are regularly checked to ensure that your games are not cheating. Now keep in mind running a casino means that odds are always in your favor.

In other words, statistically, casinos will not lose money on the tables in the long run as the odds are in their favor. Since the casino is going to win the money in the long run anyway, what’s the real incentive for rigging roulette tables or other games?

It seems the only casinos that would resort to cheating are the ones that are greedy or running an illegal operation. In most cases, even if the legal casino is greedy, the extra money they get from rigging the roulette table is not worth the risk of being caught. If a casino is caught cheating, it will severely tarnish their reputation which drives customers away. And, authorities will most likely shut them down.

If there’s a real cause for rigged roulette tables, then it’s when you are playing in illegal casinos. In illegal casinos, pretty much “anything goes” as there’s no authority that regulates and checks for fair play. Having said that, even an illegal casino has a reputation to protect. If players know that they are rigging the tables, then this will have a significant negative impact on the casino’s bottom line.

A Few Known Ways Of Rigging Roulette Tables

* Ball Tripping – a cheating method in which the ball is prematurely and forcefully dislodged in the attempt to control it to rest on the desired spot.

* Rigging The Wheel – there are many ways of rigging the wheel like opening/widening the pockets or the use of a trip pin.

* Magnets – this method involves the use of magnets or electromagnets in conjunction with a rigged ball that has metal inside. The magnet attempts to control where the ball might land.

The thing with rigging a roulette table is that it’s still a probability game. Most rigging methods will only attempt to control the ball. What is very difficult to do is accurately control the ball where it will rest. This means that even if the tables are rigged, it will only bump up the casino’s odds a few notches. For most casinos, the extra gains in odds are not enough to justify if they get caught doing it.

The Bottom Line

Saying that a rigged roulette table doesn’t exist is rather a false statement as cheaters will always exist. However, you can take comfort from the fact that rigged roulette tables are extremely rare. The incentive to rig the roulette tables are generally not enough to compensate for the risk of losing customers or being shut down. This holds true even for illegal casinos, and even more so for legal casinos.

Can Roulette Be Rigged?

Gamblers who don't understand the inner workings of a casino sometimes wonder if the games they play are set up fairly. When a casino patron loses against a slot machine, for example, he or she might wonder if the machine was somehow rigged. Authentic roulette eliminates some of this suspicion because it makes use of a physical wheel that is spun by hand. An electronic roulette game could be rigged, however, as Pierre Coulon proved when he used his laptop recently to remotely help a female friend win a jackpot at the Paris Casino in Blackpool, England.

Coulon was the managing director of the Paris Casino at the time of the incident. Upon investigation, officials discovered that the surveillance cameras normally trained upon the facility's electronic roulette game had been moved. Coulon later admitted to manipulating the outcome of the game via laptop so his female friend could win some cash. He cited a dispute with his business partner and co-owner of the casino as the reason why he committed the crime. Prior to this event, Coulon, who spent 40 years working in the gambling industry, had no instances of criminal activity in his personal record.

About Roulette Wheel Bias

Roulette is a game of chance, but a person's chance of winning or losing can definitely be affected by wheel bias. A biased wheel is one that does not select numbers completely at random. Physical irregularities and normal wear and tear can alter a wheel in a way that causes it to favor certain numbers more than others. This irregularity, if discovered by a casino patron, can boost his or her odds of winning tremendously. For this reason, casinos do everything they can to detect such flaws and prevent customers from taking advantage of an edge in their favor.

Bias Caused by Wheel Manufacturers: Not Likely

Gambling equipment manufacturers are aware of the potential for irregularity and the great harm a defective wheel could ultimately do to a casino's bottom line. For this reason, wheels are manufactured to extremely high standards. A concentrated effort is made to ensure that all wheels are perfectly symmetrical and homogenous in weight and texture. A manufacturer of bum equipment would quickly go out of business, after all. Bias caused by the manufacturers is, therefore, highly unlikely.

Bias Caused by Normal Wear and Tear: Likely

A roulette wheel is spun thousands of times per day; it is only natural that wear and tear would gradually break it down. Sometimes the ball hits the wood with such force it becomes chipped, causing weight to be unevenly distributed. Sometimes 'rotor wobble' develops, in which the wheel gradually becomes crooked due to routine cleanings in which the rotor is removed from the spindle. Sometimes 'pocket defects' occur. In this situation, certain number pockets become slightly enlarged due to repeated force, or the felt between the pockets loosens, causing abnormalities in ball recoil. Any or all of these situations can occur during the lifetime of a roulette wheel, causing bias.

Wheel bias in itself is not harmful, or helpful, to anyone. The phenomenon only becomes harmful to the house when patrons discover it and develop their own personal ways to capitalize upon it. Similarly, wheel bias is only helpful to patrons if they realize it's there and seize the opportunity to profit from it.

Joseph Jagger Rips Off the Beaux-Arts Casino in 1873

Roulette wheel bias is nothing new, nor is the casino patron's desire to capitalize upon it. Almost 150 years ago, a man named Joseph Jagger won 65,000 pounds from Monte Carlo's Beaux-Arts casino through his knowledge of the facility's weakest wheel. Jagger spent time studying all six of the casino's wheels and deduced that one of them favored a grouping of nine adjacent numbers. After a fair amount of suspicious winning, the Beaux-Arts caught on to Jagger's tactics and tried to move the games around the room order to confound him. In the end, however, the gambler's profit was much higher than that of the house.

One Century Later: Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo Wins Big in Madrid

Over 100 years later, at the Casino de Madrid in the 1990s, Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo happened upon a defect that won him over a million euros over the course of several days. The casino eventually figured out what Garcia-Pelayo was doing and tried to sue, but the courts ruled in the gambler's favor, saying it was the casino's responsibility to maintain their equipment.

The Dealer Controls the Ball

The outcome of electronic table games can be controlled by computer, as Coulon showed the world in the Blackpool incident. The outcome of authentic games can be capitalized upon by scrutinizing players who have correctly identified an equipment defect. One last question remains: can a roulette dealer, or croupier, purposefully determine where a ball will land?

Debate exists as to whether croupiers can control the outcome of their spins. Anecdotally, some croupiers claim to possess this superior skill. Skeptics are quick to point out, however, that the wheel and its ball are spun in different directions, making it nearly impossible to control the outcome of a spin. It would take an extreme amount of fine motor coordination and muscle memory for a croupier to purposefully dictate this outcome.

For over a century, people have been looking for ways to cheat the roulette wheel and win big money. Whether through electronics or the identification of a physical equipment problem, this goal is occasionally achieved. For those who wonder if casinos sometimes cheat their patrons by rigging machinery, the answer is yes. In the case of roulette wheel bias, it is sometimes the patrons who cheat the casinos.

What Else Might Interest You:

Can Roulette Machines Be Rigged Like

Can Roulette Machines Be Rigged Without

COMMENTS:

By loading and joining the Disqus comments service below, you agree to their privacy policy.

Can Roulette Machines Be Rigged As A

Can Roulette Machines Be Rigged For A